we launched in the middle of the night
on a night when when we were kind of
wondering whether we're gonna go fly or
not we finally got to go ahead and suit
up this is my favorite piece of gear to
put on very very comfortable
here's Borneo putting it on his suit for
his first flight you see John Grunsfeld
on the right everybody is raring to go
we had a sort of a marginal call from
the weather guys for those of you that
followed it Sam on the left and Ron on
the right and we're all kind of thinking
that this is sort of a dress rehearsal
for the real launch day which would
probably be the next day Tammy putting
her suit on and Wendy sue texted just a
marvelous job I think we may be one of
the last flights that actually where's
the L es as we get ready to go into the
ASA suits but we were all fired up and
ready to go and lo and behold we went to
fly here we are starting the main engine
seven seconds before a launch of course
a little over a million pounds of thrust
there to SRBs
you see the 20 maneuvers Steve in the
left window to s Survey's lighting
basically four and a half million pounds
of weight and eight million pounds of
thrust pushing us upwards instant
daylight obviously you can see how well
we illuminated things John and Wendy
were able to actually see the launch pad
the smoke plume and the coast by looking
back through a mirror and obviously a
majestic sight for everyone as we
quickly disappear from sight here and
approximately two minutes we approached
SRB Sep which of course gave us a
beautiful view of the forward rockets as
they separate it inside and we're on our
way to orbit here we are a little over
an hour into the flight just a
witnessing this beautiful view of the
earth but flight day one is extremely
busy and so we needed to get to work we
opened our payload bay doors a little
over an hour into the flight and then
soon we'll be activating our space lab
pallet and activating our instrument
system all of which is done from the a
flight deck once we attach our
telescopes to the instrument pointing
system we deploy that IPS and
instruments to the upright position and
then a little bit later on we'll be
doing a thorough check out of the IPS
and also a check out of all our
ultraviolet telescopes in preparation
for the next 15 days of astronomical
observations
on from the left-hand side I worked the
IPS side and Sam on the right-hand side
is doing the in speed instrument
checkout we were able to very quickly
settle into the routine I was
responsible for making sure the orbiter
was pointed at the right part of the sky
Tammy was responsible for fine tuning
with the instrument pointing system and
then the telescope's would lock on to
the target and he might be wondering why
we're looking at the earth but we're
currently rolling to the right attitude
the idea was that we would pick up a
star as it rose above the Earth's limb
and then Sam would go to work making
sure the experiments were ready to start
the observation and quickly we have the
Astro star tracker on the left
uit Hut is right in the middle and
whoopee is on the right hand side a very
very capable package of telescopes and
really did an outstanding job we had a
number of tools onboard to help us
evaluate how we were doing we
communicated to the telescope's
primarily through the small laptop
computers I'm issuing commands directly
to the telescope and you saw Tammy
issuing commands to the instrument
pointing system this is what we would
see through the Hopkins ultraviolet
telescope it had a TV camera that
actually looked out through the
telescope and here you see an
acquisition of the planet Jupiter we're
actually looking at the space around
Jupiter and displayed below that was a
spectrum that we're actually acquiring
here you see the Wisconsin ultraviolet
photopolymer imager experiment in the
foreground and this is the type of image
we would get from the whoopi instrument
this shows a star in the acquisition
camera and in addition we had spectral
data from whoopi also to evaluate the
target to make sure that we're looking
at the right target and the data was
good well what ended up being a very
very short checkout period we got into
the routine of observing target after
target fir'd for the rest of the mission
John and I were the redshift
back into the bus operators with borneo
in the front and we would do a borneo
would do a maneuver of the orbiter john
would maneuver the IPS to the correct
attitude and turned the manual pointing
controller over to me after the IPS
maneuver was done and I would do the the
target acquisition on the CCTV displays
and the telescope's would be set off on
their way observing the the object and
here again you see the CCTV displays
that we had on board to make sure we had
the right target all the scientists on
the ground and there was a huge team
working at Marshall as well as all the
folks here in Mission Control working
and here we see our alternate payload
specialist Scott Hagen and we're in
regular communication with the APS and
the other folks at Marshall working the
telescopes every day they'd send us up a
few pages of new information new targets
and and target procedures and also all
the orbiter procedures and information
and so that was part of our duties on
board to incorporate that into the
rolodex and that can be helping me out
