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\h        Music

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\h        Early in the morning along the east central Florida coast, rescue teams on land,

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\h        sea and in the air sprang to action.

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\h        Helicopters were silhouetted against the sky.

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\h        Boats cut through the choppy seas.

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\h        Military leaders huddled over computer monitors displaying real-time tracking.

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\h        It was only a drill, but the scenario played out like a real

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\h        space shuttle launch-day emergency.

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\h        The shuttle search and rescue drill was a cooperative effort between NASA

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\h        and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

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\h        It simulated an emergency situation where a space shuttle crew would need to

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\h        bail out of their orbiter after liftoff and be rescued from the Atlantic Ocean.

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\h        The exercise known as Mode eight was made as realistic as possible with

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\h        complicated medical and communications challenges that would be experienced

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\h        in a real bail-out situation.

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\h        The shuttle crew in the drill was made up of real astronauts and volunteers,

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\h        with each assigned various medical needs during the rescue.

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\h        Unlike other such drills in the past, this one concentrated on a launch path that

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\h        will be used during space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125

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\h        Hubble repair mission this fall.

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\h        After liftoff, the shuttle will head directly eastward out over the Atlantic Ocean

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\h        instead of curving closer to the coast putting a rescue effort farther out to sea.

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\h        This was the fifteenth Mode eight drill with the first conducted

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\h        almost 20 years ago.

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\h        And while a sea rescue of a shuttle crew is the most complicated,

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\h        it is just one of several emergency rescue drills conducted regularly.

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\h        The teams involved in the Mode eight were able to sharpen their skills while