 The middle is actually a spot where there is no drop. In other words, we have a drop with a hole in it. And you can actually see, I can see small crystals as I focus up and down through the drop. I can see small needle-like crystals all the way around the edge of that drop. Many, many, many of them. I see actually a lot of crystals. Some of them are very nice. They're long and thin and needles. They're all pretty small. I think that one on the left, they can see also is that on the far left is probably the biggest one. But there are several, that size. And I'm still trying to discern if all the stuff in the background, which is pretty dark, I'm trying to see if that is precipitate or if those are crystals. But I think I'm going to look at the other samples and see if they're giving me any clues. If they're crystals, they're very, very, very small. But I think it's precipitate. You can see a couple of them, about four of them, that have grown together. But for the most part, these are isolated and seem to be growing by themselves. But you can also see the smattering of smaller crystals. And it's a pretty big smattering. I'll repeat it six Charlie, but it's one day younger. The crystals are not as big. It actually does not look really, really as nice. Say because the crystals, there's a lot of very, very, very small crystals here. And as decided, it's their favorite shirt tonight. You can tell it's not the first time you've been modeling. Yeah, but it's probably the first time without heels. I'm doing well. Do you guys have a picture of our experiment up there? I was hoping to send you up some video of our results down here. I thought you might all be interested in what we're doing with this video that you're downliking to us. You get a frame up there about every eight or 16 seconds, and things seem to go pretty slow. But what we've done is taken these images and made a movie, a speed-up movie, about times 24 of the GFSC results, in which you can see a lot of the evolution of these complex turbulent flows that we're interested in to learn about things like solar dynamics and mantle convection. So get out your popcorn. Here it goes. Could you go ahead and roll the video, please? What you can see in this imagery is on the top of the frame is the equator of the GFSC, and the bottom of the frame is the pole. And if you look closely, you can see a lot of structures that almost look vertical at the top of the picture, and these are called the banana cells, and they're the kind of pets for theorists of solar convection. It's a model that has enough symmetry that the motions are fairly simple. But what you can see as well is that there's a lot of turbulence on the lower half of the image, and it's a bit surprising to us that this turbulence is so easy to excite and spreads rapidly up from the south pole, which is at the bottom of this image, and comes up and erodes the organized type of banana convection that we thought we would be seeing up near the equator. In Columbia, this is CSC. Stand by for GATV-EpLink. It's something we believe you'll be interested in seeing. That's the culture as well. A couple of hours ago, we had rain showers. Neither team took batting practice, but the skies right now have cleared. The game will start on time. The crowd is still falling into Jacob's field for Game 5 of the World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians with the Braves leading in the series, three games to one. Back at Jacob's field, an unusual first pitch ceremony tonight. This was Friday in Cape Canaveral, the launching of the Space Shuttle Columbia, and then earlier today, Commander Ken Bauer socks the board. Welcome aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. We've been on orbit since last Friday conducting science experiments as part of the United States Microbravity Laboratory. But tonight, our thoughts are with the national pastime. To the Braves and to the Indians, good luck in Game 5 of the World Series. Now, let's play ball. And then they recreated the end of that throw here moments ago. Funny thing is, it started out as a change-up and wound up as a split finger. You've heard of heavy fastballs? That was weightlessness. Well, Ken Bauer socks and Catherine Ford, and thanks very much for joining us this morning. How's the view? I know both of you have been up there a number of times. The view is still worth looking at to you? Can never get tired of. We've had some exceptionally clear passes over the United States, and that's something new for me. Got to see my hometown in Indiana, Lake Michigan, and the East Coast is just gorgeous, especially in New York. Well, Catherine, this is your fourth trip up there. Any surprises as you look down on the Earth? The only thing that I would say is a negative about this flight is I spent a lot of time where there are no windows. We've had some great passes over the United States. I've seen two or three of them, although it's been cloudy over the East every time I've had a chance to look. I was disappointed about that, but we have another 10 days to go, so we'll get some great passes over the United States. Well, that's right. 