STS-42 closeup view shows Student Experiment 81-09 (SE 81-09), Convection in Zero Gravity experiment, with radial pattern caused by convection induced by heating an oil and aluminum powder mixture in the weightlessness of space. While the STS-42 crewmembers activated the Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP) experiment on Discovery's, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 103's, middeck, Scott Thomas, the student who designed the experiment, was able to observe the procedures via downlinked television (TV) in JSC's Mission Control Center (MCC). Thomas, now a physics doctoral student at the University of Texas, came up with the experiment while he participated in the SSIP as a student at Richland High School in Johnstown, Pennsylvia.

STS042-27-037 (22-30 Jan. 1992) --- Astronaut David C. Hilmers, STS-42 mission specialist, wearing a helmet assembly, sits in the Microgravity Vestibular Investigation (MVI) rotating chair. The scene is in the International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-1) science module aboard Discovery. Hilmers, a mission specialist, and six other crewmembers spent more than eight days in Earth-orbit conducting experiments. Hilmer's helmet assembly is outfitted with accelerometers to measure head movements and visors that fit over each eye independently to provide visual stimuli. The chair system has three movement patterns: "sinusoidal" or traveling predictably back and forth over the same distance at a constant speed; "pseudorandom" or moving back and forth over the varying distances; and "stepped" or varying speeds beginning and stopping suddenly.

STS042-203-024 (22-30 Jan. 1992) --- Astronaut David C. Hilmers (right), STS-42 mission specialist, assists European Space Agency (ESA) payload specialist Ulf Merbold with the visual stimulator experiment on the Space Shuttle Discovery's middeck. This particular test is part of an ongoing study of the Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS). Seated in a stationary mini-sled, Merbold (or any other subject for this test) stares at an umbrella-shaped rotating dome with a pattern of colored dots on its interior. While observing the rotating dome, the subject turns a knob to indicate his perception of body rotation. The strength of circular vection is calculated by comparing the signals from the dome and the knob. The greater the false sense of circular vection, the more the subject is relying on visual information instead of otolith information.