Former astronaut Don Lind, now a physics professor at Utah State University, is one of hundreds of scientists awaiting the return of their experiments from space this week, five years later than expected.
The space shuttle Columbia will retrieve the 57 experiments that went into space in April 1984 aboard the Long-Duration Exposure Facility, a 30-foot-long, 28-ton satellite.Originally expected to be brought back in early 1985, the satellite remained in orbit because of several shuttle launch delays and suspensions and the Challenger explosion in 1986.
Now the satellite must be retrieved before about Feb. 28 or it will be lost, said Lind. It is gradually descending from its orbit and will fall to the earth as did the Skylab if it's not intercepted.
The extra five years in space will benefit several of the experiments aboard the satellite and will damage a few, Lind said. The results will be about a wash for the experiment on which he has collaborated with Swiss scientists from the University of Bern.
In Lind's experiment, thin layers of copper-beryllium foil have captured helium and neon atoms that originated in the interstellar gas outside the solar system.
By comparing the ratios of various helium isotopes, the scientists may be able to add evidence to the big bang theory of the universe's origin.
"If we get the big bang ratios, everybody will say, `Oh, of course,' " Lind predicted. If the ratios are other than expected, it'll be time for some fancy explaining. That uncertainty is the fun of science, he said.
Lind said he and other scientist-astronauts were encouraged by NASA to keep up their scientific research while working as astronauts. But Johnson Space Center didn't provide laboratory space, so Lind established a relationship with the Swiss scientists. Together, they've conducted three experiments, all involving the use of metallic foils to collect various types of particles.
The first experiment, during the Apollo flights, was placed on the moon and collected particles from the sun. The second, which went up on Skylab, gathered some of the particles from the Earth's magnetosphere that create the auroras at the North and South poles.