STS-90 Day 02 Highlights

Abstract

On this second day of the STS-90 mission, the flight crew, Cmdr. Richard A. Searfoss, Pilot Scott D. Altman, and Mission Specialists Richard M. Linnehan, Dafydd Rhys Williams and Kathryn P. Hire, and Payload Specialists Jay C. Buckey and James A. Pawelczyk activate the Bioreactor Demonstration Experiment, an investigation that grows cell tissue cultures in weightlessness. The device, making its fourth shuttle flight, has the capability to grow more perfect tissue samples in weightlessness than can be achieved on Earth. Cell samples in the bioreactor experiment aboard Columbia include renal tissue and bone marrow, both samples being evaluated for the ability to produce substances useful in a variety of medical treatments on Earth.