After the launch: What's happening now?

[Editor's note: Louis is Project Scientist for the NASA Ames Research Center portion of the Neurolab payload, more specifically, dealing with the 15 experiments will use nonhuman subjects. Here he responds to our questions.]

Indeed the launch represents the beginning of our work. Some of the engineers and operations folks who were involved in the build up of flight hardware that was loaded onboard or the buildup of the ground hardware which simulates the flight hardware or the preparation of the equipment that we're going to use for the ground controls and recovery have gone home to the Ames Research Center. Some of them are still here, as a matter of fact the majority of the Ames team is still here. Another group of the people who have left are the people who went from Kennedy Space Center to the Johnson Space Center and to Ames Research Center, who are now sitting either at the Payload Operations Control Center in Houston for two 12-hour shifts or back at Ames for two 12-hour shifts. We have people in both locations monitoring the activity of the on orbit events 24 hours a day.

The reason for monitoring at all three locations is that each center has different capabilities: Johnson is the Mission Control Center, so they are responsible for the overall mission. Just as with the development of the payload, Ames is responsible for its portion [ 15 experiments will use nonhuman subjects]. So we have people at Johnson as well as at KSC and Ames. The people at KSC and Ames are monitoring the performance of the hardware and the performance of the operations with data sets that are specific to the Ames hardware. So, while all of the data is going to Houston, the careful analysis and tracking of that data is occurring at the other two locations.

The majority of the PIs [Principal Investigators] are still here [at Kennedy Space Center]. There are two who are at Johnson: Dr. McNaughton is there for the duration of the mission; and Dr. Walton has gone to Johnson for the first series of her behavioral tests, which will occur tomorrow, to make sure that the crew doesn't have any questions or problems when they're trying to do her experiments. A few of the investigators have gone back to their home labs because they don't have direct involvement in the set up and the performance of ground controls. They literally are waiting for the tissues that are going to be generated from the flight and the ground control animals. Those tissues will be shipped to them, and they don't have a burning need to be back here since there are travel costs to be considered. After all, this is no vacation for them, and they have lots of other work back at their own institutions. But the majority of the PIs from all the disciplines are still here at KSC because they've been setting up their ground controls. So that kind of covers the flurry of activity that happens right after launch.

Basically what's been going on for the past couple of days has been the implementation of very detailed timelines to cover the activities necessary to provide the control experiments. What that means is, for each of the groups, it was decided from a scientific point of view, what type of control experiment they need to perform on Earth in order to be able to compare that data to the experiments that are being conducted on orbit.

For example, for the CEBAS [Closed Equilibrated Biological Aquatic System] experiment: The flight hardware was loaded up with the fish, the snails, the plants; it was integrated into the orbiter and it took off. Forty-eight hours later, a second unit, virtually identical to the flight unit, is loaded with fish, snails and plants, and followed the same timeline as was used for the preparation of the flight equipment. It was then sealed up and turned on, and it's being run with the same conditions as the flight hardware except that it's on the ground. So you've got your 1 gravity control.

The engineers for that team are getting data from the orbiter that tracks the various hardware characteristics: the temperature, the oxygen saturation, PH and so forth. If necessary they will adjust the ground hardware to match. Since they've got the 48 hour delay, they have plenty of time to get the data from the orbiter and then adjust the equipment on the ground. We call that an asynchronous ground control. It's not synchronous because it's not happening at the same time, and yet it will mimic whatever happens.

That concept of asynchronous ground control in fact has been applied to all the groups. For example, for the Mammalian Development Group: after launch a second group of animals was selected using the same types of criteria, to identify the dams and the neonates to match the flight candidates. That group, with a 24 hour delay, was initiated as the Vivarium Control Group. Those animals will stay in regular standard cages, for the mission duration.

Now, tomorrow night, a third set, selected using the same criteria, will be loaded into simulated RAHF [Research Animal Holding Facility] cages. These RAHF cages are, from the animals' perspective, identical to the flight cages. Those animals will be loaded into the sim RAHF cages. They'll have the same lighting, the same air-flow, the same food, the same water, the same interior dimensions and the same color as the flight cages. What they don't have are the huge environmental controls that are necessary to deal with the orbiter. We have these set up on special test stands inside the animal holding room. Those controls then form the third set of animals and the second set of controls. So if we find on orbit that, let's say, half of the lights go out in the RAHF for the Mammalian Development Team, then the PIs will have the option down here of turning half the lights out on these cages. Or if the temperature goes down or up on the orbiter, inside the RAHF, we can adjust the temperature of the room. down or up and make sure that those control animals are exposed to the same types of conditions that the flight animals experience.

The same has been done for the Neuronal Plasticity RAHF groups, and for the AEM groups. They're all having vivarium and flight simulated hardware control groups set up on a staggered basis. So, while you've got the folks in Houston and Ames tracking what's going on with the flight animals, you've now also got a group of people at Kennedy that are tracking and performing the operations necessary to maintain the two sets of ground control animals for each group.

It's easy to conceive that on every mission day there are going to be activities that happen on orbit, and on every day starting with that staggered ground mission start, the same operations are going to be performed down here: the dissections, water refills, food changeout, behavioral testing (for Drs. McNaughton and Walton), and so forth. So you're duplicating the mission on the ground, actually duplicating it two times for those groups using the vivarium and sim cage controls.

The science operations folks are now keeping track of three timelines: the mission timeline, the vivarium timeline, and the sim hardware timeline. That means for example, landing day is just the acquisition of the flight animals. Then X number of days later, the vivarium controls "land" so to speak, and then X number of days after that, the sim hardware animals will "land." So the same operations that are going to be performed on the flight animals, are done on those two control groups, and you have the staggered collection of the flight and the two control sets of data. So you're going to have back-to-back and uninterrupted operations for a lot of these groups collecting the flight and the control tissues.

The integrated schedule is an impressive document. It's the PCAP [document used to schedule activities on the shuttle ] duplicated twice over and overlain with the procedures performed down here, keeping track of it all. It's a data base that documents every event, starting at about Launch minus 70 days and going out to Recovery plus 45 days. Every single event that has happened and will happen is listed in that document identifying which procedure it is, which PI it involves, which personnel are required to support it, what facility it uses, and so forth. The choreography of all of this has been a phenomenal effort.

On top of that, you have to take into account that these experiments are integrated and that they involve sharing the animals. For more on this, see accompanying page.

They are also reconfiguring all the animal holding rooms and all the laboratories, because the laboratories aren't needed for surgeries now, they're needed for setting up the ground general purpose work stations to be able to have Dr. Walton do all of her ground control behavioral tests and setting up Dr. Kosik's labs with his post-landing electrophysiology, and so forth. So we're moving animals around, we're moving cages around, we're getting laboratories set up. That's why we did this all last summer: to practice and to figure out how we were going to get all of this accomplished and what the timeline would be.