Reports from the fifth day of the flight - 20/01/03
First success for the Israeli experiment "Madex" - the shuttle crew was able to photograph a rare natural phenomenon called ELF, a sort of ring-shaped burst of light above strong lightning storms, spreading at an altitude of 90 km above the ground. The team also managed to photograph "lightning sprites", SPRITES, using the sensitive camera, on the night side of the Earth over the Pacific Ocean. The lightning storms are also clearly visible to the eye, but the sprites are only revealed in later decoding. This is the first time they managed to photograph the phenomenon from space with a calibrated and accurate camera.
The success caused great excitement at NASA and the decoded image was sent to the astronauts by e-mail to the shuttle.
First two days in space: the experiments started successfully
The research mission of the space shuttle "Columbia" has been going on so far without any malfunction as far as NASA is concerned. The mission managers at the control center in Houston were delighted to learn that the only thing that had not gone as planned so far was the incident in which one of the staff was unable to donate blood for testing. Astronaut Laurel Clark had to endure many needle pricks in her arm until the control center put an end to her pain. The blood is intended for carrying out experiments related to metabolism and calcium loss while staying in space. Apart from this incident, the mission managers in Houston and the mission commander, Rick Husband, are unanimous: the systems are working properly and the experiments are being carried out as planned to everyone's satisfaction.
On the other hand, from an Israeli point of view, things could have gone better. A heavy cloud overshadows the continuation of the Israeli dust experiment - the same cloud that has been raining on us for two days. The clouds that have covered the eastern Mediterranean area for the past two days prevent the filming of the dust storms in the area and the departure of the inspection flights that take off from Greece at the same time as filming from space.
However, this scenario, of heavy cloud cover over the area, was taken into account ahead of time, and the Israeli experiment managers set alternative tasks. One of them was to photograph "lightning sprites", rare natural phenomena that occur above strong thunderstorms. Indeed, the shuttle crew managed to photograph "elves" above lightning storms raging in the Pacific Ocean. The storms, by the way, are also clearly visible to the naked eye, but the "elves" are revealed only in later decoding.
Malfunction in the air conditioning system
A minor malfunction was discovered yesterday in one of the air conditioning units on the Columbia ferry. In the air conditioning unit, which flows cold air into the chamber where some of the materials for the experiments carried out by the astronauts were concentrated, a water leak was discovered and therefore its operation was stopped. At the NASA center in Houston, where Columbia's flight control is carried out, the problem is being monitored and a suitable technical solution is being sought.
Meanwhile, a song composed by three IDF Gali soldiers was sent into space yesterday in honor of Lt. Col. Ramon's launch into space. The three soldiers composed a cover version of David Bowie's famous song "Space Oddity", as part of a special day of broadcasting that took place on IDF airwaves on the occasion of the historic launch.
The head of the Science and Technology Directorate at the Ministry of Education, Yaffe Vigodsky, heard the special version of the cover in Dario, and last night sent it via the Internet to space, where Ramon could listen to it.
