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Columbia Astronauts Take Sides for Super Bowl
By Marcia Dunn
AP Aerospace Writer
posted: 07:00 pm ET
25 January 2003
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Space shuttle Columbia's astronauts hunted for plumes of dust over the Mediterranean on Saturday and tried to further reduce the warm temperatures in their orbiting laboratory. They also began taking sides for Sunday's Super Bowl. Shuttle pilot William McCool, who was born in San Diego, said he was rooting for the Oakland Raiders because he watched them play while growing up. Crewmate David Brown favored the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. ``Having been launched out of Florida, there are a heck of a lot of people who worked really hard from that state to get us up here and so I'm going to go for Tampa,'' Brown said with a smile. Columbia's lab began heating up almost a week ago, after the breakdown of a pair of dehumidifiers. The astronauts managed to get the temperature below 80 degrees by directing the flow of cool air from the crew cabin into the lab, back in the payload bay. But that wasn't enough and, on Saturday, Mission Control asked whether the astronauts would mind if their sleeping bunks got a little warmer in order to get more cool air flowing into the lab. Commander Rick Husband said that would be fine. The astronauts already have had to move some of their medical test equipment out of the lab to keep the instruments cool. As for Columbia's round-the-clock research work, Husband reported seeing ``a hazy tinge to the atmosphere'' _ hopefully, dust. The astronauts aimed a pair of Israeli cameras at the area, just in case they were right. Scientists at Tel Aviv University have been trying, ever since Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, to monitor plumes of desert dust drifting over the Mediterranean. But there have been no dust storms, only plumes of pollution and lots of obscuring clouds. The researchers want to study dust in order to assess its impact on the weather. Their secondary objective, to observe thunderstorms and the resulting electrical phenomena above the clouds, has met with much more success. The seven astronauts have one more week remaining in their 16-day research flight. The crew includes Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space.
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