MS. STILSON: Palak from Chicago wants to know what experiments is Discovery carrying on board.
MR. HIGGINBOTHAM: Well, on this flight, the biggest and most obvious experiment-related item is
the Human Research Facility-2 rack. This entire 1600-pound rack will be left behind at the Station when we undock.
And this rack will be used for experiments that the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the Station
will perform to better understand what happens to the human body during exposure to long duration microgravity.
We're also carrying up a small little suitcase of materials to expose to the space environment.
It's called MISSE for Materials International Space Station Experiments. We're carrying up the fifth
in a series of these experiments that we'll deploy during that third EVA out onto the P6 truss element.
We'll also be bringing home two of the previous MISSE experiments that have flown and have been retrieved by astronauts
performing space walks. Coming back on this mission, we're bringing home a mid-deck experiment
that's looking into protein crystals and how they grow in the microgravity environment.
This particular experiment launched on the 11-A mission back on November of 2002,
and now it's coming home to investigators to take a look at it.