Harvard Experiment Sends Blood Shuttling Into Space Next Week

Harvard researchers eagerly await next week's liftoff of the United States Space Shuttle Columbia, which will carry their unprecedented experiment on the effects of weightlessness on human blood.

Over 30 researchers worked on the project "which studies the membranes of whole blood in space," said Dr. Sherwin B. Kevy, associate professor of pediatrics. Kevy said that the scientists decided to pursue the research after the failure of many commercial manufacturers to greatly improve upon techniques of blood storage.

The temperature of the blood will be monitored in orbit by Representative William Nelson (D-Fla.), whose district includes the Cape Canaveral launch site.

Nelson, who will be the second politician in space--after space sickness expert Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah)--will participate in the Harvard-affiliated experiment. However, Diller stressed that Nelson "will not evaluate the experiment, only make sure the parameters are adhered to and that they are executed properly."

Nelson is "very enthusiastic" about the mission and has prepared extensively for the experiments, said James F. Sutherland, Nelson's administrative assistant. "He has been taken up in airplanes with the doctors and has learned how to do the experiments in near-zero gravity," Sutherland said.

Nelson will tend the blood in a locker on the shuttle and keep it at normal blood bank temperature, while a controlled sample will be isolated at the same temperature on earth. Sutherland said that "the temperature should not vary more than 2 degrees," and if it does "then Nelson will not have done his job right."

George H. Diller, spokesman for the National Aereonautics and Space Administration--which funded the experiment with a $1.5 million contract--said the tests would study "red cells, lucelytes and platelets" in space, and would allow researchers to observe the various degrees of sedimentation in the blood samples.

As soon as the shuttle lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., scientists will immediatly remove the samples and run more than 60 tests on the solutions. The experiments must be done as quickly as possible to prevent the effects of the Earth's gravity from altering the results, Kevy said.

Much of the equipment from Harvard-affiliated laboratories has been moved down to Florida in preparation for the landing.

The shuttle, which will be manned by a crew of seven, is scheduled to launch on December 16 from the Kennedy Space Center.