STS-95 Space Experiments (Plants and Cell biology)

Abstract

We report the outline of Space Experiments conducted on Space Shuttle (STS-95) launched in autumn of 1998. In this STS-95 mission, Japanese astronaut Dr, Chiaki Mukai achieved her 2nd space flight and conducted a part of 82 space experiments including Japanese experiments. US astronaut Senator John Glenn also achieved his second space flight, 36 years after his first space flight. Senator Glenn was a leader of the original (the first) 7 US astronauts and very famous in US because he succeeded US first orbital space flight around the earth. NASDA had started the project of spaceexperiment using STS-95 at the summer of 1997, therefore we had only one year for the all preparationYamashita, et al.(Biological Sciences in Space, Vol.12 No,3(1998)). Scientific results will be reported by investigators, therefore we report here how we had been developing the space experiment plan, on board operation procedure and ground operations including ground control experiments about four plant experiments and one cell biology experiment.