Why Grow Crystals in Space?
In 1992, DeLucas donned a spacesuit himself as a payload specialist for the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). He wanted to learn the rigors and practical realities of research in a weightless environment. Now that he has designed a successful crystal-growth system, he prepares experiments on Earth and ships them to space aboard space shuttles, where other astronauts tend the projects. “Crystals produced on Earth are usually flawed because of gravity-induced movements within the liquid, crystal-growing medium,” explains DeLucas. “But in space, the liquid is motionless, which greatly slows the growth of some protein crystals. The more slowly you grow crystals, the fewer the flaws in their structure.” The atoms and molecules of space-grown crystals are aligned more perfectly. This allows their structures to be seen at higher resolutions. DeLucas, who studies crystals at the Center for Macromolecular Crystallography at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said he could not
