Animal Experiments in STS-107 (NASA)

Ant writes "Six lead schools are participating in the STARS Program, actually designing, developing, and flying experiments in space. STARS students get an unforgettable opportunity to work with space scientists, engineers, and astronauts to design and develop their experiments. As lead schools, they are conducting experiments that will be viewed by thousands of people around the world. The experiments will be housed within BioServe's ICM (Isothermal Containment Module). The ICM is a small temperature-controlled facility and will provide the necessary experiment support such as physical containment, lighting, video imaging, and more. Obviously, my favorite one is the U.S.A.'s harvester ants tunneling in algar-based gel experiment for 16 days. I have a discussion on my message board watching this experiment. Now, where's Homer Simpson? ;)"

Bees in space

[MacAndrew]

I remember an early student-designed experiment (early 80's?) involving bees; the bees did pretty well I think. I see they're sending spice bees [spacebees.li] (carpenter bees) on STS-107, Columbia. Here [starsacademy.com] is the official NASA description.

I'm sure this has been thought of, but what if the bees escape? The females do sting. So there would be some interesting footage of astronauts chasing and avoiding a swarm of weightless, disoriented, pissed, and space sick bees. Could be interesting. Bug spray would be right out as an option. :) I wonder if NASA classes live bees as a hazardous cargo.

Re:Bees in space

[Patrick13]

I see they're sending spice bees [spacebees.li]

I guess NASA knows that "He who controls the spice, controls the universe" [amazon.com].

Reality TV

[GuyMannDude]

As lead schools, they are conducting experiments that will be viewed by thousands of people around the world. ... Obviously, my favorite one is the U.S.A.'s harvester ants tunneling in algar-based gel experiment for 16 days.

Maybe it's just me but I just can't see thousand of people around the world glued to their monitors watching a bunch of ants making tunnels through gel for 16 solid days. I'd almost rather watch a Pauly Shore comedy (note the use of the word "almost").

GMD

Ants experiment failing?

[MoobY]

As I'm looking at the images of the ant experiment, it seems to be failing now, or the hypothesis of the experimenters is wrong. The control group of ants, which are on the ground, don't seem to be digging any tunnels, where the ants up in space have already built their set of tunnels. If the hypothesis states that the ants on the ground will be more active, then I think that, given this experiment, the hypothesis can be rejected. (Note that this is statistically incorrect, since there is only one experiment running, both in space and on the ground, so any results coming out of the ants experiment should be taken with quite some salt anyway)

I was a fucked up kid

[t0qer]

I think slash needs a new mod point (weird) anyways..

When I was 12-14 I was really into model rockets. I lived with my grandmother at the time and her yard had all kinds of newts and salamanders in it.

"OOH ASTRONEWTS!" Was the first thing that popped into my head.

I forget the model number, but it was an estes rocket with a clear payload chamber on it. I placed my "ASTRONEWT!" into the payload chamber, taped the fuse on the bottom of my C6-7 engine and then backed up for safety.

"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, BEGINNING FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR LAUNCH!" I could see the little critter had no idea he was about to be launched into the stratosphere as he wiggled and squirmed inside of his cramped quarters.

"5-4-3-2-1 MAIN ENGINES ARE GO YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TOWER" This was about the 10th rocket I had built that year, everything on it was perfect, the wings had been sanded down and painted in 2 coats, same went for the body. This thing had to be the most arodynamically sound rocket I had ever built in my life because it just kept climbing and climbing.

"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, WE ARE SHOWING YOU HAVE DEPLOYED YOUR RE-ENTRY PARACHUTES"

The rocket had flown so high I had to hop on my bike and chase it down. It ended up about 1/2 mile from where it had launched.

"HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM"

I looked at the rocket, and inside the poor newt wasn't squirming anymore. I don't know if he had died from shock, g forces, or what, but he was dead. I would have guess G forces from the condition of the corpse.

Well, after that I ended the astronewt program. Yeah it was a fucked up thing to do, and I regret it as an adult, but we were talking about animal experiments in space right?

Irony

[gene_tailor]

One of my friends who works at NASA Ames has an "experiment" on this flight as well. I say that in quotes because actually it's more of observational study, there's nothing really to prove or disprove by doing it. (I won't say what organism since that would give away her identity & I don't have her permission to post her comments, but the expt. design is a lot like the one for the harvester ants.) Anyway, she was telling me that it's sort of embarrassing to her as a professional scientist with a degree to be doing "kid science", that is, something with a big "wow" factor but that is not hypothesis driven. I find it kind of ironic that she has achieved the dream of many kids to get her expt. onto the shuttle, yet after all her grad training she feels like she's wasting time doing this because it's not real grown-up university-level science....