Microgravity SCIENCE Laboratory-1
Science In Action - Archive

Return to "Science In Action"	Next Highlights File

STS-83 from April 1997 - Droplet Combustion Experiment. Click on the picture for a 1.2MB mpeg movie of DCE in action. In this movie, you can see the Droplet Combustion Experiment ignite a fuel droplet in microgravity. The fuel is drawn from the two white appendages you seen in the picture, down the small needles until it makes a droplet in the center of the screen. Then, the other two arms that enter the picture activate their hot-wire igniters (the glowing circular pieces you see in the movie) to ignite the drop. The apparatus is then pulled out of the way to allow the fuel droplet to burn. The still image at left is the burning fuel just after the igniters were pulled away. Scientists study features of how the droplet burns in the absence of gravity to obtain a better fundamental understanding of combustion.

STS-83 from April 1997 - TEMPUS. Click on the picture for a 0.9 MB mpeg movie of TEMPUS in action. The shiny sphere in the center of the image is one of the undercooled liquid metal samples from the TEMPUS experiment. The cage surrounding the sample can be seen in reflection off the sample itself. The sample is held in place by electromagnetic fields while scientists attempt to learn more about the fundamental properties of these undercooled metals, such as their viscosity, surface tension, and specific heat.

STS-83 from April 1997 - Hand-held Diffusion Test Cells. Click on the picture for a larger still picture (40KB jpeg). Pictured here are tiny protein crystals grown aboard STS-83, the first MSL-1 mission. Despite the shortened mission, several proteins were crystallized, one yielding crystals that have provided x-ray diffraction resolution as precise as 0.9 angstroms, or nine ten-billionths of a meter. Dr. Dan Carter from New Century Pharmaceuticals in Huntsville, Alabama will be discussing these results and more during the first installment of Mission Update during the second day of the upcoming mission.

return to top of page

Authors: John Horack, Bryan Walls
Curator: Bryan Walls
NASA Official: John M. Horack