it's uh indeed a pleasure and a
privilege for the crew to be back here
to share with all of you our experience
in space for 15 days
iml 2 was a record breaking flight we
stayed up longer than any other shuttle
and
i think we did a lot of good science
while we were up there i tried to stress
while we were in space the importance of
international microgravity lab too
that
this was setting the groundwork for
future operations aboard international
space station and these guys just did an
absolutely super job i
i'll share with you a little bit of the
the emotion after landing
when we got to wheels stop
i
the mission had finally come to an end
and i was just
so proud and so pleased with these guys
you just couldn't believe the joy that i
felt at wheelstop after such a
successful mission
and i hated to give up the orbiter when
it came time for scotty horowitz one of
the astronaut support personnel to come
inside and he said it's okay bob you got
it all safe now you can leave and
after 15 days i was kind of attached to
colombia it was just a super spaceship
but
i've i've said all along in a lot of
briefings that people just see the
astronaut office
you know when we fly in space we're a
small part of it unfortunately we're a
very visible part
but it is a team effort and this was
your space flight
you guys just did an absolutely super
job preparing us preparing the payloads
training us making sure that everything
operated correctly while we were on
orbit providing the support we needed to
have such a successful mission so uh all
these medals that we got today they're
special for us but you should also take
pride in their being awarded to us
because it was through your efforts that
we were able to receive them so we'd
like to thank all of you very much for
your hard work and we're just really
happy to be here with you and share some
of these pictures
i guess we're on nasa's select now so
before we get going i'd like to
just reintroduce the uh the crew here
for everybody and talk a little bit
about them i i can take
a chance to do that
on my right uh my right hand man here my
pilot jim halsell this was jim's first
flight
jim had flown sr-71s in the air force
before he came to nasa as an astronaut
so he was used to going mach
3 3 and a half but
we got him going a little faster and he
thought it was pretty special
no stranger to y'all is rick of
course rick worked here at jsc before he
was selected to be an astronaut with
myself in 1985 and
we were pretty proud and pleased to have
two of the 85 class as the commander and
payload commander on this flight
rick just i can't say enough good things
about the job he did as payload
commander he the payload crew was
assigned to this flight two years
ahead of time
and the travel and the work that these
guys put in preparing these better than
80 experiments from 15 countries around
the world and six different space
agencies
was phenomenal and when
the orbiter crew got assigned uh all we
had to do was get up to speed a little
bit on what was going to be done on the
job and show them that we knew how to
fly the orbiter but these guys were
ready to go and
it was an awful lot of hard work and
they did a super job
it was worth it
carl walsh next to rick was ms2
this was carl's second flight
you probably remember he flew on sts-51
got to do a spacewalk and took those
fantastic imax pictures that are part of
destiny in space
this time we didn't let him do anything
so exotic we locked him up in a space
lab for 15 days but
he did get to be the commander on the
blue shift for the few hours that i
didn't sleep each night and
he just did a super job keeping the
orbiter running so these guys could do
great science
i'd like to thank bob for sleeping
dr leroy ciao uh on the blue team back
in the lab and i'm going to talk about
leroy and don together because in my
mind i just can't separate them
dr don thomas uh these guys just
unbelievable the amount of work they
were doing they were bouncing from one
experiment to another back there the
folks at huntsville just couldn't wear
them down and
i'm really proud of the work that they
put forth getting the science done back
in the lab they just did a super job
getting everything that was asked of
them completed and
i think the folks at huntsville were
surprised they could get so much out of
a crew
and finally last but certainly not least
dr chiaki mukai
chiaki our payload specialist from nasda
was an alternate payload specialist on
space lab j
and
she was well familiar with most of the
experiments we were flying and was
prepared to fly in space
and
the only problem we had with shiaki was
trying to slow her down she has got one
speed
and
it just goes all the time and we tried
to tell her that in microgravity you
don't need to go that fast you can slow
down a little bit and get things done
i think we're making a little bit of a
impact toward the end of the flight but
not much she just
extremely enthusiastic hard worker and
did a super job
one person we don't have with us today
is our alternate payload specialist
jean-jacques favier and jean-jacques was
an extreme help
preparing for the flight in helping
