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Dec. 11, 2006: Readers of Science@NASA may remember
six fun months in 2002-03 when astronaut Don Pettit circled
Earth onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Don was
the expedition's science officer--and more than that, he was
infected with a mischievous sense of experimentation.
 In
the shower, he assembled giant blobs of floating water. He
spun them, inflated them with air, and made them vibrate in
ways impossible in the water-squashing gravity of Earth. Physicists
are still puzzling over some of the things he observed.
Right:
Don Pettit onboard the ISS in 2002. [More]
In
the lab, he built a "barn-door tracker" for cameras
using odds and ends he found around the station. This device
allowed him, essentially, to nullify the 17,000 mph motion
of the station in order to take steady photos of cities, aurora
borealis, stars and planets. The ISS became Don's personal
Hubble.
In
the kitchen, he demonstrated that High Tea can be taken with
chopsticks. Literally, using sticks of wood, he plucked droplets
of Russian tea from mid-air and popped them into his mouth.
He
called these activities (and many others like them) "Saturday
Morning Science" because he did most of them in his spare
time on Saturday mornings. All were shared with the general
public.
Now,
four years after the ISS, Don is about to serve up a new batch
of experiments—this time from Antarctica. He calls them Saturday
Morning Science on Ice.
"We're
on a bit of an adventure," explains Don. "I've joined
a scientific expedition to Antarctica to hunt for meteorites.
The name of the expedition is ANSMET, short for Antarctic
Search for Meteorites, and it is funded by the National Science
Foundation and operated by principal investigators from Case
Western University. ANSMET has been making annual trips to
Antarctica since the mid-70s. The scientific value is immense.
More than 10,000 meteorites have been found including such
jewels as the famous Allan Hills meteorite from Mars.”
"I
was fortunate enough to be asked to tag along as the token
astronaut," he laughs. "Why me? It was mainly dumb
luck. One of the ANSMET scientists dropped out at the last
minute for medical reasons. Because the principal investigator
had dealt with astronauts before, he knew they would not have
trouble passing the medical exam and could be called up on
short notice. When my boss asked me if I wanted to go, I thought
about it for perhaps a nanosecond and said yes!"
"So
here I am in Antarctica with the ANSMET team looking for little
chunks of extra-terrestrial debris that just happened to rain
down on the Antarctic continent where the glaciers have this
amazing
habit of concentrating them well beyond their natural
abundance."
Above: The ANSMET team on Dec. 7, 2006. [More]
"There
will be some spare time during our search. We'll have tent
days, days where the weather is so bad we have to stay in
our Scott tents. From past history, this will probably happen
one day a week. So what do you do when bad weather confines
you to an 8 foot square tent whose basic design has not changed
since 1920?”
"I
plan to continue my Saturday Morning Science that I started
on the space station four years ago. I have a microscope,
a centrifuge, cameras and other gear for all kinds of scientific
investigations.”
A
selected list: Don plans to make a census of microbes in the
upper layers of Antarctic ice. He's going to capture and photograph
south-polar snowflakes and study their structure. He'll use
his centrifuge to separate space dust from melted ice—and
so on.
The
ANSMET team reached the ice fields of Antarctica's Grosvenor
Mountains on Dec. 8th and they are busily setting up camp.
They'll spend the next six weeks there—plenty of time for
discovery.
Science@NASA
is going to cover the expedition, highlighting Don's new Saturday
Morning Science experiments. "So stay tuned," he
says, "and see what tantalizing adventures appear on
these pages."
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Author: Dr. Tony
Phillips | Production Editor:
Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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