10 days to go from the time of this interview, a total of 16 days, but seven people on board, like being in a small motel, the bathroom's down the hall. How are the accommodations with so many astronauts on board? It was seven people in four spacesuits about a year and a half ago, and there was a lot more crowded there. This is a luxury compared to having just the crew module to live in. We have essentially twice the volume, and because we're working two shifts, we have half the people awake at any one time, so there's lots of room to roll around in up here. Well, that's right. You're using the cargo bay, which is what, about 60 feet long, isn't it? Yeah, that's correct. It's about 15 feet by 60 feet, but the lab module's a little bit shorter than that. What is it, Catherine, about 20 feet? I want to ask you a couple of basic questions. I know on the Skylab a few years back, there was an experiment with a shower. You don't have a shower on board. How do you keep yourselves clean over 16 days? Fresh water and rub that over your body. Something else you can do if you have a lot of time is just squirt water on your skin. The water sticks to you because of the surface tension, which is one of the things we're studying in our science experiments in the back, and then you can sort of rub with your fingers to get the soap to come up into the water and then wipe off with a towel. It's almost as good as a shower, but I don't think you could ever beat a good, solid earth shower. Well, I'm sure that's true. You know, NASA is always bragging about the improvement of the food on board, the shuttle, and I remember the days when you used to squeeze it out of a tube. Is it all that good? Is it yummy nowadays? Yeah, on board, I think it was peanut butter. We just put it on tortillas because we don't use bread up here because it crumbles, and we don't want to make a lot of crumbs in the air. So we have peanut butter burritos quite a bit. Peanut butter burritos, and Katherine, you're telling me the food is good up there? If that's the best you have, I wonder. I would like a pizza. Well, put out a call and see whether they deliver. Let's move on to some of the science. You're growing potatoes up there. You're becoming potato farmers. How's that going? It's going pretty well. We do a video downlink of the condition of the plants every day, and the PIs on the ground seem to be very happy with the condition that they're growing in. Now, what's the question? You're trying to determine whether food can indeed be grown in weightlessness? A couple objectives of that. One is to test an enclosed environment for growing plants up here. They give them all the nutrients that they need, the carbon dioxide and take away the oxygen and the ethylene. The other thing is to look at how the plants are actually growing. To get them back on the ground and take a look at them, there's some evidence that perhaps they don't grow in exactly the same way that the starch is not synthesized in the same way as it is in the gravity. So that's something that we'll learn about after we get back to this mission. So, Ken, you're not going to chop them up, boil them for mashed potatoes, or have some french fries while you're taking this trip, then? We have to hold some of the crew members back. They want to eat those potatoes, but we're not going to let them. Okay. One of the big problems, of course, is adapting to weightlessness. The dreaded SAS space adaptation syndrome. I know you don't like to talk about the health of the astronauts during a flight, but is everybody okay? Yeah, we're all doing great. Everybody feels good, and I was amazed. We all felt good from the very beginning of the mission. We had five brand-new guys on board, so they didn't really know how they were going to feel, but I think we had some really super luck on this flight, and nobody felt bad at all. You've got a lot of free time, I think, built into your schedule, or at least that's what the NASA schedule says, free time for the astronauts, because after all, you're going to be up there for 16 days. What are you doing or planning to do during your free time? Well, the other day, we spent some time doing a PAO event for the World Series. We've been taking some special photographs, and all of us are spending that time to do just the things that we want to do. It's not that we don't have work to do, but we kind of get to elect what work we do. So we may run around and do a special project, clean up a special area, or maybe tape a video for our family when we get back. But it's just nice to be able to plan your own time once in a while. I guess I should explain that you sort of threw out the first ball for one of the World Series games, and I saw it here on Earth, and it worked well. After you tossed the ball towards the camera on the Columbia, they cut to a ball falling down onto the field, and it looked as if you threw a strike. Well done. Oh, great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. My crew up here was saying I was having control problems, though. I don't think they like my pitching. Well, even some of the pitchers in the World Series have control problems, so don't worry about that. Talking about the free time, Catherine, do you bring books? Do you have an opportunity to sit and read a book, or is your temptation to always go for that window whenever possible to see the view? I probably don't have as much free time as the schedule looks. There's always something that needs to be done, but I did have about three or four hours yesterday, I believe it was, and I spent most of the time looking out the window. I just never get tired of looking at it. Even passes over the oceans, you can enjoy looking at different cloud features and watching the world go by, and the nighttime passes are particularly spectacular. If you turn out all the lights, you can look at the stars. We can see the shuttle glow on the windward side of the shuttle, and it's something you just can't get tired of. Well, Catherine Thornton and Ken Bauersocks, thanks very much for being with us. I was delighted to have this opportunity, and so we were all delighted here on World News This Morning. And Houston, this is ABC News in New York, signing off, and this is World News Now. Cathy Thornton aboard the Shuttle Columbia, currently upping or increasing the amount of power being placed to the heater element in the experiment chamber, a three-centimeter diameter chamber. This particular experiment, very important to the experiment team, the science team from Case Western University, because both two and three-centimeter diameter chambers are not possible to evaluate or to conduct experiment runs while on the ground, on Earth. On Earth, it is only possible to run this type of experiment with 1.2-centimeter size or diameter cylinder chambers. That's the environment of the space lab, permitting the science teams to conduct an experiment not possible on Earth.