Daily science fare
The crew's research activities will pick up where the Expedition 2 crew left off, but also will add more experiments (about 20 U.S. and 20 Russian experiments total) and more complexity.
New U.S. science experiments on Expedition 3 include studies of the effects of spaceflight on muscle tone, bone density, kidney function and heart and lung function, which could be used to help understand the causes of problems in those organs and tissues among humans on Earth.
Also, the crew will photograph Earth to study the human impact on the environment.
Other experiments include:
- checking out a neutron detector;
- a study of how paints, milk and ink blobs behave in space;
- a bioreactor to study cell interactions in microgravity;
- continuing research on how protein crystals grow and react to nitrogen gas;
- and an effort to grow three-dimensional clusters of ovarian cancer cells to model better how they behave in the human body.
Unlike frenetic shuttle missions where work is scheduled by the minute, the crew will take a more leisurely "job jar" approach to tasks.
"We should have the opportunity to set our own schedule a great deal," Culbertson said, adding that tasks now are assigned by the two mission control centers (Russian and U.S.) as a list rather than a schedule by time.
The expedition itself should be thought of as a social experiment in learning how to manage operations and control an engineering project as huge as the station, Turin said.
"All the tasks of our flight (are) already a technology experiment," he said. "You can call it an experiment for assembling and maintenance of all the equipment provided."
This research-focused expedition comes amid a summer of bad news for station funding, with NASA announcing a $4.8 billion cost overrun on the project. NASA plans to shrink that figure by slashing science research on the outpost by $1 billion, a plan that Culbertson questions.
"Any time you cut a budget for anything that we're doing that's as important as the space station and the science and research that we have planned, then you're taking a chance that we won't get a return on investment that we've put into it," he said.
Senior station scientist John Uri says future cuts to station science will have no impact on Expedition Three as those research plans and funds were already in place.
Station scientists anticipate a bounty of future findings should funding hold stable, with Uri describing station research to date as an "appetizer" to the upcoming "main dish" of science that served years ago as one of the station's major justifications during funding debates.
The science experiments on Expedition Three then represent "a salad or a soup," Uri says. "There are several courses coming up as we continue to maybe get to the main course."
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