While schoolchildren across the country watched last Thursday, the science experiments of two students were carried aloft with the space shuttle Discovery, as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Ad6ministration’s “Space Shuttle Student Involvement Program.”
The projects are the work of Richard Cavoli of Marlboro, N.Y., and Lloyd C. Bruce of St. Louis, both now 24 years old. The two were high-school students when nasa first chose their projects to go into space with the ill-fated Challenger mission in January 1986.
Mr. Cavoli, a graduate of Marlboro Central High School and currently a medical student at the State University of NewYork at Buffalo, will use the weightless environment of space to test whether larger, purer lead iodide crystals--used in X-rays--can be grown on a semipermeable membrane.
Mr. Bruce, a graduate of Summer High School in St. Louis and now a senior at the University of Missouri, wants to test the possible benefits of weightlessness in the creation of lighter, stronger titanium alloys, which could be used in airplane engines.