this is our crew patch and here's the
patch on
the cake they make us traditionally at
our last meal on earth before we go
into space
we usually get cranked up about three
hours prior we had a really relaxed
schedule this flow uh we woke up about
nine or ten o'clock in the morning and
we're going to launch at 9 48 at night
the first picture was of me in the suit
up room here's our pilot joe edwards
payload commander bonnie dunbar who also
served as mission specialist number
three
jim reilly
mission specialist number one
mike anderson ms number two
andy thomas our long duration crew
member
salazan sharypov our russian cosmonaut
who served as one of our mission
specialists
here's the walk out to the orbiter again
we
walk out and get strapped into the
vehicle about three hours prior
angie's
yeah this is what greets us on our way
out to the pad
and it's simply spectacular
uh the main engines light about 6.6
seconds prior to liftoff the computers
check them out if they're all okay
then the solids are given the command of
fire
that was the twang
the whole ascent takes about eight and a
half minutes and the first two minutes
you're
getting most your thrust out of the two
side rocket boosters as you can see so
clearly there the vehicle shakes quite a
bit under the solids
and together the three main engines and
the two sods put out around seven
million pounds of thrust
the vehicle itself weighs about four and
a half million pounds when we leave the
pad
now here's a good picture of the sod
rockets coming off the orbiter
and again once that happens then you've
got about six more minutes uh
before you get to
orbit
there's a view inside the cockpit
all the shaking the main engines just
lit
again about six seconds prior to liftoff
then the big flash from the sod rocket
plume and
little more severe shaking comes from
the side rockets
if you look carefully at our windows
you'll see a cloud layer that we went
through
here come the clouds
and again the flash was from the
reflection off of our own rocket plume
then one more flash this is a real
attention getter when the sod rockets
come off and a lot of debris goes past
the forward windows
for the next six and a half minutes we
ride on the main engines and that's when
we get most of our orbital velocity
uh once we get in space we open up the
payload bay doors
we start turning our rocket ship into a
laboratory
this exposes the pale bay to the vacuum
of space
and also lets us glimpse
earth out the back windows of the
orbiter
back in the payload you can see the
space laboratory in the back and there
are several experiments in the payload
bay
we had 23 science and technology
experiments distributed throughout the
shuttle all operated by different
members of the crew
back here in the space hab we had both
science and technology experiments as
well as all of the cargo that would be
eventually transferred back and forth to
the mirror of course we had many mission
objectives our primary one was to
exchange the crew members uh andy thomas
and dave wolf and along with that the
cargo that you can see shown here
the space hub is a multi-uh disciplinary
objective type of pressurized cargo
holder we can perform experiments from
around the world in it in this
particular scene
i'm setting up a radiation experiment
from japan called the real-time
radiation monitor that actually looks at
the radiation that we're exposed to in
an anomaly in the earth's magnetic field
called the south atlantic anomaly this
is part of it called the detector unit
also had some biospecimens on it that
looked at the effect of radiation on
regeneration
over on the right those spheres are part
of another radiation experiment here
we're using materials of different
thicknesses to shield
from the radiation determining what the
best materials are to be used in future
space station and exploration vehicle
design
on the flight deck this digital camera
pointed out over the window and was
connected to a computer which students
from across the country commanded to to
take pictures of the earth
we also used a computer a laptop to look
at our human performance or reflexes in
space as a function of the environment
in addition to things that we looked at
in space we did look at things on the
ground with some of our palettes in this
case the mechanics of granular materials
was actually looking at what happens in
soils
in earthquake and landslide terrains
where soils can fail by modeling these
features on on orbit we are able to take
advantage of the lack of gravity which
overprints most of the forces so we're
able to look at the small forces that
work in these systems
well on flight day three
we got set up and started doing the
rendezvous the rendezvous actually began
with our
our launch and we basically chase the
the mirror around the earth till we
catch up through a series of burns
this depicts the way we rendezvous with
mirror we come up from below and we try
to position ourselves to stay within the
green corridor
this is the view from the of the orbiter
from mir
and you can see clearly some jets firing
as we close
again a view out the top window
we rendezvoused at night and this works
out to be a lot better for visibility we
use cameras and
sun glaring off parts of the mirror can
make our cameras bloom
this is dave's view
it's a real pleasure watching you guys
come out of the sky
and the actual docking itself
couldn't even feel it from inside
all right and this is the view out the
back window and as mike has said
previously uh there's no view quite like
looking at a space station and the earth
attached to the orbiter
this is a view through the hatches into
mirror and you can kind of see some
anticipation there on the part of
anatolian dave
some regret and some happiness when that
hatch opens
the hatch opening it's a russian
superstition not to shake hands across
the hatch it brings you bad luck across
the threshold so i'm going to pull the
russian commander anatoly into the space
shuttle
it's really quite emotional to
rendezvous and doc and see friends at
