STS-107
Report #08 
Wednesday, January 22, 2003 -- 6 p.m. CDT 
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas 
 
The seven astronauts aboard Columbia beamed down television views of their smallest 
companions in orbit today, including insects, spiders, fish, bees and silk worms 
that are part of the Space Technology and Research Students package of experiments 
designed and developed by students in six countries.

The television pictures showed ants busily creating and moving about tunnels in 
an ant farm developed by students from Fowler High School in Syracuse, N.Y.; Garden 
Orb Weaver spiders beginning to construct webs in an enclosure designed by students 
at Glen Waverly Secondary College of Melbourne, Australia; silkworm larvae beginning 
to develop in an experiment designed by students at Jingshan School, Beijing, China; 
Medaka fish embryos developing in a tank designed by students at the Tokyo Institute 
of Technology in Tokyo; and carpenter bees beginning to construct nests by boring 
tunnels in wood.

The experiments are being monitored by both teams of astronauts as they work in 
shifts to support the 80 different experiments aboard the space shuttle and the 
Spacehab Research Double Module. The Red Team -- Commander Rick Husband, Mission 
Specialists Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark and Israel Space Agency Payload 
Specialist Ilan Ramon - enjoyed a half-day off before resuming work with a variety 
of other experiments. 

The Red Team worked with the growth of prostate cancer cells in the Bioreactor 
Demonstration System, shutdown of the Laminar Soot Processes experiment, which 
completed 14 runs in an effort to better understand the nature of soot created 
by combustion in microgravity, and bacteria and yeast growth as part of the Microbial 
Physiology Flight Experiment. They also checked on the growth of plants in the 
Astroculture experiment that includes miniature roses being grown in space to produce 
new fragrances for perfumes.

The Red Team handed over to the Blue Team - Pilot Willie McCool, Payload Commander 
Michael Anderson and Mission Specialist Dave Brown - at 5 p.m. CST, and prepared 
for a sleep shift beginning at 7:09 p.m. The Blue Team awoke at 3:09 p.m. to the 
song "Hakuna Matata" by the Baja Men for Anderson from his two kids.

The Blue Team began its day with work on the SOFBALL, or Structures of Flame Balls 
at Low Lewis-number experiment, which scientists hope will improve their understanding 
of lean (low fuel) burning combustion and lead to improvements in engine efficiency, 
reduced emissions, and fire safety. 

The overnight team also worked with the Advanced Respiratory Monitoring System, 
a European Space Agency experiment looking at how the human body adapts to 
weightlessness.  

After lunch, the team was to calibrate the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment 
(MEIDEX) and resume observations after adjusting the shuttle orientation in orbit 
to facilitate measurement of small particles in the atmosphere over the Mediterranean 
Sea and Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Sahara desert.

Cooling and humidity control of the Spacehab module is being effectively managed 
through minor adjustments to systems aboard Columbia and the science module.