ensure that we got all the science done
working at the payload operations center
in marshall
so we're extremely pleased to be here
and without any more words i'd like to
share some of the pictures we're going
to start out with some 70 millimeter
slides if we can have the slides first
and the lights down
we tried to pick
slides i'm gonna give you a little tour
of the earth we're gonna start out down
at the galveston island and work our way
around
the slides that we picked show changes
in the earth
that are significant from previous
shuttle missions or else pictures that
maybe hadn't been documented before on
shuttle photography
of course no slide briefing is complete
without a picture of our launch and
first time flyers chime in was it worth
all the work
i'd say it was well worth it
yes well worth it it was a right now uh
my heart at this point the picture this
picture was taken i think my heart is uh
somewhere in my throat i couldn't
believe the tremendous acceleration
once we got on orbit we opened up the
payload bay doors and
this is a view that the guys in the blue
team and well the red team back in the
lab also didn't get to see a whole lot
it was a space lab from the outside they
saw the inside of it
and it's a fantastic laboratory
it's set up just like a lab on earth
only it's got an environment that you
just can't get anywhere else
we were in a microgravity environment in
a very fine microgravity environment for
15 days
14 days worth of science and
the only thing that we need to do is do
it for longer and
build space station international space
station so that
we can have this environment and
continue on the work that we've started
here
i i will point out that i had four hair
balls on board for those that don't know
what a hair ball is that's a an
astronaut that was selected in 1990 and
i think this is the most that they ever
had congregated at one time in
microgravity and in spite of having four
hair balls the orbiter was pretty clean
and there wasn't a whole lot of lint in
the filters it was the most most that
they had allowed ever
we were also extremely privileged to be
airborne during the 25th anniversary of
the
apollo 11 lunar landing
and we couldn't help but uh draw on the
similarities between the missions in
some ways or
well first off we were extremely proud
to be aboard colombia not only the
the
maiden space shuttle but also the
namesake of the command module that
carried
those guys to the moon 25 years ago we
also launched from the same launch pad
aboard the same mobile launch platform
as apollo 11
so that was kind of special
and we were trading stories down on the
mid deck one night and
we thought it was pretty neat that we
had a
an apollo uh capcom dr story musgrave
down on console uh talking to us
everybody asked us well where were you
when apollo 11 launched or when those
guys landed on the moon and we all had
our stories and we said uh well story
where were you and story was in the uh
at the at the launch at kennedy when
they launched and in the moker when they
landed so he had some good stories for
us too
but it it certainly was neat to uh to
look at the moon up there and think
about
where we've been and know that we're
going to build international space
station and
lay the groundwork for future
exploration beyond our planet
if you look real close there right in
the center that dark area on the moon
that's a sea of tranquility where apollo
11 landed
jim you want to talk about
making sure we had good pictures
one of the unavoidable duties of the
pilot is to be the janitor i think
myself and carl agree that we we got
good at taking care of all the ship
shaped kind of duties that you need to
do to stay in space for 14 days
comfortably and here you see a picture
of me cleaning the windows and i do do
windows
it actually is more important than just
from a cleanliness point of view we try
to take a lot of 70 millimeter
photography both color and color ir and
to get the best possible photo it's
important to clean the to clean the
windows two or even three times a day
because as you can imagine as the lab
guys get a little bit of free time
they're all up at the window plastering
their noses right up to the window
so occasionally like a good housewife or
a house person i would
admonish them to try to keep their noses
off the window
and it really is important there's
nothing more frustrating when you get
back and you've taken all these
beautiful pictures of the earth and you
find out that they're a little soft
they're not quite in focus and it's not
because you did anything wrong with the
cameras because the windows weren't
clean so we wanted to make sure we had
clean windows all the time
it was a tremendous opportunity to view
the earth on blue shift we saw a lot of
north africa
and we saw a lot of australia we flew
over india but i can't tell you whether
i saw in or
whether there was really india beneath
us because of these this huge monsoon
cloud sort of hung over india for two
weeks and they were just getting a
tremendous amount of rain there
if you look real close you'll notice
galveston island and bolivar peninsula
clear lake area is underneath that one
