good afternoon and welcome to the sts 57
post flight press conference this
afternoon the crew is with us to talk
about the eureka retrieve
and the first flight of the space hab
experiments module
plus other experiments on board the
flight
and to my right is the crew commander
colonel
air force colonel ronald j graby and i'd
like to introduce him and turn the
program over to him ron
thanks very much barbara we're delighted
that you all be here with us
so we can share the highlights of the
flight it was a great flight and we're
certainly interested in telling you all
about it
let me introduce the rest of the crew to
my right is brian duffy brian was making
his
second flight on sts-57 he was our pilot
he was the member of the three-man
three-person
orbiter crew along with myself and the
flight engineer
brian also orchestrated the eva for us
he
was the prime choreographer of the
rendezvous flight plan as well
and he participated in a number of the
space hub experiments
to brian's right is david lowe david was
the payload commander that means that on
this flight he had prime responsibility
for integrating the spacehab module
as being the first flight of spacehab
that took quite a bit of his time
he was also one of our two eva
crewmembers
in addition to that he was the prime
operator for the rms during the eureka
retrieve so as you can see he had a full
plate on this mission as well
to david's right is nancy sherlock nancy
was our
ms2 our flight engineer she was the
third member of the orbiter
team for ascent and entry along with
brian and myself
nancy was the prime rms operator during
the eva so it was a very busy day for
her
and nancy had a great deal of
participation in the spacehead
experiments as well on nancy's right
is jeff weisoff jeff was also making his
first flight along with nancy
uh jeff was the rendezvous mission
specialist for this flight along with
brian and myself he was responsible for
ensuring that the rendezvous profile was
was properly executed
and he had some particular
responsibilities regarding that as we
closed in
to eureka in the final stages jeff was
the second member of the eva team along
with david
jeff had a great deal of interaction
with the space have experiments and he
had a
couple of other experiments that
required his attention as well including
shoot and fair which we'll talk about
a little bit later to jeff's right is
janice boss
janice always gets to get introduced
last but that's by no means least she's
the person who had more than anyone else
to do with the successful
implementation of the space app
experiment procedures on this flight she
really did the lion's share of the work
back in spacehab
in addition to that we integrated her
into the rendezvous profile and janus
was the backup
rms operator during the eva so as you
can see it was a full flight
and and everyone on the crew had a great
deal going on during the the course of
the ten day mission
what we'd like to do with you today is
first show you a film that'll cover the
highlights or some of the highlights
of the sts-57 flight and then after that
we'll
switch medium to uh slides and at the
end of that we'll have about a 20-minute
question answer period
so if we could roll the movie place
this is our crew patch i'm sure it's
familiar to most of you
here we are the night before launch we
actually had one dry run or dress
rehearsal the day prior to launch the
weather wasn't quite good enough
but undaunted we set out the next day
this is a beautiful sight here we are in
the suit-up room on the morning of
launch here i am adjusting my
microphones
here's brian
next g david everyone you can see is is
really anxious to go
here's nancy you see a little hello here
to uh to her daughter
here's jeff very high spirits
as is janice very eager to get on with
it
once our suits were all checked out and
confirmed that they were all operational
we headed out
to the pad this is always a fun time you
go out you know you're
always going to be greeted by a lot of
folks at the end
at the end of the ramp there people that
you're friends with
a few hours later we get when it's time
to go to work the uh of course the main
engines start
and the the boosters light and the
sts-57 is on its way
the roll program for us this time was
nice and smooth we had a cloud that was
nearby you'll see us going uh
going right by it
went right by the edge of it ron and i
had been sitting there looking
i had it for quite a while it was it had
just
moved left and right over the pad that
was not a factor
shortly after takeoff you can see the
shock wave here on the vehicle
janice and i uh rode on the mid deck and
the two events you really feel other
than other than the initial takeoff is
when the srvs separate after about two
minutes
uh we can feel and hear the sound of
that separation
and then we go for another six and a
half minutes on the main engines
and one of my real great pleasures was
my first sight of the earth when i got
to go up to the flight deck to
participate in the external tank dto
photography
i handed david a camcorder and he took
these great pictures of the tank
floating away and i was using an f4 to
take stills
shortly after we arrive on orbit we
begin configuring the orbit
orbiter for orbit operations this is me
