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UPDATE #12 - January 10, 1997

PART 1: Status of S/MORE
PART 2: The S/MORE team answers your question
PART 3: Send us pictures
PART 4: Other online projects starting
PART 5: What's up in space
PART 6: Face-to-Face With Shannon Lucid
PART 7: Press release about Shuttle-Mir STS-81 mission

STATUS OF S/MORE

The S/MORE project continues to wind down. This will be the last
updates-sm message which is sent out. However, some activities will
remain active awhile longer.

S/MORE folks will continue to answer email questions through the end
of January. See below for more details.

The second part of The Great Plant Debate involves students growing
plants and sharing data about these plants. These activities are
currently taking place in classrooms and the results and ensuing
discussion will be shared online at the end of the month.
For further information, visit this Web site:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/smore/events/datashare.html
So far, only a handful of classes have indicated their intent to participate.
If you plan to join in and haven't yet RSVP'd, please send a quick note
to marc@quest.arc.nasa.gov

Our project evaluations are being mailed out. If you registered for
the project and are a K-12 teacher, you should receive an email
survey form shortly. Every teacher who completes the survey will
be rewarded with a complimentary package of NASA photos and
other goodies. As well, the gift pack will also be sent to a random
sampling of other folks who simply register. To join in this fun,
please go to http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/smore/credits/survey.html
To continue to stay current on the adventure of Shuttle-Mir science,
visit the official web site at http://shuttle-mir.nasa.gov/shuttle-mir/
Thanks so much for your interest in S/MORE. It has been a real
pleasure to make this project available to you.

Sincerely yours,
Duncan Atchison                 Marc Siegel
Lockheed-Martin                 Sterling Software
NASA Ames Space Life Sciences   NASA K-12 Internet Initiative

THE SMORE TEAM ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

The people of the SMORE team are available until the end of January to answer your email questions. In most cases, you will receive a direct reply within 10 days to two weeks. Please consider having your students interact with these enthusiastic people. The rules are simple: 1) send your questions to this address: question-sm@quest.arc.nasa.gov 2) send only one question per email message; multiple unrelated questions should be sent in separate email notes. Complete details are available at this web address: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/smore/question/ask.html

SEND US PICTURES

The S/MORE web site is looking for evidence that this project was used in real classrooms (including home schools). We would like to share this evidence online. If you have photographs of kids in action, or samples of their S/MORE related work, please consider sharing. To get the material to us (all hardcopy will be returned if so desired), please choose from below: * For those who are comfortable with electronic sharing: If it already exists in electronic form, you can try enclosing the pictures in a MIME-compliant mail message (like Eudora or Pine), or We can FTP it from a location you specify, or If it is already on a Web page, we can simply point to it. Please send Linda a note at lindac@quest.arc.nasa.gov. In the message, either include the goodies or send instructions on how we can get at the material (FTP site or Web address). If these fancy digital techniques won't work for you: Black and white diagrams can be FAXed to Linda Conrad at (415) 604-1913, or Material can also be sent via U.S. postal mail to the following address: Linda Conrad NASA Ames Research Center Mailstop T-28H Moffett Field, CA 94035 Any text should be in electronic format Photos and art will be returned if you like We would very much like to feature the work of your students on our NASA site. But we can only display your work if you send it....so please share!

OTHER ONLINE PROJECTS STARTING

As S/MORE winds down, other NASA projects will fill in the gap. All of these projects connect classrooms with the people at NASA. To find out more information, visit the "Sharing NASA" home page at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/interactive To continue to stay informed about new opportunities, join the mail list by sending a message to listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write these words: subscribe sharing-nasa For example, it is on this "Sharing NASA" mail list will you'll first learn about Neuron. This project planned for the '97-'98 school year will present NASA's Neurolab project, a shuttle mission dedicated to studying the brain. In the meanwhile, here is a brief listing of what is currently available or planned soon. Participation in any project is free. To partake, first join the mail list. And then visit the Web home page. Live From Mars (September 1996 - December 1997) Send email to listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov; in the message body write: subscribe updates-lfm http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/mars In late 1996, NASA initiated a new era of Mars exploration with the launch of two separate missions to Mars. One spacecraft will land on the surface and deploy a roving vehicle for a 30-day exploration; the other mission will orbit Mars to map the planet and study its weather. In addition to a mission focus, Live From Mars will explore the science behind the missions, including what we hope to learn from Mars and how it relates to life on Earth. Women of NASA (September 1996 - June 1997) Send email to listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov; in the message body write: subscribe updates-won http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/intro.html Women of NASA provides an opportunity to meet some of NASA's women via scheduled WebChats. Also available is an archive of biographies of NASA's diverse scientific and technical women, and online and offline resources for teachers who are trying to deal with the issue of gender equity in their teaching. This project is designed to encourage female involvement in math and science careers via role models within NASA. Online From Jupiter 97 (late February - March 1997) Send email to listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov; in the message body write: subscribe updates-jup http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/galileo Online From Jupiter 97 will follow NASA's Galileo team as they guide their spacecraft past an encounter with Jupiter's mysterious moon Europa. Europa is surrounded by a frozen shell of ice which covers a potential ocean of liquid water. Some speculate that this water could host some form of life presently. Shuttle Team Online (March - May 1997) Send email to listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov; in the message body write: subscribe updates-sto http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/shuttle (available January 15) Join the men and women who make the space shuttle fly and learn about their diverse and exciting careers. We'll peek behind the scenes as these folks train astronauts, prepare the shuttle between missions, launch the shuttle, successfully execute the mission from Mission Control and safely land the shuttle. The focus will be on STS-83, a 16-day microgravity lab scheduled for launch March 28, 1997.