cloud in the picture
but uh it really was a nice shot at
galveston island when we went over this
day if you
when you look really close it's kind of
hard to see in the lighting here but you
can actually see the the moody center in
the in the beaches in this one area
right off in there
coming down into
south america this was just a gorgeous
shot looking
down the andes
you can see the west coast of south
america on the
right of the screen there
the andes with the dry lakes and then
off that hazy area that you see
on the far left of the screen there is
over into the
amazon
this is the rio grande river in
bolivia and what you see there is not
smoke that is the wind coming down and
actually picking up
dust from the river and blowing it away
this is one of they've seen this before
on shuttle flights this is one of the
better pictures of it this
airborne dust particulate when it gets
airborne is actually a nutrient for the
rain forest as it gets carried off into
the
rain forest
here we are over uh
central south america you can see some
of the the biomass burning getting ready
for a new planting season
again
cultivation in the rain forest area in
central south america
it doesn't show up quite as clearly on
this screen but this is just a gorgeous
shot of rio de janeiro as we come to the
east coast of
south america
you can see the runway on the island
there it was just exceptionally a clear
day a lot of the time
south america was in the clouds but
toward the end of the mission the clouds
cleared out and we just had some
gorgeous viewing
much in the news lately
haiti on the island of hispaniola
and this is port-au-prince
here's another phenomenon that
they had not documented with photography
they knew it was happening the smoke
what looks like smoke at the top of the
picture there you can see the light
coral area that's actually the bahamas
were just east of florida and the cloud
that you see is actually dust it's
particulate that has blown from africa
across the atlantic ocean
and
this again is a particulate matter
that's in the air that gets blown into
south america and is actually a nutrient
that feeds the rainforest sir
this is in
saudi arabia and you can see
center point irrigation where they're
actually bringing up deep water from an
aquifer and irrigating the land you'll
notice some of the areas
bright green where it's being irrigated
others where it's not in the desert is
actually reclaiming some of these center
point irrigation systems
this has been well documented in a lot
of shuttle federal actually back to 1965
during gemini this is a lake chad
what you're seeing here in the center of
the picture the the water area is
approximately 15 to 20 percent
the size of the lake that was there in
1965 it's something that nasa's been
tracking for a long time
uh this is uh lake turkana on the uh
kenya ethiopian border uh where the
river omo is uh building a delta into
the lake
this lake
the delta that you see in the north
there you can see the mud the silt being
dumped in there but the actual delt up
at the top is about 400 percent larger
than it was first documented back during
the gemini program
it doesn't show up real well here but in
the water you see some
pinkish swirls
this is the red sea and this is a
plankton bloom in the red sea
and it's something that they'd not seen
before in the red sea
carl mentioned
india being under water a lot or under
cloud cover due to the monsoon season
this is the brahmaputra river
just coming out of the
himalayas you can see the mountains the
dark green area in the
upper right corner of the picture and
what is normally a an extremely braided
river you can see all the the small
little river uh roulettes or however you
want to say it but
uh you notice it's getting much wider as
it fills with rain it just becomes a
huge almost a moving lake as opposed to
a river
this is a melville island off the west
coast of australia
we saw
australia quite a bit uh and you could
see quite a bit of agricultural burning
there uh the fires
this is in the uh philippine sea uh jim
took this picture you want to talk about
sun glen
yeah help me out if i can't remember i
took so many pictures over the part of
the flight but i sung blind is a very
interesting phenomenon where if you
catch the angle just right reflecting
back up towards you you can get some
really interesting photos of what's
happening not only at the surface of the
water but also to a certain depth
beneath it and what you see here is the
surface of the ocean the star the the
black splotches are
shadows from clouds so disregard that
but what's really interesting to the
oceanographers
and if i can figure out how to operate
this
okay
uh this area right here and bob you help
me out with a scientific name of that
well large internal waves uh they're
called sulois bengakis but
it's just the wave interaction that
actually looks like a deep trough there
but actually it you know if you were
down on the surface of the ocean it
would look level to you so from space
we can see
formations in the water that can't be
seen on the surface of the ocean and the
oceanographers are trying to understand