opening up the payload bay doors and
brian is taking film footage of the door
opening which we then later downlinked
and for me personally as those doors
open and i got my first glimpse of the
earth from 250 miles was just absolutely
spectacular
this is a view of the eureka satellite
as we're closing in on flight day four
it's actually sped up a little bit but
it gives you an idea of what eureka
looked to us
uh actually it's coming down almost
immediately overhead janice's vantage
point as she was back in the space hub
here we are on the flight deck and you
can see there's a lot of activity going
on in this time frame this is all just
prior to grapple with eureka
as ron mentioned while the other five
members of the crew were up on the
flight deck i was using the space have
overhead window
to look through a night vision system
and the laser ranger you see me taking
out there
to help support the rendezvous with
range and rage rate data
this is the view that i had of eureka as
ron was doing the fly around to get the
grapple fixture
poised for david's activity you can see
david here
looking at the monitors to make sure
everything's ready for him to grab a
hold of the reek and put it back in the
bay
as ron is doing the fly around
and this is the view again out of the
the d camera you can see the
rms coming in in the right hand portion
of your picture there
the payload was very very stable that's
a tribute to both ron's flying
capabilities and and also just how
stable the payload was it was rock solid
there
which is from from an rms point of view
that's a great sight to see
coming in here this is just prior to
grapple in fact i think uh grapple's
about right there
and now it's being uh the end effector
the snares are actually pulling
the payload into the end effector there
this is a
an a camera view right now um this i
don't know how many minutes later it was
we were already over in the
post-capture position um and so
the the payload is pretty stable there
what you can see uh in the background
there we're just coming across the west
coast united states
um you can see the la basin down there
with the with the clouds right there
and coming up into view right now about
middle of the picture is the
the high desert area of california and
edwards air force base is just up beyond
that
you can see the san joaquin valley up
above that too
one of the small problems that we had
during the retrieval was that
the antennas on eureka failed to latch
so we took the opportunity to post
grapple to send down some film footage
of that
so the payload operations center over in
germany could take a look at that
and then once everyone was satisfied we
had some good views we began birthing
operations and deactivation of eureka
and this is david operating the robotic
arm manipulating
eureka down into the birth position and
to latch it into the payload bay and we
then began
preparations for the next day's eva
which was to begin with an eba to latch
those antennas
the birthing sequence itself went very
very smoothly
the next morning as nancy mentioned we
had the plan dva that was flight day
five
and we started out making sure that the
suits were all ready
once we got the the crews into the suits
we actually
brought them into the uh into the mid
deck area from out of the airlock
where they could practice some
translation techniques and also
determine the way in which they wanted
to carry their tools
out for the work that they knew they had
ahead of them
here we see david and jeff you can see
just what tight quarters it is in the
airlock
when the four hour pre-breathe was up
david opened the hatch on the tunnel
adapter
and the thermal cover here you can see
him making his initial egress from the
tunnel adapter
and then there's a shot from inside the
airlock where you can see us positioning
ourselves
to go out
this is uh myself positioning to go out
dave's now outside of the hatch
and here i am following him out he's in
the lower left hand corner of the
picture now
first task that we had to do was to
basically set up the work site so that
we could go
work on the eureka antennas and jeff
installed a pfr attached device on the
arm and a safety tether and then i came
on over and attached the portable foot
restraint
right there that i was going to step in
and then nancy was going to drive me
around on the end of the arm there
all of that is now attached to the end
of the arm to the end effector there and
i'm just about ready to ingress the
portable foot restraint
you can see the arm you're going to see
that move a little bit
putting putting some some inputs into
the arm you can see it
it probably moved up to a foot or so and
i think nancy got some some brake slip
messages when both jeff and i ingressed
the portable foot restraint
and then from there nancy uh drove me on
over and positioned me in front of the
eureka the latching into the antennas
uh while eureka was birthed in the
payload bay was one contingency that we
really hadn't trained to
so overnight the rms and eva folks
worked
very hard to send us some good
procedures that they uplinked in the
morning
and that involved manipulating david
over in the middle of the payload bay
and putting him right down between the