[Editor's note: this regular feature will report on the latest activities on board the Mir space station. The original source is NASA's Shuttle-Mir pages at http://shuttle-mir.nasa.gov/shuttle-mir/mir22/status] WHAT'S UP IN SPACE NASA 3/Mir 22 Status Report-14 Mission Control Korolev December 19, 1996 The cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station performed housekeeping and maintenance activities this week and held a press conference as they continued their scientific research. As of December 19, Russian Cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Alexander Kareri have been in space aboard Mir for 125 days and U.S. astronaut John Blaha for 95 days. During the press conference, the crew answered a number of questions on subjects ranging from plans for the holidays, to the status of the International Space Station project, to their daily exercise regiment. Their Christmas dinner will consist of a special meal combing American and Russian cuisine, and some Italian food as well. Also, there will be an exchange of gifts from home to be opened, which were brought to the Mir on the Progress resupply spacecraft in mid November. The crew will also observe the Russian Christmas on January 7. Commander Korzun, displayed a small decorated tree held in a spacesuit gloves during the press conference. Science activities this week included the monitoring of the BioTechnology System (BTS), including the visual inspection of the growth of bovine cartilage cells, as well as sampling of the media in the BTS. Additionally, the crew performed a direct feed of the growth media to the cartilage cells and sampling of the media in the BTS, visual inspection of the facility and growth of wheat plants in the Greenhouse, monitoring of Materials in Devices as Superconductors (MIDAS) experiment, and preparation of experiment files and e-mail telemetry to Mission Control, Korolev using a special laptop computer. The BioTechnology System is a facility which will be used throughout joint U.S. - Russian flights to grow tissues in microgravity. On this mission, bovine, or cow cartilage is being grown. By growing cartilage in microgravity, researchers will obtain a better three-dimensional model which they can compare to cells grown on the Earth, helping to determine how cells grow in different environments. Researchers say this kind of research, not possible because of the gravity on Earth, eventually may lead to development of new drugs or medical procedures. Air being drawn into the Greenhouse, where the second "crop" of wheat plants as being grown on Mir during this mission, returned to normal temperatures, approximately 25 degrees Celsius, and will be monitored daily for fluctuations which could affect plant growth. The sprouts which were planted on December 6, were around 12 centimeters in height, showing somewhat rapid growth rate. According to science team members, this experiment is proceeding well. A Mir Structural Dynamics Experiment (MiSDE) studying the night to day transition vibrations of Mir was performed. Several more sessions measuring the vibrations of Mir during exercise, and the docking and undocking of Space Shuttles are planned. Mission Control Center, Korolev January 3, 1997 U.S. Astronaut John Blaha took a short break from his scientific research on New Year's eve to watch an uplinked videotape of his daughter's college graduation from Purdue University. Otherwise, Blaha and the Mir 22 cosmonauts had a quiet week in orbit. Their activities included housekeeping and maintenance, science activities and payload hardware maintenance. Blaha continued to prepare for his return to Earth later this month with the STS-81 crew. He has packed 11 bags of gear that will be transferred to the Space Shuttle Atlantis with several more to be packed after the completion of scientific research. In Mir's science program, daily direct media feeding to the cartilage cells in the BioTechnology System (BTS) is continuing. Blaha performed a media sample processing on Monday with the Portable Clinical Blood Analyzer, and made daily visual inspections of the growth of bovine cartilage cells, as well as monitoring the BTS systems. Blaha and his crewmates continued to monitor the Greenhouse experiment, and reported an optimal temperature of 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius) being experienced by the wheat plants which are being grown in that facility. On Thursday, a session with the Mir Structural Dynamics Experiment (MiSDE) focused on vibrations of Mir during a thruster firing. A Friday session studied the effects of activity within the vehicle and the effect on microgravity experiments. Another science activity included checking the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA) facility.