better how the air masses and the water
currents all interact together to
develop the world's
world's climates and this these this
kind of photography really helps them
out
uh this
for a couple of reasons we picked this
slide uh up at the terminator well first
off we're crossing from uh nighttime
into daylight and you can actually see
the uh
terminator right across there but right
there that's a huge typhoon that was up
near uh the philippines in okinawa while
we were flying the eye of it is actually
right about in there i got a hurricane
coming up that was even more well
developed but very interesting to track
the storms from up there and i thought
just a beautiful
the earth limb with the the terminator
they're not often seen
jim took this shot and if you could see
this in better detail this is just a a
phenomenal shot of uh hawaii
he was looking at the
the wake of the island as the ocean
currents come by up here and
it's cut off a little bit here on the
size of the screen but if you look at
the detail the field patterns and
so you got to orient myself pearl harbor
in the airfields it's just it's really a
fantastic shot
we're going to show you more this is
hurricane amelia and jim's going to talk
about it in our video
extremely well developed hurricane
the eye here and the size of it wins
over 150 miles an hour
jim took just a tremendous shot here
if i had to pick out one highlight of
the whole mission from looking out the
window this would be it i was minding my
own business exercising on the ergometer
and i see this come within the field of
view so automatically i uh stop
exercising pick up the camera and start
shooting and i got lucky in getting this
picture and i think it actually conveys
the depth that we're dealing with here
i'm just guessing but i guess the top of
the hurricane must have been somewhere
at 40 or 50 000 feet
and the the side walls of the eye of the
hurricane look perfectly
vertical and you could see straight down
and the blue that you see in the center
there is the pacific ocean in the eye of
the hurricane
it was such a powerful force of nature i
actually felt that i could see the
swirling in close to the eye the
the wind speeds were so high it was a
phenomenal side
uh with that we'd like to go to our
crew movie and share a little bit of the
motion with you here
these are color bars
well here we are uh getting suited up
ready to go fly
uh
i mean look all the way there carl
waving at everybody thumbs up he's ready
to go leroy's ready to go
this was really a gentlemanly flight for
me i'm used to getting up at two in the
morning and getting suited up
the red team got to sleep in until 7 30
or something we had virtually no sleep
shift at all
we were ready to go walking out in
daylight instead of the middle of the
night with lights shining
uh
bringing up the end here the guys that
like cleveland an awful lot
certainly for any first time pilot
ascent is the highlight of an aviation
career here we see the the three main
engines igniting and from the inside you
can see the vibration that we feel as
the main engines light but before
liftoff
now we'll go back to the outside you'll
see the solid rocket boosters ignite the
explosive bolts fire and we are on our
way
there's no doubt at this point in time
that we're going uh we're headed out of
town i think the next shot will be from
the inside of the vehicle and you'll get
another shot of when the srbs ignite and
then once again
liftoff
immediately after this the row program
starts we can see the horizon out the
side windows twisting beneath us and as
we point the nose gently down toward the
horizon
head out over the atlantic ocean to the
east
certainly first stage is a tremendous
acceleration tremendous vibration to
exciting right at about right now i was
able to sneak a peek out my side window
and already i was able to see the
the sky darkened to a deep purple
during a summer afternoon launch in
florida high humidity so you can see the
shock waves the condensation from the
shock waves as we go supersonic coming
off the nose of the vehicle and off the
external tank
in a moment you're going to see an
outstanding view
of a
something we've never really seen before
and that's a condensation shock right
there
just shortly after that we have the
solid rocket boosters complete their two
minutes of thrusting
and they separate from the vehicle you
can see the large plume of smoke and
this is what it looked like from the
inside you can see the the separation
motors fire across the windscreen and
the orange plume come across the windows
from that point in time for the
remainder of the flight those windows
were covered with a residue that kind of
hampered our photography efforts from
those front windows
this is the thumbs up there's bob giving
an enthusiastic thumbs up shortly after
solid rocket booster ignition and we are
continuing on up to mikko that 17 500
miles per hour and just saw carl
recognize the fact that we went through
50 miles nautical miles in altitude here
is miko and you can see how we move
forward in our seats as the three times
our normal weight is relaxed off of us
here's a view looking out
toward the external tank as it is
