N E U R O N - Neurolab Online Project

UPDATE # 23 - May 2, l998

PART 1: Columbia's packing it in and coming home!
PART 2: Calendar of Events
PART 3: After the launch: What's happening now?
PART 4: Throwing yourself into your work
PART 5: Subscribing & unsubscribing: how to do it.

COLUMBIA'S PACKING IT IN AND COMING HOME!

Can you believe that the 16-day orbit phase of this mission is almost
over? The plan is to land tomorrow (Sunday, May 3) at 11:09 a.m. Central
Daylight Time (calculated from Houston center since that's where Mission
Control is.) It has been an eventful flight with lots of learning
experiences and lots of successful science information gathering. I hope
you have been following the Mission's daily Mission Control Center Status
Reports at one of the many places these twice daily accounts of the
activities aboard the shuttle are posted. Here are two: 
	http://shuttle.nasa.gov/sts-90/reports/
	http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/media/mstat/

The information you receive at these sites primarily focuses on the
activities going on onboard the shuttle. Prior to leaving Kennedy Space
Center, I interviewed Louis Ostrach regarding the post launch activities
especially for the Ames non-human teams here on Earth during the mission.
I've included the contents below and though it may be a bit lengthy for
this venue, I couldn't think of any way to make it shorter. It makes great
reading and is very informative. I couldn't resist including a
rather comical incident that occurred pre-launch and was told to me by
meteorologist Steve Sokol. 

I am continuing to add things like pictures to the NeurOn at the launch
site, but now that I'm back any further journals will be found on the
team journal pages:
	http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/journals

One new item on our agenda is the upcoming Space Day QuestChat schedule.
In anticipation of Space Day the NASA Quest Team, representing several
Sharing NASA projects, (See: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ )will be
sponsoring
two days of continuous QuestChats where students may interact with NASA
experts in real time on the Web. We scheduled these for two reasons:
first, in response to teachers who have told us that they would like to be
able to share the chat experience with all of their classes during a given
day; and second, as a grand finale to a school year that has been full of
exciting and informative chats in which our NASA volunteers have given
their time to interact with the classroom. Don't miss out! Participate in
at least one QuestChat before the school year is over. I'm sure you'll be
glad you did.

To a safe landing!
Linda

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

        Please join us for the following bilingual chat:

->Friday, May 15 at 8:00 - 9:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
José Limardo, Hardware Project Engineer
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/limardo.html
José is currently working on three experiments for the STS-90 Neurolab
mission. Born and educated in Puerto Rico, José is completely bilingual.

To see a complete list of bilingual chats featuring scientists and
engineers from other Sharing NASA projects:
        http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/common/bilingual


           Countdown to Space Day Chats

->Tuesday, May 19 at 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time:
Chris Barreras, Payloads Engineer 
Chris most recently worked on rodent hardware that flew on STS-90. 
Please read his bio at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/barreras.html
prior to joining the chat. 


->Tuesday, May 19 at 11:00 a.m.-Noon Pacific Daylight Time:
B.J. Navarro, Stowage Manager 
B.J. most recently packed the STS-90 space shuttle with all the experiment 
hardware. Read her bio at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/navarro.html
prior to joining the chat. 


->Wednesday, May 20 at 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time:
Cecilia Wigley, System Safety, Reliability & Quality Assurance Lead 
Cecilia is the system safety, reliability, and quality assurance lead.
Read her bio at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/wigley.html
prior to joining the chat.

To see a complete list of Countdown to Space Day chats featuring
scientists and engineers from other Sharing NASA projects:
        http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/common/spaceday.html


All NeurOn chats are listed at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/chats

[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 using nonhuman subjects. Here he responds to our questions.]

AFTER THE LAUNCH: WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW?

by Louis Ostrach
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/ostrach.html


April 21, l998
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
Kennedy and Ames. The people at Kennedy and Ames are monitoring the
performance of the hardware and 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 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 Kennedy 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,
 snails and plants. It was then integrated into the orbiter and it took
off. 48 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 one 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 yet it will mimic whatever happens. 

That concept of asynchronous ground control has been applied
to all the groups. For example, for the Mammalian Development
Group 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. 

The next night a third set, selected using the same criteria, will
be loaded into simulated RAHF (Research Animal Handling Facilities)
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 airflow, 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. 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.
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/journals/ostrach/sharing.html

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,and  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. 

THROWING YOURSELF INTO YOUR WORK!
by Steve Sokol
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/sokol.html

April 25, l998
I was working the Spain and Morocco weather...it was a little dicey in
Spain with gusts to over 50 mph at Zaragosa...This amusing sidelight
emerged as Spaceflight Meteorology Group in Houston monitoring the
TAL (Transatlantic Abort Landing) sites for STS-90. 

A strong low pressure system just north of Spain was causing very
strong winds at Zaragosa, Spain. This young weather observer was 
trying to launch weather balloons with winds gusting to 45 knots (52
mph). As you can see, it got interesting: 

The first hand story from a colleague in Spain goes:
Essentially, a military aerographer, from Rota who weighs 100 lbs if
she was wet, went out to launch crucial weather balloons while winds
were averaging 30 knots with occasional gusts to 45 knots. You can
imagine this balloon dragging her all over the place. She never actually
fell flat on the ground or was dragged, but she lost her balance several
times (more than we could count). 

The L-1 balloon went horizontal, right towards the fire trucks (30 yards
away). The balloon cleared the last truck by less than 10 feet, but the
sonde appeared to be a goner. Somehow, the winds died down just
enough to allow the balloon to acquire more vertical motion and the
sonde barely cleared the driver-side door on the fire truck. It Would have
made a great video. 

Lesson learned: Bring camcorder next time! (kicking myself) 

Spain weather people promised pictures of the event. They said they
were still looking for the young lady in a field (possible exaggeration).
Ha! 

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