have to link up with the space station, move a docking port into position and then carefully lift the lab out of its tight berth in the shuttle payload bay. Destiny eventually will be the scene of round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week, month-after-month orbital research, something NASA hasn't done since Skylab in the 1970s. The experiments will involve fluids, metals, semiconductors, flames, plants and, perhaps most important, the human body. NASA wants to learn more about the effects of radiation and weightlessness on the body before it sends astronauts to Mars. Destiny will probably not be operating fully until 2006, given all the other space station construction still to be done. ...
