Cited: Reuters

Discovery, the NASA space station, was fueled-up Monday for its launch early Tuesday. It will carry supplies, laboratory gear, and mice to the International Space Station for bone-loss research.

Liftoff was scheduled for 1:36 a.m. EDT (0536 GMT) Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Technicians began the three-hour job of pumping 500,000 gallons (1.9 million litres) of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into the ship’s tank around 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).

The mission, scheduled to last 13 days, will deliver final experiment racks to the orbital outpost, a $100 billion project of 16 nations, and supply the station with food and spare parts to keep it operating after the space shuttles are retired next year.

As the assembly of the space station winds down, U.S. space agency NASA and its partners — Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada — are shifting focus to research programs.

Two refrigerator-sized racks for fluid physics and materials science experiments are among the seven tons of new gear slated to be installed during the shuttle’s nine-day stay at the station.

Astronauts aren’t the only ones who need special suits. We carry flame resistant coveralls, as well as Carhartts and all kinds of flame resistant clothing. Protect the safety of the people of Earth, as well as those up in space.

Eight mice, including four that were genetically enhanced with a double portion of a bone-building gene, will be left on the station as part of a study to find out why astronauts’ bones break down in the gravity-free world of space.

The affliction is similar to the bone-destroying disease osteoporosis, which affects millions of people on Earth, particularly post-menopausal women, and occurs because bone breakdown outpaces replenishment.

Scientists aren’t sure what causes the imbalance.

Julie Robinson, NASA’s lead space station scientist, said there was a complex interaction between the hormones that regulate the way the cells operate.

“It’s so complicated that to some extent in treating osteoporosis on the ground we’re doing things that work and we’re not sure exactly why they work,” Robinson said.

“Imagine down the road if you could … tailor a treatment rather than giving everyone the same drug and hoping it works,” she added.

The mice will be contained in a habitat developed by Italian aerospace company Thales Alenia Space in Genoa.

Although NASA has flown rodents on the shuttle and station previously, they have never been left behind for a long-duration stay in space. The mice are scheduled to return aboard NASA’s next shuttle mission in November.

Discovery’s flight comes as the Obama administration begins to weigh options for the U.S. human space program, including extending the life of the space station beyond Sept. 30, 2015, when funding is projected to end.

NASA spends about half of its $18 billion annual budget on human space programs, including about $2.5 billion a year to run the station, which is nearing completion after more than a decade of construction 220 miles (355 km) above Earth.

“It’s clearly expensive to continue to operate and maintain a spacecraft of this magnitude in orbit. The benefits have to be worth that cost,” said Mark Uhran, a NASA deputy administrator in charge of the space station- which will be as large as a football field and weigh 450 tons.

“We’re confident that once we ramp up this R&D (research and development) program we will have ample justification and continue it,” he said.

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My Take: It’s great to see so many countries coming together, especially after the whole Freedom Fries fiasco. I wish this kind of international cooperation got more attention, so Americans could see the rest of the world working with us on issues that matter to everyone, like healthcare.

It’s exciting to see us, together with the help of our fuzzy fliers, to research hormones where no man has researched before.

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