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- Space Transport System STS-62 Mission Objectives: The 14-day mission is the latest in a series of Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) flights which will provide additional information for on-going medical studies that assess the impact of long-duration spaceflight, 10 or more days, on astronaut health, identify any operational medical concerns and test countermeasures for the adverse effects of weightlessness on human physiology. The United States Microgravity Payload (USMP) will be making its second flight aboard the Space Shuttle. The USMP flights are regularly scheduled on Shuttle missions to permit scientists access to space for microgravity and fundamental science experiments which cannot be duplicated on Earth and provide the foundation for advanced scientific investigations that will be done on the international space station. The Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST-2) payload contains six experiments that will obtain technology data to support future needs for advanced satellites, sensors, microcircuits and the space station. Data gathered by the OAST-2 experiments could lead to satellites and spacecraft that are cheaper, more reliable and able to operate more efficiently. STS-62 will help scientists calibrate sensitive ozone- detecting instruments with the sixth flight of the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) Instrument. This highly calibrated tool is used to check data from ozone-measuring instruments on free-flying satellites -- NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA-9 and NOAA-11 satellites. The Protein Crystal Growth (PCG) experiments and the Commercial Protein Crystal Growth (CPCG) experiments aboard Columbia will help scientists understand the growth of crystals to study the complex molecular structures of important proteins. By knowing the structure of specific proteins, scientists can design new drug treatments for humans and animals and develop new or better food crops. NASA's efforts in the important field of biotechnology are represented by the fourth flight of the Physiological Systems Experiment which is designed to evaluate pharmaceutical, agricultural or biotechnological products, and the first flight of the Biotechnology Specimen Temperature Controller (BSTC), designed to test the performance of a temperature control device being developed for use with the Bioreactor, a cell- culture growth device. Also flying again on the Shuttle is the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA) payload which will support more than 15 commercial life science investigations that have application in biomaterials, biotechnology, medicine and agriculture. The Middeck 0-Gravity Dynamics Experiment (MODE) will make its second flight on STS-62. MODE investigates how the microgravity of space flight influences the behavior of large space structures. The MODE test article can be configured in different shapes typical of space structural forms-- the truss of a space station, for example -- to help engineers develop and verify an analytical modeling capability for predicting the linear and nonlinear modal characteristics of space structures in a microgravity environment. MODE also will gather force measurements of nominal, crew-induced disturbance loads on the Shuttle. Astronauts will demonstrate a new magnetic end effector and grapple fixture design for the Shuttle's Canadian-built robot arm that engineers believe will increase the arm's dexterity and alignment accuracy, provide operators with a sense of touch and allow the use of more compact "handles" on satellites and other Shuttle payloads. Additional information available at "http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-62/mission-sts-62.html"
[Summary provided by NASA]
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