there that was a part of our daily
activities we also had as I mentioned
the mid-deck active control experiment
and here you see it with the disturbance
at the far end on the right there
disturbing the whole structure and
that's free-floating or near
free-floating the mid-deck
and in just a second you'll see the
control take over and the left-hand
gimble suddenly locks in even though the
right hand is still disturbing and this
was the way it worked most of the time
quite well here's a case where the left
hand side is supposed to be pointing
inertia lis in space but obviously this
is a oscillatory divergent case where
the control wasn't quite enough and you
wouldn't if this were a space station I
don't think you'd want to be aboard
and these were fun to watch but by far
the minority and this was just a great
interactive experiment as you can see by
the expression on our commander's face
and corneal build to the left
fortunately the other mid-deck
experiments were rather benign we just
spent most of our time cleaning the
filters on the protein crystal growth
experiments you can see John here
participating in a medical DSO that was
determining the function of the eyes and
the head your gaze on orbit
he's definitely wired for sound in this
scene and again dr. SAR x also known as
ron talking to with with one of the many
school contacts we spoke to schools
literally around the world India South
Africa as well as throughout the United
States that was really again as John
said one of the more enjoyable aspects
and of course we'd had to include bill
on the bike he had to arm wrestle the
rest of us for time though he didn't
live on the bike we actually made him
work but as I said before it was a great
way to get some exercise and relax while
you're on orbit
well that exercise is likely to make
anybody hungry and some of us were
hungrier than others so we see Borneo
here was first in line at the galley the
red shift usually had dinner together we
usually had a cocktail hour first where
we all had a shrimp cocktail or here you
see a blue shift person coming in here
probably didn't have enough breakfast
trying to get somebody's food away from
them and of course playing with food you
know no matter how often your mom tell
told you not to play with your food it's
just impossible not to do that in space
and you see Tammy here with fluid
physics experiment some tropical punch
floating free in the mid-deck which he
was able to vacuum up posthaste and of
course we don't have a shower on board
and that's the best you can do earth
observations as we said was one of the
more enjoyable things to do and also an
important part of the shuttle program
and here's Wendy's famous barren island
volcano in the Andaman Islands and that
was neat to look for that kind of stuff
that was
a great discovery for us to be able to
report that to the ground again shark
Bay this is a larger view of it and from
day to day we could see variations both
due to tidal differences and also from
the rain in Australia this is looking
towards the south up at the very left
end of the picture is Adelaide and some
of the dry Lakes in the airlock
Lake Region and some of these also had
water in and we had both color visible
film and infrared film and we took
sometimes pairs of pictures of the same
region we also had an opportunity on a
number of passes to see the Hawaiian
Islands Tammie showed you the Oahu view
here's a the Big Island of Hawaii and on
the top of the picture there on the
volcano or a number of NASA
observatories that also do astronomy and
we really enjoyed taking the pictures
this is another beautiful view of a
sunset on orbit it takes about 90
minutes to orbit the Earth and so one
gets to see a sunrise or sunset every 45
minutes and this is one of the storms
that we witnessed in the south-central
United States you're looking North is at
the top of the screen to the left you
can see Louisiana all the way up to
Atlanta actually and on the right hand
side of course is Florida and it's a
very graphic depiction of city lights
and storm activity eventually we have to
come back home this is a graphic
visualization of the pilot dto you can
see an actual approach here on the
computer screen working with the
controller which is mounted to the
existing stick and the orbiter in
addition to that prior to coming home we
went ahead and did a check on the flight
control systems and what we do is we do
a check of all the Jets and also the
flight control surfaces to make sure
that the orbiter does perform as
advertised and here the three orbiter
folks Steve Wendy and myself are going
through the flight control system
checkout and you'll now see the Elavon
moving in the background and you can
really feel this just shake the vehicle
as it slams back and forth against the
hearts
and then the final step before we come
home is to turn the orbiting observatory
back into a flying machine and it gets
kind of hectic there when we're trying
to pack everything away and then put our
launch and entry suits back on and get
ready to re-enter here you see Ron and I
and our suits are us logo they're
putting Borneo in his suit
once that's done and just before we do
orbit we close the payload bay doors and
seal the payload Bay so that we can
re-enter the Earth's atmosphere
as you're probably aware we were