separated from the vehicle there's
another picture i believe taken by don
or leroy and that's true speed we're
down at uh we're coasting uphill from 70
miles or altitude at this point and you
can see how fast the world is going by
once we got on orbit uh we opened up the
payload bay doors activated the lab and
uh went to work for 14 days of uh
exciting microgravity experiments here i
am headed back through the tunnel to see
how the guys are doing back there on a
turnover between shifts
most of the time we had two people back
in the lab but
twice a day they traded notes to find
out how the lab was operating and what
was going on
the the laboratory is just
it's a fantastic piece of equipment and
it sure certainly increases the amount
of working volume that you have
this was my first flight with a space
lab and besides the fact that it's the
world's finest microgravity laboratory
it was a unique place to work because
it's it's
much bigger than just the inside of the
flight deck in the mid deck you can see
all four of us are back here that's
because we're in the middle of a
handover
we're all handing over the notes from
the previous shift to the next shift so
we could keep up continuous ops we
worked steady in there in there
two shifts a day for the 14 days or so
that we had the lab operating we had
about 80 experiments
several which were life sciences two of
the life sciences were looking at us as
the subjects
chiaki is in the lower body negative
pressure device which is managed by
folks right here at jsc
and i was the operator on this
particular experiment then later it'd be
my turn to get into the lower body
negative pressure device we also flew a
suite of experiments by a canadian team
from vancouver
spinal changes in microgravity which was
looking at what happens to your body and
particularly what happens to your spinal
column it's well known that we get a
little bit taller in space and of course
that means you're pulling on the spinal
cord
and this was another experiment that was
looking at changes in our ability to
perform
cognitive and motor tasks it was called
paws the performance assessment
workstation and it's uh somewhat like a
video game but it wasn't fun
this is the biorack facility uh this has
flown on previous missions and it's got
a centrifuge there to spin some samples
up to create a 1g condition we had other
samples under 0g and we had many plant
and small animal experiments in each of
these small
containers that you see me inserting in
there so we could we had a good 1g and
0g comparison between these two in space
here i'm doing the micro uh looking at
the microscope we have a lot of
biotechnological experiment like cell
culture and protein crystal growth and
free flow electrophoresis
well the fruit flies that you see here i
watched them every day over the course
of the flight and the ones on the left
are microgravity as don mentioned we had
the ability to have some in zero g and
some in one g tell you what the ones in
zero g quickly learned not to try and
fly here comes a german experiment uh
using very special facility it's a slow
rotating facility it's a jellyfish to
find out it's gravitational sense
so we have a lot of life science
experiment we had more than 82
experiments
and this is a the gold fish and some of
the goldfish doesn't have inner ear
the organ so
this experiment to find out
how fish react to the microgravity and
also how fish
orient themselves and here there's other
different kind of fish called medaka
killfish and the researchers are pretty
much excited to find out
their mating behavior and also the egg
development and you can see small belly
fishes these eggs are laid on earth and
hatched on space and this is
and they are developed very well and
also this is a nude experiment and we
have such a very special uh facility
called aquatic animal holding facility
and made by japanese space agency and
this is a nude and uh
and these are the baby news and
researchers are pretty much interested
in the inner ear organ which
uh usually necessary for
the earth condition
so we have such a very a lot of life
science experiment on board
the other half of our experiments focus
on material science where we were
looking at crystal growth and some fluid
science i'm in front of one of the
german facilities here called tempus
which was an electromagnetic levitating
furnace we had small samples about the
size of a marble that you see here
heating up and beginning to glow as it's
melting you can see it's oscillating a
little bit and its surface is
you can see the oscillation pattern
there and it's a containerless facility
where we can heat samples up and melt
them and re-solidify them without ever
touching the walls
this is another fluids experiment called
the critical point facility and with
this we're studying a phase transition
between liquid and gas and this facility
operated almost 24 hours a day non-stop
for the entire
14-day mission of the science back in
the lab
they even let the commander back in the
lab once in a while to help
this is uh one of our fluids experiments
called the bubble drop particle unit and
here we have a heater near the center of
