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This is NASA's press kit for Space Shuttle mission STS-75, dated February 1996 and later edited by Richard W. Orloff. It covers Columbia's planned 13-day flight carrying the Italian Tethered Satellite System reflight (TSS-1R) and the third United States Microgravity Payload. The kit sets out launch and landing plans, abort modes, the timeline, payload weights, crew duties, the tether's science objectives and investigators, and crew biographies. It does not mention any unidentified objects.
“NASA”22 pages
Edited by Richard W. Orloff, 01/2001/Page 27 COMMERCIAL PROTEIN CRYSTAL GROWTH (CPCG) STS-75 includes a flight of the Commercial Protein Crystal Growth systems identified as CPCG-09. This payload will process nine different proteins seeking the development of new therapeutic treatments for infections, human cancers, diseases caused from hormone disorders, and Chagas disease. Columbia will carry into space the first joint U.S.- Latin American experiment in protein crystal growth. The project, conceived in March 1993, brings together a small team of investigators from Costa Rica, Chile and the United States. It involves the crystallization in microgravity of ultrapure samples of Tripanothione Reductase, a DNA-grown protein expressing key features of the Tripanosoma Cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas Disease. The experiment will seek to determine the structure of this protein through crystallographic studies of the crystals obtained in space. The high resolution resulting from the space grown crystals could pave the way for the development of effective pharmaceuticals to combat this debilitating disease and lead, some day, to an effective vaccine. The CPCG-09 payload was developed by the CMC, which was formed in 1985 as a NASA Center for the Commercial Development of Space. The CMC's objective is to form partnerships with industrial groups and other government agencies who are pursuing commercial applications of macromolecular crystallography relating to structure-based drug design. This is a drug discovery methodology based on inhibiting or enhancing the biological activity of macromolecules, or proteins, responsible for various diseases. Protein crystallography, using X-ray diffraction, is the lead technique whereby the three- dimensional molecular structure of a protein disease target is established. Protein structural information leads to the discovery and synthesis of complementary compounds that can become potent drugs specifically directed against the disease target. Structure-based drug design is a productive and cost- effective targeted drug development strategy. CPCG-09 will be the CMC's 29th space flight, and will use the CMC's newly developed Commercial Vapor Diffusion Apparatus (CVDA). Analysis of the results of previous CMC missions has shown that techniques have produced proteins crystals of significantly higher quality than ever grown on Earth before. The CMC has developed over ten pieces of flight hardware specifically for the support of microgravity investigations in protein crystal growth. These systems use vapor diffusion, temperature induction, and batch mixing techniques and certain pieces of hardware have been augmented with instrumentation for localized temperature, light scattering, and video monitoring. The newest addition to the crystal growth hardware inventory, the Commercial Vapor Diffusion Apparatus (CVDA), was designed, developed, and manufactured by the CMC. The CVDA can accommodate 128 protein samples. The flight of CPCG-09 is sponsored by the Space Processing Division of the Office of Space Access and Technology, as part of NASA's commercial development of space program.
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