originally scheduled to land at Kennedy
Space Center on the 17th of March which
would have been 15 and a half days on
orbit unfortunately the weather and in
Florida didn't accommodate that landing
so we put the telescope away I never did
actually close the doors the Mission
Control Center folks never put us in the
suits because of weather was was so bad
we didn't they didn't think that we had
a chance at it the next day Saturday the
18th we made one look at the Kennedy
Space Center waved off on the first Rev
and went ahead and burned to Edwards Air
Force Base on the second deorbit
opportunity on the 18th there you can
see the hack we're on final now and to
runway two two at Edwards and the winds
were a little bit gusty at Edwards you
can see a little bit of the dust coming
off the lake beds but but there wasn't
an appreciable amount of turbulence we
could feel a little bit of turbulence on
final and the right to left crosswind
was definitely noticeable but nothing
that wasn't well within the performance
capabilities of the orbiter and for
those of us that have flown before
there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of
difference between an eight day to ten
day flight in a 17 day flight so if
there is a limit on the amount of time
that people can go to space and come
back and land in orbiter we don't think
it's at the 17 day point it was a
wonderful flight we had an orbiter that
gave us virtually no problems whatsoever
the folks down at Kennedy Space Center
should be very very proud of the orbiter
that they gave us we hope that we gave
it back in pretty good shape to them so
that they can turn it around for the
next bunch of folks that go fly it it
was a tremendous adventure for us we
were very pleased with the results I had
a tremendous group of people to go fly
with exceptionally talented a group of
folks and so if we could if we just go
ahead and start the slides now okay as
is traditional the rookies are pretty
much responsible for the crew patch and
we think that they did just a great job
pretty well tells the story of the
mission has the telescope's which
operated of course in the ultraviolet
part of the spectrum three different
instruments from the payload Bay that
the science guys will tell you about
in more detail later but we we launched
on the 2nd of March we really didn't
think we were going to do that with the
weather as it was when we got down there
I was a night launch primarily because
we were attempting to maximize the
amount of observing time and as it
turned out launching in the middle of
the night minimized the amount of time
that we were going to be in the South
Atlantic anomaly during the night time
passes so we went to the program the
science guys did along with payload
commander Tammy Jernigan and made the
case for launching in the middle of the
night and we did that we launched a 137
eastern time I guess we're a minute late
138 Eastern Time on the 17th and I can
tell you what or the second it's my
second night launch and day launches are
impressive night launches are really
something it gets to be no kid in broad
daylight down there at Kennedy Space
Center for just a little while although
Astro is sometimes talked about as an
individual payload there are actually
more than one instrument that come
together to to make the observatory
itself and in this picture we see
starting from the left the long conical
sunshade you see there is actually part
of a star tracker that we use for
correcting image motion that are created
by disturbances in the orbiter just to
the right of that that you can see sort
of in the back is the ultraviolet
imaging telescope which actually takes
images of ultraviolet objects and it's
it was built at Goddard Space Flight
Center and to the right of that the
larger tube is the Hopkins ultraviolet
telescope from Johns Hopkins University
and here's another view of the same
telescopes the same telescope package
the Astra Observatory the instrument you
see in the foreground with the square
aluminum baffle is a Wisconsin
ultraviolet photo polarimeter experiment
which we commonly just call whoopee
and on the two it's right you see three
small tubes those are the baffles for
the optical sensor package which was
three star trackers that were used in
conjunction with the instrument pointing
system to help acquire stars and to
guide on those guide stars during the
observation this particular image if you
look at the landmass below has special
significance to astronomers this is in
the southern hemisphere and I can't
forgot to make this laser pointer work
yeah okay right in here in this region
are all of our almost all of the large
ground-based observatories in the
southern hemisphere this is northern
chile and right in this region and here
is the Las Campanas Observatory the
European Southern Observatory and just
to the right over here is the
inter-american Observatory and much of
the astronomy and the southern
hemisphere is conducted in this region
or in Australia and so this picture has
special significance to us and in fact
the last time I flew an aster one as we
were flying over like this some people I
was working with were down here making
observations in Chile okay this is where
I this has got both of the orbital
pilots here
Wendy Lawrence on the left of course