this test cell where we're forming
bubbles just heating up the element
there and forming bubbles like you would
on your oven at home but we can do that
in a controlled manner and look how they
move under different temperature
gradients and how they coalesce how the
bubbles form together here so you'll see
a bunch of bubbles just forming and
grouping together under microgravity
conditions
this is a french electrophoresis unit
it's one of two electrophoresis units we
flew and we were trying to separate
different proteins
and you can see up there where i'm
pointing up to the control and display
screen and if you look real close you
can see uh two peaks this is the
electrophoresis cell where the sample
was actually injected and the
electrophoretic separation performed
well as you know we did a lot of repair
in flight i'm spinning this bag around
trying to get the air bubbles out the
big problem with a couple of the units
we worked on was that bubbles weren't
places they shouldn't be
so jim and i worked together to try and
purge the japanese electrophoresis unit
of the air
so our first job was to get purge while
it didn't have air bubbles in it so
we're very carefully squeezing some out
of one bag sucking it into a syringe
this is the electrophoresis unit which
wasn't really designed to be worked on
in space but in fact we took it out a
total of six times as we tried to purge
all the air bubbles out of it
this is one of the medical dsos or
experiments that we performed on the
flight this particular one i'm doing has
to do with uh seeing how the eye and the
head track targets in the absence of
using your inner ear
i'm wearing a laser on my head and
you'll see a red dot on the middeck
lockers there as i kind of move it
between targets and try to acquire them
and sensitive electrodes will measure
the electrical impulses to see how my
eyes moved and an accelerometer also on
the helmet unit there will measure the
accelerations
uh during our flight we exercised quite
a bit and we were very interested in how
the exercise perturbed the microgravity
environment and so we carried the
microgravity measuring device which was
built right right here at johnson space
center and we were able to look at the
vibration modes of the cycle
ergometer jim's heading on down from the
flight deck down to the mid deck we
showed you the science on board now
we're going to show you a little bit
about living in space for a long period
of time
of course the mid decks are
our living quarters it's where we sleep
and eat you can see our sleep station
here
yeah they really woke me up for this
picture yeah this wasn't staged we got
one a gym that's a little staged but we
really woke rick up this day
i quickly caught on however
every morning like i do at home i wanted
to read the morning news so this is how
we get our morning news in space it
comes out of the tips machine fantastic
machine it really worked great but you
can see the kind of updates we got a
little bit of that is news and the rest
is changes to what we were going to do
each day
well
you enjoy your food up there
it's good food
this was carl's one task on board and
i've never seen anybody do it better was
keep track of all our consumables and
he's
making sure everything's right
we carried the
rinseless body baths and the shampoo to
keep ourselves clean and they worked
surprisingly well we were able to uh to
clean ourselves up real well it's the
same same baths and shampoos that
hospitals use in their intensive care
units
nobody wants to live with somebody that
hasn't cleaned up in 15 days
i mentioned exercise here's a shot of me
exercising
we had some very strong
cords that isolated the ergometer from
the floor to help damp oscillations i
had a great opportunity to talk with the
japanese student uh using amateur
the ham radio
and it was fantastic
and they are the people uh in my
hometown were so excited
this shows uh padam operations where we
have an opportunity to send messages
home as you can imagine being away from
home for 15 days you get a little
homesick just like going to summer camp
and that was always a great thing to get
messages from home
we were fortunate enough to be airborne
for the anniversary of apollo 11's
launch and
and the first steps of humans on the
moon and so we
had a presentation at
the time of those first steps there
jim mentioned in that still photo the
importance of keeping the
windows clean
jim got so carried away he was keeping
everything really clean
but it really was important the cape
gave us a fantastic vehicle and we
wanted to deliver it back to them as
clean as they gave it to us
and as i said before we couldn't have
got all those great pictures without
having clean windows to shoot them out
of
here's uh jim getting ready to take some
of those pictures while i was talking on
cyrex in the background
i'd like to give a tribute to all of our
trainers in this case the photography
training people were able to take
somebody who had never really taken
pictures before and we were able to
return something useful back to the
experimenters here
this is australia
shark bay
and then
looking
toward the upper
