First contacts with the operations and science teams of the three successful ESA instruments that transmitted all their telemetry and video data to the ground, revealed great grief about the tragic end of the STS-107 mission, but great satisfaction with the science data that had been achieved due to the outstanding performance of the crew.
The Facility for Adsorption and Surface Tension (FAST) which first flew on STS-95 in October 1998 (with US veteran astronaut John Glenn and ESA astronaut Pedro Duque among the crew), performed extremely well. Three experiments were performed sequentially for one German and two Italian investigator groups.
The COM2PLEX instrument consists of three Loop Heat Pipes provided by three industrial companies in Belgium, France and Germany. Detailed data are available and qualitative analyses indicate improved heat transfer capabilities.
For all seven flight experiments of the Advanced Respiratory Monitoring System (ARMS) supported by investigator teams from Denmark, Germany, Italy and Sweden, excellent data were received.
More information on the European instruments and experiments onboard theSTS-107 can be found at
http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/STS107
Fact sheets of the experiments can be downloaded from :
http://www.estec.esa.int/spaceflight/transfer/STS107exp