then bill Gregory on the right and those
two folks were on different ships we're
divided up and do into two shifts and
ran 24-hour operations onboard the
orbiter for all 17 days that we were
flying and Wendy was the blue shift
pilot she was ran basically all of the
orbital maneuvers that we did we had
over 377 maneuvers that supported the
payload just a little over 400 maneuvers
all told for the flight
Wendy basically loaded every single one
of those on the blue shift bill did all
of them except for a few that I managed
to screw up on the red shift and
and and they did an awesome job not only
of keeping track of the attitude
timeline to make sure that the orbiter
was maneuvered properly to support the
observation is that the science folks
wanted to make with the telescopes but
also just in keeping the orbiter clean
doing all the things for the system's
the flash evaporator systems the
wastewater dumps all those kinds of
things that you need to do in order to
keep the orbiter up and running to
support science operations these guys
were doing one on each shift Tammy
Jernigan was the payload commander for
that matter still is the payload
commander until we managed to get the
flight report written and and she was
assigned to the flight both she and John
were assigned before the orbiter crew
was even mentioned in context with STS
67 by about six months so Tammy was
working all those issues with the
payload community at Marshall Space
Flight Center and a Goddard with all the
science teams the principal
investigators to try to get the
operations in sync with her science
early on and she did just an awesome job
here you see her working with one of the
many PG SES that we had these were
dedicated to the payload we had three
computers that were dedicated to Astro
and that was our primary interface with
the Space Lab system the s-class the
subsystem operating software and the
e-class the experiment software to work
with the payloads we had the the s-class
running primarily on the starboard side
left side as you're looking at which was
the MS station and then the experiment
side was primarily run by the folks on
the right side that being the PS okay
speaking of one of the PS Ron fries dr.
Ron Perez and when we got back to
Ellington I said that he had been
assigned to astro since the earth cooled
and that's not really completely
accurate
however he has been working astro since
he graduated from college which was
shortly after the earth cooled
and basically the guy is an expert on
Astro as you would suspect he flew on on
Astro one Jacqueline Vance brass and
Vance bran and Guy Gardner and Sam
Durant's all well executed the first
mission here and so he was just a
tremendous source of knowledge not only
on UI key which is his particular area
of expertise but on the other two
payloads as well and besides that he was
just a great guy to go fly with always
willing to do anything that was required
he and Sam both were the were the suit
guys for a post insertion and the orbit
prep Sam and Ron were the folks that
that got all the rest of this dressed in
the morning you see Sam on the right
Sam dorrance and that John Grunsfeld on
the left John was the first time flier
as was both wendy and borneo bill
Gregory affectionately known as Borneo
John was the other MS he was the
blueshift guy that ran the instrument
pointing system
starboard side a flight deck he's also
forgotten more about laptop computers
than the whole rest of the crew combined
ever knew and he was just a huge help in
that area since we were operating about
six of those things simultaneously to
support the payload and the orbiter Sam
of course also flew on Astro one with
ron van sky and company and and as such
was was another super expert his primary
area of expertise being cut the hopkins
ultraviolet telescope which he works
basically full-time at johns hopkins
buck you see sam and i holding contains
the target procedures we observed
hundreds of targets and we had an
individual procedure for each target
that was observed and as you can see we
affectionately named his book the
rolodex since it became so full with all
the new procedures that the ground
uplink and we had a little fun with it
here in zero-g
wherever we go Steve gets the
opportunity to introduce all of us and
because he does that we don't get a
chance to brag about him so I'm gonna
take a second here to point out that
Steven flown twice previously this
his first flight as a commander and he
took on the ambitious chore of going
uphill with an all rookie flight deck
his first time in the left seat and
three brand-new spanking astronaut
wannabes fulfilling the rest of the
flight deck did an admirable job of
getting us up hill what Steve did was
basically turned the mission over to the
red team the blue team leaders and what
he did was he supervised us and kept
basically the ground in tune with what
we were doing and handling any of the
problems and this is a picture of him at
work doing what he did best and that was
keeping the ground informed via
basically the same email that we use
here on earth and you can see he's
typing on a keyboard and when issues
came up Steve would use magical keyboard
to talk to the ground and we got some
awesome results at the Johnson Space
Center and the folks in Huntsville
Marshall did a wonderful job of helping
