School Experiments Take Off

The space shuttle Discovery is planning to take off for the International Space Station on Aug. 7 carrying student science experiments on AIDS, fabrics and adhesives.

The experiments from 12 area schools are part of an initiative by a research laboratory and an educational outreach program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

About 130 of the students who participated and their parents and teachers plan to travel to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch. The students, ranging from first graders to high school students, will exchange mission patches with crew members carrying their experiments into space.

Stebbins High School students thought up and planned ideas they hoped will save lives.

"The kids wanted to see how different viruses reacted in space to help find a cure for AIDS," said Wade Adams, chief scientist for the Air Force's Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing Directorate. "That put NASA into a tailspin, at first."

Scientists from Wright State University helped the students refine the idea. They'll send up a frozen chicken retro-virus that is not contagious to humans, Adams said.

"We have high hopes for that experiment," Adams said. "It's possible the environment of space could impact the virus enough that it won't have the ability to reproduce."

Students will also send up a variety of fabrics to try to determine how they degrade in space. They will also study space effects on clothing fibers and bacteria with an eye toward using space as a natural dry cleaner for astronaut laundry. Another experiment is designed to test how adhesives hold up.

The student experiments will piggyback on a materials experiment developed at the base, he said.

The Air Force Research Laboratory bought room on the space station for experiments designed to learn how the space environment affects different materials over a long period, Adams said. The container will hold about 1,800 different materials.

Adams came up with the student experiment idea as a way to use some extra space in the containers, base officials said.

The office worked with the base's Educational Outreach Office and NASA to solicit proposals. Students were challenged to design a test of some material or substance that would help solve problems associated with long-duration space flight, as well as contribute to improving conditions on earth.

Originally, base scientists planned to tuck the student experiments in the back of the container.

Some of them have been moved to the forefront.

"It's cool that NASA and the U.S. Air Force wanted to move some of the student materials to the front of the container for direct exposure to radiation," Adams said. "That says something about the quality of the kids' experiment."

The experiments will remain in space for up to 18 months depending on the space shuttle schedule. The young scientists will then get an opportunity to look at the results.

"These students will get a chance to do some rel research," Adams said.

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