Three years of UW-Madison-based research burst into flames Saturday aboard the Columbia space shuttle.
The seven crew members worked 12 hour shifts in order to conduct more than 80 experiments in various fields, including two from UW-Madison's Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, which works in conjunction with NASA.
The experiments were expected to yield much anticipated conclusions about the biological changes of plants in microgravity, according to Bratislav Stankovic, a researcher at UW-Madison who worked on experiments.
Researchers at UW-Madison said they worked closely with those aboard the space shuttle Columbia, training the seven crew members to conduct the two experiments.
\Over [the] couple [of] years this mission was being planned, I went down [to Florida] about three times,"" said Jessica Abba, an associate research specialist at UW-Madison.
Researchers said they are uncertain whether the two lost boxes that contained three years of investigation will be reproduced.
""I am hopeful that someone will redo these experiments. Whether it is going to be [WCSAR] or someone else, I'm not sure,"" Stankovic said.
Despite this scientific loss, Stankovic said space research at WCSAR continues. Other experiments are currently planned for the International Space Station and researchers are in the process of designing a new chamber scheduled to launch in a couple of years.
""WCSAR is a part of the university and we develop the hardware here and team up with people in the industry to run experiments,"" Abba said.
The two experiments conducted by researchers at UW-Madison involved the effects of a weightless environment on plants. The first of the projects was flown in a plant growth chamber designed by WCSAR and controlled by researchers at their headquarters in Madison.
""We grew a rose plant and a rice flower plant to see how microgravity affects their essential oil production, basically to see if they smell any different in space,"" Abba said.
The project was funded in part by International Flavors and Fragrances in New York in hopes of producing new fragrances to be synthetically produced by perfume companies.
""We tried to identify different fragrances that would develop in a microgravity environment,"" Stankovic said.
The second experiment investigated genetic transformations of plants in the weightless environment.
""We tried to see how microgravity might affect the transformation efficiency of plants,"" Stankovic said.
Laurel Clark, the only astronaut on the mission who graduated from UW-Madison, was trained to conduct this experiment. In an interview last June, she expressed her enthusiasm for the project.
""The second [project] is really exciting. Gene transfer is actually a potentially incredibly important thing. ... You can take characteristics--beneficial characteristics--from plants and transfer them to [other] plants so that they're resistant to disease or very different environmental conditions,"" she said.