us out when we were in a bind we also
used this keyboard for communicating
with other members of the astronaut
office and our families and friends have
an opportunity to introduce some of the
mid-deck experiments that we carried
these gave an opportunity for Bill and
myself to participate in some of the
science operations I'm presently in
front of what's called PCG test protein
crystal growth thermal enclosure system
that was one of the protein crystal
growth experiments that we had
unfortunately you can't see the other
one which was PCGS test for single
thermal enclosure system and this is
another one another flight in the long
we hope long series of flights that will
continue protein crystal growth on orbit
it's had tremendous success as far as we
know we had the same success in our
flight they were certainly interested in
having 16 days worth of protein crystal
growth on orbit primarily we were
growing crystals for drug research in
this experiment and the locker that you
see on top the other silver metal box is
cemex which stands for a commercial
materials dispersion apparatus ita
experiment the unique thing about this
experiment as
it's a commercially sponsored experiment
in conjunction with the University of
Huntsville Alabama at Huntsville and
I'll let Bill continue to explain what
we did with the CEMEX experiment we had
a couple of portions of the C mix we had
the box which you saw just above Wendy
which was the thermal enclosure and then
we also had a pouch assembly that had a
variety of syringes which contained
different compounds into her life-forms
and what we did was once we got up on
orbit we would push these syringes to
activate and we would have corresponding
syringes on the ground that would be
activated at the same time and then
later on in the mission we would
deactivate by sending a fixer in by
pushing the syringe a second time and so
we were able to model both the ground
and up in orbit exactly what was going
on and we filmed these so that they
could provide further analysis once we
landed another mid-deck experiment we
had that was great and kept our
commander busy almost the entire flight
on the mid-deck was the mid-deck active
control experiment and this is a very
good payload that involved a lot of
human interactivity built at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
collaboration with Langley and it's a
control structure technology experiment
and basically it was a long beam that at
one end had a little gimbal assembly
that would try and disturb the whole
structure and at the other end the one
that's closest to the left on the screen
had a little pointing instrument in it
and gimbals and the purpose was the
disturbing end would try and shake the
pointy end and some computer algorithms
and gyros and the gimbals would try and
hold the pointy end very very stable and
this is a model for all sorts of space
structures this was relatively low cost
experiment but from what they learned on
our flight with all the runs that
osborne EO and some of the other crew
members did we'll be able to hopefully
to leverage some great cost savings for
building very large satellites such as
some of the earth observation systems or
space stations or spacecraft to head out
and explore the planets
we also had an experiment on board
called Tsar X it's an amateur radio
experiment and here you see wa4 s ir AKA
ron freeze talking to one of the school
groups on the ground and we had a record
number of contacts and everyone i
thought was truly excellent the kids
asked and students has just wonderful
questions and it was really need to be
able to talk to them and give them
real-time feedback we also had our
experiment looked up to computers so
people could log on to the orbiter and
receive a little bit of information I
mean over 1,200 contacts for people were
able to connect with the orbiter and
lots more where we were just able to
talk to folks from all over the world as
we passed over on an amateur radio one
of the other experiments that we flew
was the pilot and what you're looking at
here is a computer workstation and just
out of view are my hands holding a
second stick and what this allowed us to
do is through the course of a mission
fly numerous approaches and landings to
a simulated shuttle landing site and
we're looking for a possible degradation
over the period of the 16-day mission
additionally this allowed us to practice
prior to the actual landing and Steve
myself and Wendy were able to practice
our crew coordination and our calls and
kind of get back into the saddle as far
as being prepared for our actual landing
unfortunately we were not scheduled to
work all the time all of us had an
opportunity to relax on the bicycle
ergometer John is actually the one doing
work and I'm having a lot of fun playing
alongside it was a great way to relieve
stress like just like you would do down
here on the ground we exercise
throughout the day you were better folks
tended to exercise during the middle of
our shift and we left the pre and post a
period available for the payload crew to
hop on the bike and I think every one of
us would feel that we we really felt
great post landing because we had had an
extensive opportunity to get on the
bicycle and pedal three of us had an
opportunity to pedal around the world
that took about 95 minutes to do
