[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3918]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




THE BIOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL RESEARCH CONDUCTED ABOARD ``COLUMBIA''/STS-
                                  107

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, on January 16, 2003, the space 
shuttle Columbia and her crew, Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie 
McCool, Specialist Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, 
Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon, rocketed off launch pad 39 A, the same 
launch pad which was used to launch Apollo 11, the first manned mission 
to the Moon. I was there on that day on January 16th. It was a 
beautiful launch, filled with tremendous excitement and hope for the 
potential work of the crew of Columbia.
  They left on a 16-day research mission, and they were performing 
research in a number of disciplines, from biological and medical 
research to physical sciences, Earth sciences and space sciences, as 
well as product development. In total, an amazing 86 different research 
experiments were ongoing during this extended shuttle mission.
  This required the crew to work 24 hours a day in two different 12-
hour-a-day shifts. Their motto for the mission was ``ex orbe 
scientia'': from orbit, science. Many people are saying that we should 
abandon research in low-Earth orbit and head straight to Mars, but I 
can tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, as a medical doctor, I can attest 
to the myriad number of medical problems a crew to Mars may face.
  The crew of STS-107 was working hard on a number of experiments to 
help us understand better and counteract some of the challenges 
medically and physiologically that a crew would face on an extended 
voyage such as a trip to Mars. I will just cite a couple of examples of 
the types of research they were doing.
  One of the principal challenges of zero gravity is a decline in bone 
mass that occurs when we are up in space. It is actually we lose 1 
percent of our bone mass each month we are on orbit. If we are to 
venture out truly into long-duration space missions, such as a trip to 
Mars, we need to find ways to counteract this bone loss that occurs on 
orbit.
  The crew of STS-107, the Columbia mission that was tragically lost, 
was trying to understand better the bone loss that occurs in space and 
things that can be done to counteract it. Needless to say, as a 
physician, I know full well the tremendous potential that this research 
could have yielded back on Earth. I took care of many patients who 
suffered personal tragedies from the consequences of osteoporosis, the 
same phenomenon that occurs on orbit with our astronauts.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the research experiment was actually done 
on the astronauts themselves, and so a tremendous amount of knowledge 
and understanding about the effects of space on bone loss was lost with 
the crew.
  Additional research was being done on the immune system. As we all 
know, our Nation, our world, has been wracked by new challenges, 
medical challenges that affect the immune system in humans, and what 
has been discovered is that the immune system of astronauts on orbit is 
impaired. Whether it is the stress of rocketing off into space or 
adaptation to zero G or other features of the unique features of space 
environment, astronauts on orbit experience a loss of immune function, 
and the crew of STS-107 was studying this issue as well.
  They were studying pharmacokinetics that are changed in space. 
Pharmacokinetic is the absorption of drugs from our gastrointestinal 
tract and how they are handled and eliminated by our body, and there 
are some very, very unique features of the zero G environment that this 
crew was studying.
  Protein turnover in space. We all lose muscle mass as we age. As 
well, we lose muscle mass in space, and this loss of muscle mass with 
aging, there may be ways to counteract that, and there may be links to 
counteracting this muscle mass loss in space and what we can do here on 
Earth to help the elderly or people with physical conditions that 
involved significant muscle mass.
  Renal stones, they were doing research in this arena.
  The vestibular system which controls our balance, they were doing 
research on. This is very, very critical for many elderly people who 
experience difficulties with their balance system and experience falls 
as they get on in years, and the crew of STS-107 was doing research in 
this area as well.
  Perhaps one of the most promising areas of research for the American 
people is the work they were doing on cancer research. The work they 
were doing with prostate cancer specifically involved the bioreactor, 
and regretfully all of this research was lost.
  Mr. Speaker, I conclude by just saying this was a great human 
tragedy, the loss of this crew. It was a great blow to our space 
program. It was also a great blow to the advancement of science.

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