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A research scientist at the University of Utah who is originally from Plains Township participated in a project for NASA that will be launched as a six-month experimental trial on today’s scheduled liftoff of space shuttle Discovery.

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Space shuttle Discovery stands ready at pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Monday. Discovery is scheduled to launch early this morning.

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Lorraine Siperko, present day

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Lorraine Siperko, 67, a 1978 graduate of King’s College, worked on the research project with a team of scientists and engineers from the University of Utah, Iowa State University, Wyle Life Sciences and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA adds “biocides” to astronauts’ drinking water to kill bacteria and viruses. Siperko’s group discovered a method to monitor the concentration of biocides in the water.

“It is a health concern for the astronauts and they have to know exactly how much is in there,” said Siperko, a 1959 graduate of Plains Township High School. “There could be other health concerns if they have too much in their water.”

Any bacteria in the water can cause health problems, according to Siperko.

“Occasionally, the astronauts have come back ill because of something that did get in their water,” she said.

The experiment went on today’s scheduled launch of space shuttle Discovery at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A group of team members, including Siperko, was invited to view the liftoff.

The six-month experiment will take place on the International Space Station with the water being tested once each month for biocides.

About 10 years ago, the space agency posted a notice that it needed a method to monitor biocides used in water on the station, said Siperko, who graduated with a doctorate in analytical chemistry at Ohio State University in 1983.

The team of scientists developed an easy-to-use method that works in zero gravity so that astronauts can monitor at the space station the amount of biocides in water.

Siperko, the former Lorraine Gumienny, said they tested for two different biocides – iodine and silver ions.

“The U.S. leg of the ISS uses iodine, while the Russian leg uses dissolved silver,” said Siperko, who has been involved in NASA’s research for more than three years. “The concentration of these biocides must be strictly controlled, since too little poses a risk due to disease, while too much can adversely affect the astronauts’ health.”

Before the method could be approved for today’s launch, the team had to show that it could operate in zero gravity, Siperko said.

A handful of scientists and engineers tested the method on reduced-gravity flights that originate out of NASA’s Ellington Field in Houston. Siperko was one of them.

“You may have heard of these flights, which consist of an alternating series of weightlessness and increased G forces,” Siperko said. “The effect on the body can be extreme in some cases, giving rise to the nickname ‘Vomit Comet.’ Luckily, I never had a problem.”

Siperko said there are several requirements for an analytical method that is to “fly on the shuttle to be transported to the ISS. … It must be lightweight, compact, easy to use and reliable, and be able to operate in microgravity,” she said.

“The method we developed for both iodine and silver uses a syringe to pass a water sample through an analysis disk, then a hand-held spectrophotometer reads the concentration of biocide directly from the disk,” Siperko said.

“In this way, the astronauts know if the biocide concentration in the water should be adjusted,” she said.

Siperko, who lives in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, with her husband, John, formerly of Center Moreland, said the water analysis method will most likely be used on future lunar and Mars missions. The couple have a son, Gary, who lives in Cleveland.

NASA also is interested in analyzing for other contaminants that could leak into the drinking water from piping and storage containers, she said.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, but what we’ve accomplished was exciting and fun,” Siperko said. “I hope to be a part of the next generation of water quality method development for NASA.”