shoot payload and the eureka payload to
push on the antenna
we first went to the first antenna which
is the four one here i am
manipulating him back to the aft antenna
and he's going to push
on that antenna while the payload
operations center commanded the latch
jeff was absolutely invaluable to us you
see him over on the side
he was our eyes out in the payload bay
to determine any clearances
the eureka portion of the eva took just
a little bit less than two hours and
from that point on we pretty much went
into the
what we had planned as far as our dto
was and
that involved three major objectives the
first of which was
what we called mass handling and in this
case i was on the end of the arm and i
was
carrying jeff and we were simulating uh
jeff was just being basically a
500-pound blivet
and i was using jeff to simulate
maneuvering around a large
scientific instrument that we might have
to do on future missions
yeah he was he acted as blithed very
well
um while we were doing this nancy would
um
maneuver me forward and after the
payload bay as well as um up and down
out of the payload bay
and we did this both in vernier and
course rates on the rms and uh
results that i'd like to report are that
uh the the arm is a a very stable
platform
driving around in either vernier or
course rates um was a
fairly simple thing to do as long as you
move slowly as long as the inputs i made
into
the mass were slow inputs it was
very very controllable you can see here
me
rolling jeff around just a little bit
from there we went on and we did some
fine alignment and again we found the
same results there as long as you move
slowly on fine alignment you can
align things very precisely
after the fine alignment task dave and i
switched places on the arm and
i was going to do the third task which
was the high torque task
the idea behind this was uh being held
in the foot restraint on the arm to go
down and
use a torque recorder to torque on some
bolts which is what i'm doing here that
were held
a bulk bolt that was held on the sill
and the idea there was to look at the
reaction forces and how the arm moved as
we
as we put those inputs into the bowl and
that
turned out to work very easily very much
like our wet f training and uh
seemed to be a very easy operation to do
while you're held in the foot restraint
the other major payload we had on board
was space hab this was the first flight
of space hub it's a commercial module
connected to the crew compartment by a
tunnel
there's a hatch at either end of the
tunnel for asset and entry and you see
david here opening up the hatch on
flight day one
so we can get space have ready for
experiment operations
it flew uphill powered because some of
the experiments required temperature
control and monitoring
but there were a number of systems that
had to be started up on that first day
to get ready for use
you see david here on the forward wall
of space hab where the space hub
subsystems
equipment mostly was getting things
ready to start operations
this is the tunnel going down the tunnel
that was connecting the two
parts of the space hub and the orbiter
this is early on the flight it gives you
a nice view of the aft
wall of space have before we've put out
all our experiment procedures and gotten
a little more clutter than
as you'll see in later views this is
brian checking out some orbiter
equipment that we had stowed back there
that actually is the laser ranger that
we used on the eureka retrieve day
and you can see how the aft wall is
covered with lockers very similar to the
mid deck lockers
space head was envisioned as kind of an
extension of the mid deck to give you
access for lots of experiments doing
early design work
this is the port wall which we found
that to be a very convenient place to
store procedures in the computer disk
you can see me taking some computers out
there
as well as nancy working on an
experiment on the forward wall
with two people back there on the corner
you can see there's plenty of space in
georgia to get around and space hab
was a very nice area to work it was nice
and bright and had a lot of easy access
for getting into the experiments
the starboard wall spacep has the
capability of putting
racks in you see jeff here working at
the rack which had a workbench on it and
some foot restraints it was very handy
for performing experiments and you saw
me working on a
computer we also had some experiments in
the mid deck this is ron working on one
of our protein crystal growth
experiments adjusting the focus for some
photo tv we were taking of it
we flew a lot of computers on this
flight and this is an experiment
tools and diagnostic system which is
basically checking to make sure you can
do some ifm on
on baseline equipment this is a liquid
encapsulated melt zone
and by encapsulating it in a liquid they
were hoping to grow
very pure crystals
and this is jeff also operating an
experiment called cgba
which involved mixing the fluids
together and then you'll see him shake
the fluids here in a second and these
were mostly all biological samples that
he was activating
one of the experiments i ran from the
middick was called scg for solution
crystal growth
and we're stirring some solutions here
to as a precursor to another experiment
