While hundreds of students will embark on exciting leave terms at the start of spring, one Dartmouth Medical School professor will find himself on an entirely different type of foreign study program.
On April 2, Medicine Professor Jay Buckey will blast into orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia as part of a 16-day mission to determine the effects of zero-gravity on humans and animals.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration chose Buckey as a payload specialist for the mission last April.
He will work with three other scientists to complete 26 experiments as part of Neurolab, the name given to this series of investigations.
Buckey hopes to determine how life forms adapt to space, and to find answers to questions such as why astronauts suffer insomnia in space and why they often have problems standing upright after returning to Earth.
"All life evolved under the force of gravity ... we learned to do everything -- walking, talking, breathing -- under that force," Buckey said.
"When we have gone to space our brains have had to do a lot of quick thinking about how to adapt to these environments," Buckey said. "How that adaptability works will provide answers to keeping us in space for a long time."
From Hanover to Houston
Buckey -- along with his wife and three children -- moved from Hanover to Houston last June to begin extensive training for the upcoming mission. Preparation includes parabolic flights aboard a KC-135 plane, which is used by NASA to simulate weightlessness. A KC-135, dubbed the "vomit comet" for its propensity to induce nausea, was used in the filming of "Apollo 13" to simulate outer space conditions.
The experiments include 15 tests on humans -- some of which will include Buckey as a subject -- and 11 on rats.
One of the experiments will focus on a newborn rat's ability to learn to walk on Earth after it has been exposed to zero-gravity in its first few days of life.
Others will look at the effect of the drug melatonin on Circadian rhythms, the body's biological timer used to regulate sleep. That experiment may not just have repercussions for space travel but regular time-zone travel on Earth as well.
As the number of days remaining for preparation grows smaller and smaller, Buckey says he and his co-workers -- which include one other payload specialist, two mission specialists, the commander and pilot -- realize every training session has to count.
"We've gotten to the point that things we might have put off for the future before have to be done now," Buckey said.
While in space, Buckey said he will have to work incredibly hard to keep the mission on schedule.
"Everything has to go on time. We have to think everything through very well," he said.
If an experiment is done wrong in space there is no time to perform it again, and months of preparation come to a loss.
Planning stages
"We will be doing things in space that have never been done before," Buckey said.
Without gravity, the Neurolab crew has had to "choreograph" every movement in procedures such as dissection and in such experiments involving visuo-motor coordination. Many of the instruments used in space have been fitted with velcro in order to keep them grounded.
He will complete his training in the middle of March and go into quarantine for one week before the launch in order to ensure no contaminants are brought onto the shuttle.
But in the space program, there is always a chance the launch could be delayed by problems.
The space shuttle Columbia is at present being refitted for flight with its main engines and solid rocket busters, but, as Buckey pointed out, if a problem is found in them the whole mission could be scratched until a much later date.
Throughout the last six months of training, Buckey has kept in touch with Dartmouth colleagues via BlitzMail, which he calls a "very impressive" system of communication.
While Buckey is not sure if he will go back to the same job he occupied before he left for Houston, he is planning on returning to Hanover when this adventure has come to an end.
But for now, only the short term is of concern. Barring any delays, Buckey will be in space around the time College students begin to filter back for Spring term classes.