and we thoroughly enjoyed that the only
problem with the current configuration
of the bicycle is unfortunately have to
look at the sleep stations if we had
been able to set it up the other way we
could have peddled around the world and
actually looked at at the same time but
it really was a great way to get some
exercise and relax while you're on orbit
and those of us on the blue ship had
this wonderful opportunity every morning
we got to see that old Borneo Bill wake
up and climb up and climb out of his
sleep station we had four sleep stations
installed which was really a wonderful
thing for a dual shift flight and keep
in mind that why half of the crew is up
and working the other half of the crew
needs to be asleep so we can conduct our
24-hour operations and the sleep
stations really provided you with a
great way to get a good quiet night's
sleep
personally I never used earplugs and I
slept great on orbit it was really kind
of neat to be even though you're inside
of a sleeping bag kind of a cocoon like
sleeping bag that's attached to the
walls of the sleep station you can
definitely tell that you are floating
and I thought that was better than any
waterbed that I had been on well as I'm
sure you hear from every crew one of the
most exciting parts of any flight is
looking out the window and the Earth
Observation program actually gives us a
real requirement to do that so it's it's
a great program and here you see John
John and Wendy were our onboard film and
camera folks they made sure we had
plenty of film loaded that the cameras
were working great lenses were clean
windows were clean and as I was
mentioned before we took over 7,000 70
millimeter frames most of which was
Earth Observation photography and one of
the very pretty places that we flew over
many many times in the daylight on this
flight was Australia this is a view
along the western coast of Australia of
an area called Shark Bay Shark Bay is
just a beautiful area to look at from
space there are a number of rivers this
is a very arid desert region
and there are some rivers that flow into
the bay and you see a lot of sediment
produced here this work there we go
there's for example river coming out
here you see the sediment plume coming
out into the bay and all of this stuff
here is lime and algae deposits that
have built up in the bay but they have
these tidal flows going through them
that make very pretty patterns and this
is further across Australia as our orbit
carries us across Australia this is in
the central region of Australia which is
very area and dry and you see here the
Copper Canyon region Copper Creek region
and normally these lakes are these
rivers and lakes are dry a few times
every century they flood and create
these very wide floodplains and you can
see the creeks here the floodplain
covers this wide area here there have
been a number of rains recently in
Australia and you can see in the Sun
glint that a lot of the rills in this
floodplain are filled with water you can
see the Sun glint off of the water and
this lake down here is the late
colleague Yama Yama and it is in fact
you can see water filling the lake
Australia actually did have quite a bit
of water in it this time normally this
area in Australia is quite dry and
another thing we see from orbit are
weather patterns this is a a circulation
around a low-pressure area in the
southern hemisphere you can see the as
the air mass moves in toward the low
pressure area it takes on this cyclonic
circulation and you see here are various
lines of thunderstorms forming around
the low-pressure area itself this is one
of my favorite places in the whole world
spend a lot of time there back when I
was in the Navy in a previous life and
here we see Mount Pinatubo and basically
this this particular photo will be the
baseline for the coming raining season a
season in the Philippines this is the
big island of Luzon here's Manila Bay
manila's over here the Bataan Peninsula
of world war to fame and of course Mount
Pinatubo with crater lake at the top
bright blue and you can see the mud
flows that have come down Clark Air
Force Base is located right here you can
actually see the runways there and all
the mud flows that have that have
followed the eruption of Mount Pinatubo
the particular area that I was
interested in this is Subic Bay Cuba
point Naval Air Station that both Clark
and Subic Bay have been given back to
the Philippine government now but we
used to drop a lot of bombs onto targets
right out here and there's another
target right up this away it wasn't
supposed to be a target but one
particular air wearing commander decided
to make it a target one afternoon which
unfortunately it was a recreation area
for the communication station and there
were a number of families fortunately on
the other end of the island but but
obviously this is a place where a lot of
folks currently in the astronaut office
has been an awful lot of time and it's a
beautiful beautiful part of the world I
have the oceanography background on the
flight so they voted for me to discuss
this line we're actually looking at the
Ritchie archipelago which is in the
Andaman Sea that's actually between
India and Burma and the Bay of Bengal
and because of the reflection of the Sun
off the surface of the water were able