that
grew some ceramic crystals uh here's
just a quick shot of
one of the things i did one day was to
solder a circuit board
the idea being to look into
how feasible it is to do on orbit repair
of electronic
components another thing we were doing
back in the space hab
was we were actually looking at an
experiment that was
looking at how feasible it is to grow
plants in space which is something that
we figure we'll have to do in the long
term and that's what nancy was doing
here
looks like she got going in one
direction and figured out it was easier
to just spin all the way around
another experiment that we carried
called uh shoot which was super fluid
helium on orbit transfer was operated
from a pgsc
on the flight deck janice and i worked
with that pgsc and brian and
ron coordinated the burns here you can
see the cryogenic doers for the
superfluid helium on the mpass structure
the idea behind this experiment is to
study the transfer of cryogenic fluid
for future servicing of satellites
the other secondary that we carried on
the mid deck called fair
is a fluid transfer experiment between
two tanks to study a future design of
propellant tanks this particular one is
very similar to the design that's
planned to be flown on the cassini probe
that will go to saturn
at the end of the decade
we had a lot of training pre-flight and
earth observations because of course
looking out the window
is a very interesting view of the earth
you can see me taking some pictures
there with our 70 millimeter
camera which gives you very high detail
for looking at the earth
this is a view of the sinai peninsula
you can see the
gulf of aqaba there leading down into
the red sea
this is further down under the horn of
africa the somalia area
at the southeast corner of the red sea
and this is not africa this is the uh
the west coast of australia there you
can see uh
ecsmith bay which the the big bay that
you see along to the right there
and uh sharks bay is just underneath the
tail of the orbiter there
and uh one of the other experiments that
we did was called dso 618
writing a cycle ergometer it was one of
the other experiments that we were
trying to
use to increase your orthostatic
tolerance when you come back and land on
earth
we were extremely busy on this flight
and as you can see jeff didn't take time
to eat so
janice felt compelled to feed him
and just like every crew we felt
obligated to play with our food however
in this case we decided to take this
opportunity to bombard jeff
behind the camera there with eminem
one of the other things that we flew was
a bear for the drug abuse resistance
program a dare bear
and his little t-shirt says dare to keep
kids off drugs and he got pretty good at
translating across a mid-deck
as you're getting ready to come home for
entry you check out some of the systems
on board that you haven't been using in
a while
or in the entry configuration making
sure everything's ready this is a
checking
rcs system you can see brian and and ron
moving around of course actually it's
the orbiter moving around as the jets
fire
and you can see how they are enough of
an input that there's a significant
movement on the part of the orbiter with
the wave off days we had we got a little
more chance to look out the windows you
see the terminator here
as everybody had told us first time
flyers sunrises and sunsets are gorgeous
as you heard we had a lot of practice at
deorbit prep and this is one of the
scenes on the flight deck as we prepare
to come in
in the lessons david did a lot of this
camcorder footage and brian did from the
flight deck so you can kind of see
the aft part of the fight deck there and
everybody's seated and ready to come in
once we were decided to get serious
about this entry stuff
well we finally did the view of a burn
and we're in the dark for some of the
high mock
times and up in mach 24 range and here
you see the plasma
which surrounds the vehicle during the
entry up there we flew into the daylight
around mach 23 so we didn't get to see
that all the way down
we also we got to florida short of nine
in the morning so we probably didn't
wake everybody up but we think we uh
we announced our arrival with the sonic
booms
here we are with a view of the orbiter
on the final approach we landed at ksc
runway 3-3 it was a great treat for us
to be able to come back to ksc you
always like to bring the orbiter back to
the place that you launched from
here's a view taken from the sta the
shuttle training aircraft
as we approach the runway the wheels are
now down
just crossing the underrun crossing the
threshold to the runway
now we transition to a view looking down
the runway
there's touchdown if you look for them a
brief flash here at the tail
there it is that's the drag chute
beginning its deployment sequence
you can see the drag shoot coming out on
the side view there's the shuttle
training aircraft
flying with us in the vertical assembly
building going by in the background
there's nosegear touchdown and now a
picture looking head-on at the orbiter
from the other end of the runway
there's drag shoot jettison you can see
it comes almost straight down
we didn't have much of a crosswind that
day at all it was almost an ideal
condition for a landing
you