[Editor's note: Paul Savage is the payload manager for the Fundamental Biology Research Project for the NASA/Mir Science Program. In this role, he manages about 20 people. He is the person ultimately responsible for delivering the payload hardware, and works with management at NASA Headquarters and at the Johnson Space Center on this. Also he works with Russian counterparts.] FACE-TO-FACE WITH SHANNON LUCID Paul Savage - http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/smore/team/psavage.html October 31, 1996 We had the chance to talk to Shannon Lucid face-to-face a few weeks ago in Houston, TX. She had a lot of really good things to say about her experience, and a few things to say about how it could be improved. Those things seemed to get picked up with John Blaha, for example, who is now up on the Mir Space Station. Some of the things that Shannon talked about have been corrected or improved. So, as each crew member goes up there, and the previous one comes down and passes on their experiences, we keep refining the program. Hopefully, we will then have a good template for the International Space Station. The meeting with Shannon was outstanding because she's so open and easy to talk to. I tend to get a little intimidated talking to any crew member because I don't want to be a "Golly, gee whiz!" They're just like us. Shannon makes you feel comfortable just in the way she come across. She is perfect for the role because I think she retains a lot of her experiences in very fine detail. She is more than willing to discuss them with everybody, and make sure that her experiences get passed on. John Blaha's should be the same the way, having been a shuttle commander. They're able to focus, and really be aware of everything going on around them. I think Shannon also adds the everyday person's outlook, even though she is very uncommon and very extraordinary, and she communicates that back, whereas John might communicate more from a technical, pilot, shuttle commander point of view. Shannon has a way to relate to us as common people. One of Shannon's anecdotes I really liked was that she was talking a lot about the training program she received. She said the best training she ever received for being on Mir was when she and one of her sons tried to fix the electrical system of their truck one day. They really didn't know much about it, and they were just kind of ad-libbing as they went through. But eventually, on their own devices, they made it work. She said, that just having the common sense and the willingness to jump in and do it was what they relied upon on Mir. On Shuttle, she said that any time you had a problem, you called to the ground, and a ground crew of about 50 to 100 people, who had all the documents at their fingertips, would run around and get an answer back, telling her how to fix the problems and what to do. There the communications with the ground is good enough that the astronauts don't have to wait eight to twelve hours until they talk to the ground again, like they do on Mir. But on Mir, the ComPass (opportunity to have a live conversation with the ground) is limited to just a few times a day, for maybe 30 minutes to an hour. So, they're forced to get down just the key information. There's not a lot of opportunity for a long interaction. If a problem is reported, it will be several hours before an answer is received. So Shannon said they just learned to do what they could to fix it on their own, and just try to be self-sustaining, as much as possible. Basically, what we were doing was talking to her about our fundamental biology experiments. She really enjoyed working with the quail eggs. They seemed to get a real lift out of working with living things. She was up there over the course of the summer when we started growing the wheat, and they took a lot of pride in being successful in starting life. She said that the cosmonauts that she worked with most of the time, Iriana Frenko and Yuri Yusachev, left her in August. She was still up there several weeks afterward. One of their parting words was, "Make sure that you keep the plants alive." All three of them are very proud of having gotten the experiment started because they basically had no training for that experiment. It was one of those things where circumstances dictated that we had to start the experiment at that point in the summer in early August. The crew that had originally been trained for the mission were John Blaha and his original cosmonaut pair, but all of their missions slipped. Because all of the missions had slipped, we had to get the plants started. They really used their ability to just figure things out on their own and be self-sustaining. They were successful in getting the greenhouse assembled and getting the seeds planted. The scientists on the ground have been extremely happy with the growth of the plants. There's been an effort at Ames Research Center to develop a "salad machine" that would be a system for growing vegetables on the Space Station for consumption. So we asked her, "How would you feel if we had a system like that?" She was really excited about it. She relayed the story about how the Russians use the Progress Vehicle, which is an unmanned canister that they send up several times each year to keep the Mir supplied with food, water, fuel, batteries, and things like that. She said the biggest kick they got out of one of their Progress missions was when they sent up a load of fresh tomatoes, and the crew was eating tomatoes for many days. So she was really excited about the idea that someday the crew members would be able to grow and eat fresh vegetables.