to detect many features of the ocean in
this case circulation patterns you're
going to take some of the current that's
running along the shore and as Sam
talked about weather patterns in in the
airmass the cyclonic circulation you can
also have the same features that will
develop in the ocean you'll have some
circular patterns on the ocean surface
detected by the Sun glint which we call
Eddie's other features that you can
detect in this photo this is a large
area in which are which is experiencing
a wind gust and the wind blowing over
the surface is actually forming some
linear waves that you
can actually make out and I was quite
surprised that we would be able to
detect that amount of detail from 190
miles above the surface and down here in
the bottom unfortunately I can't quite
make it out in the slide but there is a
ship that is traveling out to sea and
that was another fun thing for me to
look out the window and try and look for
ship wakes as I'm not in my former life
I'm still in the Navy and I have a lot
of friends who were out at sea right now
so I was trying to track down their
boats also as an orbiter pilot once
you've got the maneuver kicked off you
have a an opportunity to look out the
window I did that as much as I could and
this is my one claim to fame I was
looking out the window and flight day 6
I think it was and we were passing over
the Andaman Islands and lo and behold
saw this plume of smoke and realized we
were looking at volcanic activity and
this is barren island just to the east
of the the Andaman Island chain it had
an eruption back in 1991 and it had a
subsequent eruption in late 1994 and
they had been tracking that and they
were surprised to see that as is gaining
in momentum at the rate that it is in
the Smithsonian Institution was
interested in our subsequent
observations and so any opportunity we
had we grabbed the camcorder their arrow
flicks and the house of Bloods and took
lots of photos this is a picture of the
mighty Himalayas rooftop to the world
and when I was a small boy I had two
great dreams one of which was to fly in
space and the others to go climbing the
Himalayas on an expedition and I think
this is certainly the more exciting of
the expeditions but maybe someday I'll
get down there but it was amazing from a
couple hundred miles up to look down on
this particular part of the earth and
have a feeling for the great relief in
the surface of the earth there's you
know tens of thousands of feet of
difference between some of the low-lying
areas in the picture and at the top of
the mountain it's just a really neat
place to see and we saw an amazing
variety of terrain you know as Wendy was
talking about the the ocean surface with
waves being measured in
tens of feet at the most hundreds of
feet and here we have tens of thousands
of feet it's really just a beautiful
planet we also saw waves on the surface
of sand and this is in Saudi Arabia and
you can see really two prominent types
of terrain here there the the dunes both
linear dunes and somewhat circular dunes
separated by areas where you see many
many small green spots and those green
spots are not natural the way the dunes
are that are actually farmers pumping
water from under the ground up to the
surface in center-pivot irrigation and
creating very very tiny islands in the
sand of Agriculture so it's really very
striking more detailed photographs of
Oahu at least that I've ever seen from
space you can see the of course Pearl
Harbor and the International Airport and
you can also see waves breaking on the
north shore on Oahu just a wonderful
view and I'm hoping to get a little bit
closer look up after we land excuse me a
little bit later this year still up
there in spirit this is one of the views
we were treated to close to the end of
our mission we have of course the
instrument pointing system doing the
fine job it did during the whole flight
and of course the orbiter performed
beautifully our instruments operated
very well and you can see in this
photograph if I can activate the pointer
here here's the earth glow it's about 95
kilometers above the surface of the
earth oh this is a moonlit view with a
wonderful stellar background we were
just delighted to be part of this
mission very pleased that the orbiter
the instruments and the IPS performs so
beautifully ok and every every flight
needs to have their sunset photo and to
be perfectly honest with you we don't
really know if this is a sunrise or a
sunset
if they really kind of look alike and
you get 16 of them each every day and so
there were a lot of them but they're
pretty quick you gotta you gotta catch
him in a hurry but it is just dazzling
the amount of detail that she can get
looking at the Earth's atmosphere with
the Sun in the background and we were
trying to count the layers of the
atmosphere we finally figured out there
were at least 10 that you could detect
with the naked eye and and I think you
can probably see at least 10 of them
here and it's always amazed me that
these thunderstorms that usually are
only 40 or 50 thousand feet high that
you can actually see those so very
clearly with the naked eye in the
atmosphere with the Sun coming up or
going down
it's just a beautiful beautiful way and
it can actually distract you from what
you're supposed to be doing if you're
not careful it is so fantastic