upper left portion of the screen the
whole uh
south the west coast of australia
they're down to perth
just a beautiful view and this is the
coburg peninsula in the northern
territories of australia there's a
wildlife preserve attached to it and
just a tremendous view
australia sort of looks like mars it has
a reddish tinge to it as you fly over it
here's another shot this time from the
video camera that bob set up of
hurricane amelia
i told you how i was exercising on the
ergometer and this came into my the
field of view at that point in time bob
was talking to a school in sarax and i
think by the expression of my face he
knew something very special was
happening outside so while he was
simultaneously talking on the ham radio
he fired up the the video camera and we
were able to get these shots
it really was an awesome hurricane
this is a very special shot i really
enjoy this one this we're going over
central south america and you're going
to see some very special things happen
up here you're going to see
thunderstorms lightning at night these
are city lights now i want you to look
right here and you're going to see
something
right there was a
a meteorite entering the earth's
atmosphere you're going to see another
one right up here right there
and we got the opportunity all of us
during the course of the flight to just
happen to be looking out the window at
the right time to see a meteor rearing
entering the earth's atmosphere from
above and i think that's a very special
memory
here's our tribute to the people of the
cape uh months before we launched they
told us to the second one we were going
to launch they gave us a perfect vehicle
and right here you can see the cape that
should be the shuttle landing runway
right there the vertical assembly
building right there the crawl way going
out to the two pads our pad being that
one right there
i was amazed at the level of detail you
could see just with the human eye
unfortunately all good space flights
have to come to an end and here jim and
i are finally getting to do some pilot
stuff we're doing the flight control
system checkout the day before our first
uh entry attempt
jim is using uh pilot here it's a little
portable computer we had on board
actually a workstation that actually has
actual orbiter software in it uh that he
can practice landings on
unfortunately this is as close as jim
got to landing the space shuttle
but when you're up there for a long
period of time it gives you a chance to
look at the displays and get your
mindset on landing again what you need
to look at and what you need to prepare
for for a landing so this was jim's one
view of landing and we're going to give
you another one here pretty soon
and this is uh the end of the space lab
portion of the flight i'm shutting down
the uh although we've done and i spent
the day shutting the facilities down and
now we're just turning out the last bits
of light and
putting up closing up the hatch that
closing out the tunnel part that goes
out the space lab
this is just after entry interface you
can see the pink glow out the windows
rick said wave adam he's got a handheld
camera the flashing that you see is from
the energized plasma and the overhead
windows the light reflecting off our
suits and helmets and rick's got the
camera and that's what it looked like
out the overhead window it's just
awesome that's not the tail of the
orbiter
just the whole reentry was at night and
it was just a bright pink glow you can't
quite see it here but there's little
sparks flying by as pieces of the
orbiter are heating up and coming off
little small pieces
here very small
really small
here we are coming on
turning onto the heading alignment cone
getting ready to land at kennedy and the
space shuttle is just an absolutely
fantastic machine it it launches like a
rocket flies like a spaceship you can
turn it into a space station and it
flies like a super airplane here's a
little subsonic arrow maneuver we did a
little flight test to document the
flying qualities of the vehicle get some
aerodynamic data you can see the vab out
the window there
transitioning from the 18 degree outer
glide slope at 300 knots to our
one and a half degree inner glide slope
we were trying to touch down at 200
knots about 2 900 feet down the runway
here we are pulling out about uh 1800
feet above the ground in uh don't miss
this this is my big moment
300 feet above the ground jim that was
it jim lowered the gear
jim did a great job on that that's
career limiting if uh if he doesn't get
those down i'm gonna recommend he gets
to fly again
and here we are coming in uh touching
down at runway 33 at ksc
and you're going to see the shoot come
out here in a minute
bob said he was supposed touched out at
200 it was what 199.2 yeah yeah i missed
by a little less than a knot
the drag shoot is just an extremely
effective deceleration device it really
slows the vehicle down i i did hardly
any braking at all
jim deployed it at 178 knots we
de-rotated at 175 and then at 60 knots
he jettisoned it and here's a nice wheel
stop shop shot columbia's home and it
was the end of an extremely rewarding
and successful mission