280 resident's research traveling to space this weekend

From orbit, Dr. Lawrence DeLucas could see fire in the oil fields of Kuwait. It was 1992, and though the Gulf War had officially ended the year before, the aftermath was evident from outside Earth’s atmosphere.

Circling Earth every 90 minutes, he saw those fires more than 200 times during his mission.

“Space, it’s very emotional,” DeLucas said. “I could look down at Earth and see all these countries without map lines or borders. I knew people were being killed down there in the war, but everywhere else everyone seemed so close together. 

“So many people were finding ways to live.”

DeLucas, who lives off Altadena Road, is a former astronaut. According to his NASA biography, he flew with the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia from June 25 to July 9, 1992, traveling more than 5.7 million miles and logging more than 331 hours in space.

Since then, he’s assumed the role of director of the Center for Structural Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and his work there — both before and after the mission — has assisted the world in moving closer to cures for some of humanity’s most critical diseases.

A better sample

DeLucas’ connection to space began in his childhood. At age 9, he built his first telescope.

 “Like a lot of kids my age, I was a Star Trek fiend,” he said. “Just put me on rocket; I don’t care if I come back.”

His fascination continued into adulthood, but his education took a different path. DeLucas studied to become an optometrist, and during that time he grew close to his mentor, Dr. Charles Bugg, who was then head of UAB’s Center for Macromolecular Crystallography.

DeLucas didn’t stray far from Bugg. Thanks to their connection, he became a faculty member at the school in 1981 and was eventually named assistant director of the facility. Within four years of taking the position, he and Bugg would move their research outside Earth’s atmosphere, and pharmaceutical development would never be the same.

Crystallography is the study of the arrangement of atoms in solids. By growing crystals of proteins — in the same way sugar is grown into rock candy — researchers can better understand how proteins work and function. 

“We want to know where every atom is, and a three-dimensional shape gives many clues,” DeLucas said. “Just like a mechanic would take apart a car to see how it’s built, our disassembling of [bacteria and viruses] allows us to develop structure-based drugs.”

In 1984, Bugg and DeLucas were growing crystals at UAB when Bugg was invited to a symposium at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. There, they were introduced to an experiment that grew salt crystals in space. The result formed a larger, higher-quality specimen.

Bugg decided then, if the conditions were right, he would try to grow crystals of bacteria and viruses in near-zero gravity. With a more perfect 3-D model of a protein’s molecular structure, some guesswork could be taken out of pharmaceutical research. 

Basically, better crystals meant more effective drugs.

DeLucas was responsible for creating the hardware, and the total cost to fly just his four experiments was more than $11,000. In the nine months before the launch, he changed his designs four times but, ready or not, in 1985 they went up on NASA’s Challenger orbiter.

“We got pretty stunning results,” he said.

A greater distance

Following a successful stint designing and sending more experiments, DeLucas was offered the chance to fly with them. He was named to the mission team for a flight on the Columbia in 1992. It was a child’s dream come true, but as an adult DeLucas was awestruck by reality. 

“When you think about going to space, you think it’s so far away,” he said. “But low-Earth is only 250 miles up, and from there, deep, dark space goes on forever. There were thousands of stars. I couldn’t even find the Big Dipper.”

As his crystals grew in the orbiter, DeLucas watched the fires burn in the Middle East and thought about war. His position also provided him new perspective on the environment.  

“Looking back down, I could see a light blue line surrounding the Earth. It looked like a sheet of paper,” he said. “That’s the air we all have to breathe. It made me think about the environment and how to protect it.”

With DeLucas aboard, Columbia made 221 orbits, setting a record at the time. He said staying outside the atmosphere much longer could cause muscle degeneration. In near-zero gravity, a decrease in pressure in the blood vessels prevents the heart from understanding the appropriate rate it needs to beat.

Before reentering Earth’s atmosphere, he said the crew was required to “fluid-load” twice to keep blood pressure up, and his suit strained to push blood out of his legs. It worked. He said the first time he checked his vitals on the way in, his heart rate was up to 147 and his blood pressure was 188 over 138.

It wasn’t much of a deterrent, though.

“I would go back in heartbeat,” he said.

A brighter future

DeLucas went on to serve as the chief scientist for the International Space Station, a job more about politics than research, he said. His role required him to talk to Congress, discuss procedures with other countries and analyze results of prior experiments. After a year of that, it was back to the lab.

“I needed to get back to my work,” he said.

At UAB, he hired engineers who could design his hardware concepts and found ways to make his experiments more cost-effective. At 63, he’s still doing it today, he said, as he prepares for the Feb. 22 launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX is a program funded by PayPal inventor Eli Musk. According to spacex.com, “It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010.”

Most important to DeLucas, the Dragon lab will be attached to the rocket. Dragon is a reusable, robotically controlled spacecraft designed to connect with the Space Station via a robotic arm. This month, it will do so with DeLucas’ research aboard to complete what he called the “biggest space experiment we’ve done.”

The February mission features a double-blind study, for which scientists on Earth will grow crystals from the same 100 proteins as the ones in orbit. The goal is to provide researchers with evidence needed to secure funding from the U.S. government for future near-zero gravity crystallography experiments.

“We’re trying to take all the bias out of this and clearly show what benefits space can provide,” DeLucas said. “If the data shows space is better for growing these crystals, we’ll have something the world can believe.”

After more than 30 years of researching outside Earth’s atmosphere, DeLucas continues to work on improving the lives of those on the ground. His current experiments, according to his biography on uab.edu, target multiple cancers and osteoporosis.

With those on SpaceX — and the many that came before — his time has been driven by what he saw from the shuttle window in 1992. DeLucas is constantly finding ways to help humanity live, and live together.