FIFTH SHUTTLE-MIR DOCKING FLIGHT HIGHLIGHTS STS-81 MISSION

The continuing cooperative effort in space exploration between the United States and Russia will be the focus of NASA's first Shuttle mission of 1997 with the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on Mission STS-81. This is the fifth of nine planned missions to Mir and the second one involving an exchange of U.S. astronauts. Astronaut John Blaha, who has been on Mir since September 19, 1996, will be replaced by astronaut Jerry Linenger. Linenger will spend more than four months on Mir. He will return to Earth on Space Shuttle Mission STS-84, scheduled for launch in May 1997. Atlantis will again be carrying the SPACEHAB module in the payload bay of the orbiter. The double module configuration will house experiments to be performed by Atlantis' crew along with logistics equipment to be transferred to Mir. The STS-81 crew will be commanded by Michael A. Baker who will be making his fourth Shuttle flight. The pilot, Brent W. Jett, Jr., will be making his second flight. There are four mission specialists assigned to this flight. Peter J.K. "Jeff" Wisoff, serving as Mission Specialist-1, is making his third flight. Mission Specialist-2 John M. Grunsfeld is making his second space flight. Marsha S. Ivins serving as Mission Specialist-3 is making her fourth space flight. Jerry M. Linenger will be Mission Specialist-4 for launch through docking with Mir. Shortly after docking, Linenger and Blaha will conduct their handover with Linenger becoming a member of the Mir crew and Blaha becoming Mission Specialist-4 through the end of the flight. Atlantis is targeted for an early morning launch on or about January 12, 1997 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39-B. The current launch time of 4:27 a.m. EST may vary by a few minutes based on calculations of Mir's precise location in space at the time of liftoff due to Shuttle rendezvous phasing requirements. The STS-81 mission is scheduled to last 10 days, 3 hours, 30 minutes. An on-time launch on January 12 and nominal mission duration would have Atlantis landing back at Kennedy Space Center on January 22 at about 8 a.m. EST. Atlantis' rendezvous and docking with the Mir actually begin with the precisely timed launch setting the orbiter on a course for rendezvous with the orbiting Russian facility. Over the next two to three days, periodic firings of Atlantis' small thruster engines will gradually bring the Shuttle within closer proximity to Mir. The STS-81 mission is part of the NASA/Mir program which consists of nine Shuttle-Mir dockings and seven long duration flights of U.S. astronauts aboard the Russian space station. The U.S. astronauts will launch and land on a Shuttle and serve as Mir crew members while the Mir cosmonauts use their traditional Soyuz vehicle for launch and landing. This series of missions will expand U.S. research on Mir by providing resupply materials for experiments to be performed aboard the station as well as returning experiment samples and data to Earth. The current Mir 22 mission began when cosmonauts Valeri Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri were launched on August 17, 1996, in a Soyuz vehicle and docked with the Mir two days later. John Blaha joined the Mir 22 crew with the September 19, 1996, docking of STS-79. Blaha will complete his stay on Mir and return with the STS-81 crew. Linenger will work with the Mir 22 crew until the arrival of Mir 23 cosmonauts Vasili Tsibliev, Aleksandr Lazutkin and German researcher Reinhold Ewald in early February 1997. After the Mir 22 crew and Ewald return to Earth in a Soyuz, Linenger will complete his tour with the Mir 23 crew. Linenger will be replaced by NASA Astronaut Mike Foale when Atlantis again docks with Mir in May. The STS-81 mission also will include several experiments in the fields of advanced technology, Earth sciences, fundamental biology, human life sciences, microgravity, and space sciences. Data also will supply insight for the planning and development of the International Space Station, Earth-based sciences of human and biological processes, and the advancement of commercial technology. STS-81 will involve the transfer of 5,975 pounds of logistics to and from the Mir, the largest transfer of items to date. During the docked phase, 1,400 pounds of water, 1,137.7 pounds of U.S. science equipment, 2,206.1 pounds of Russian logistics along with 268.2 pounds of miscellaneous material will be transferred to Mir. Returning to Earth aboard Atlantis will be 1,256.6 pounds of U.S. science material, 891.8 pounds of Russian logistics and 214.6 pounds of miscellaneous material. STS-81 will be the 18th flight of Atlantis and the 81st mission flown since the start of the Space Shuttle program in April 1981. More information about STS-81 is available from http://shuttle.nasa.gov

Note: As this project has officially ended, these and other inactive
mailing lists have been shut down.

If this is your first message from the updates-sm list, welcome! To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/smore/updates