USA: FLORIDA: SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA RETURNS TO EARTH

Natural Sound

Space shuttle Columbia and its crew returned to Earth on Sunday, ending two weeks of brain research that was marred by unexpected animal casualties.

But the science experiments were far from over.

In picture perfect conditions, Columbia touched down at Cape Canaveral with scientists on the ground eager to complete the scientific experiments that were started in space.

the space shuttle swooped through a clear sky and touched down neatly on the runway.

The trip added six point four (m) million miles to the odometer of NASA's oldest shuttle.

Commander Richard Searfoss had only two functioning hydraulic power units for most of the hour long descent.

The cooling system for the third unit failed to work on Saturday - Searfoss turned that unit on just minutes before touchdown so it would not overheat.

Once on the ground it was a race against gravity: the sooner the astronauts and animals could be examined, the greater the likelihood of observing space-induced changes in the nervous system.

Stretchers were carted to the landing strip so six of the seven astronauts could be carried off the shuttle in an attempt to preserve their weightless state.

Workers rushed to unload the spaceship so scientists could begin dissecting the few dozen baby rats that survived 16 days of weightlessness, as well as the nearly two-thousand fish, snails, crickets and older rodents that flew.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Well I'm sitting here like a little kid with ants in my pants. I can't wait to get going on my experiment. The tissues are being unloaded from the shuttle and I'm just rarin' to go. I'm sort of equal parts of exhaustion and excitement and anticipation about the kind of work that I'm going to do. My real work starts tomorrow when I get the tissues back in New York and I start the process of sectioning the brain tissues and looking to see whether the hypotheses I want to test bear some fruit. "
SUPER CAPTION: Dr Gay Holstein, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Most of the young rats died in orbit, victims of maternal neglect.

The astronauts kept close watch on the 170 rodents that rocketed into orbit with them on April 17, especially after 52 of 96 baby rats died.

The surrogate mother rats could not or would not nurse the young animals in space.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"In four hours we're going to find out if gravity is really essential for a major part of the nervous system development and muscle development. Four hours from now, I'm going to be photographing rats, that two days ago were walking and crawling in space. They never have walked on earth ."
SUPER CAPTION: Dr Danny Riley, Medical College of Wisconsin

The post-flight dissection plan called for the fish and crickets to be placed on ice and frozen to death, the snails to be doused in alcohol and the rats to be decapitated or overdosed with anesthesia.

The work was expected to take hours.

The big question, for the astronauts anyway, was whether they would return to space this summer and do it all over again.

NASA says it will decide this week whether to repeat the Neurolab mission in August to fill the flight gap created by the anticipated delay in space station construction.


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Closed Caption:

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