When the International Space Station Alpha begins its launch operations in a few years, human adaptation to long-term space flight will be studied -- a result of the efforts of a NASA Science Working Group that includes two Penn State faculty members.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has chosen Peter Cavanagh, director of the Center for Locomotion Studies, and William Evans, director of the Noll Physiological Research Center, to work with a group that will determine what types of equipment should be included in the Human Research Facility. The lab will be built on the space station and used to study human adaptation to space and basic life science research.

"Right now what NASA wants to know is what kind of scientific equipment it should have for human experiments," Evans said.

Evans explained the lab will make it possible to study motion sickness, energy and metabolism and changes in bones and muscles.

Cavanagh is particularly interested in learning why astronauts lose calcium from their bones when they enter space. Starting the day astronauts enter space, tremendous amounts of calcium from their bones leave their bodies through urine. Calcium continues to leave the body at a constant rate, Cavanagh said.

In the time it would take an astronaut to reach Mars, so much calcium would have been lost that bones could easily be broken by doing everyday tasks, he said. Cavanagh said he hoped to find out how to prevent and slow down this loss of calcium.

He said this calcium loss may be due to factors such as hormones, diet and especially exercise. While in space, astronauts hardly use their legs -- they move by grabbing on to objects and pulling with their arms.

Disuse of the legs may be one cause of the calcium loss, Cavanagh said. He also said certain types of leg exercises would probably prevent this from happening, and would like to find out what the exercises -- through experiments in the Human Research Facility.

Evans said the NASA Science Working Group has already begun making plans for the lab. Evans and Cavanagh met with the group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in January. They started work on documents for the instruments that will be installed in the lab in 1999.

The first components of the space station will be sent up in 1998.

The space station is being developed by the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency, so it will be "like a big case of legos in the sky," Cavanagh said.