such a remote outpost
and that's anatoly the russian mirror
commander
here's pavel the russian board engineer
on board mir
this is the man who remembers where
everything is in the whole station
these two really know how to live in
space
anatoly is one of the most experienced
uh space travelers in the world
it's interesting anatoly was also
bonnie's uh commander when she was in
star city training
we spent about 13 months at one point in
1994
and then dave
we've got him back on american soil good
to see you commander
and the first thing we do is get
together for a meal we have something to
eat with the russians exchange a few
gifts before we get
settled down to work
here we are
in the crestal module
and you see the air hoses that provide
ventilation very important in zero
gravity not to have dead spots and we
can reroute these hoses as necessary to
change the air flow
depending where the hot and cold spots
are in the vehicle that's a yellow
oxygen tank you just saw on the left
there's a space suit on the right this
is a storage area and you can see that
we have to transfer all the 9000 items
down this corridor to get into the rest
of the mirror space station
it's not very wide there's the area i
slept in above we pull ourselves with
sets of these bungees you see that black
bungee on the top so we have prepared
this area before the shuttle docking
cleared it it's actually much more
crowded than this during actual life
storage lockers on the left panels on
the right there are systems
and storage behind all these panels
there's the treadmill above that's
really the floor you might say we were
upside down
we're approaching the dot the node the
main node to which all the modules six
main sections of the station station are
attached
now we're turning
literally turning rolling into the base
block these modules are attached so
orientation is not necessarily the same
in each module and there's andy and
we're spending our time
transferring information and making sure
he knows where things are and giving him
the tips i've learned in four and a half
months in space
and here we've turned to the parota
module it's our main laboratory it's
mostly packed up at this point i'd spent
the last two to three weeks
packing up items
so uh
final preparations there's the computer
very important as you were many purposes
for a laptop on orbit including watching
videos which i had some not much time to
watch
but they were interesting as uh they
were they impacted me strongly as an
attachment to earth somehow the movies
seemed very important
dave was there inventorying the
materials and equipment that he's taken
back to earth and here he's brought some
of the stuff to space have on the
orbiter
and we transferred approximately nine
thousand pounds of
equipment which covered all of dave's
equipment plus all the stuff andy was
going to be using for the next four
months that was approximately 1400 items
all told
in zero g you have the advantage of
being able to maneuver and carry
the items just about any way you want as
terry was showing here and one of the
people who really helped out here was
saljan sharifah
our cosmonaut who was part of our crew
his knowledge of the mirror was
invaluable on being able to transfer all
that material
and even at the height of transfer when
we had stuff temp sewed all over the
space hub we were still able to operate
as both a as a freighter and as a
laboratory
this is a
module quantum you see some of the
deliberate things this is jaradan there
are about 15 on station
that used for
latitude control this is our
pressure
pressurization unit
this is a bioreactor and many medical
discoveries will will be made in space
that can't be made on the ground here
we're growing three-dimensional cancer
tissue breast cancer in a way it can't
be grown on the ground and this is a
great tool for cancer research
well this is a microgravity laboratory
and i'm way back in the back there but
working on this technology experiment
that is going to be used for space
station looking at contaminants in our
air about 23 different compounds has a
lot of technological applications to the
ground as well
we also carried the first telemedicine
instrument instrumentation package to
orbit which allows doctors on the ground
to monitor
crew members for instance here
terry's looking at my eye he was taking
my blood pressure earlier we can send
ekgs or heart monitoring data to the
ground it's also being used as a remote
package in rural areas across the united
states
well as they say all good things have to
come to an end and after five days of
docked operations we
exchange the traditional gifts instead
of goodbyes
terry and mike here prepare to close the
hatches anatoly closes the hatch on the
mirror side
followed by our closing of the hatch on
the orbiter side
we undocked and this view is from the
payload bay from one of the payload bay
cameras you can see the two docking
adapters
separating there
and then the next scene is the view that
we had from the orbiter
through our centerline camera and
through the overhead window you can see
the docking target there that we use to
align the vehicles during docking and
during undocking
it looks nice and peaceful in those
pictures but it's a flurry of activity
on the
flight deck as we
take a look at the attitude of mir and
the attitude of the orbiter position and
adjust the relative velocity between the
vehicles
you can see the view here that the
mirror crew head is separated
as we backed away from there we moved to
a position about 240 feet below them
so that we could fly around the mirror
to do a photographic survey
taking still photography and the video
that you see here
and as beautiful as this scene is it
frankly just doesn't compare with the
view that we had there looking out the
overhead windows seeing this beautiful
spacecraft
slicing through the horizon of the earth
as we flew around it
on the right side of this picture you
can see the parodium or the spectre
module which is the module that was
damaged in the collision you can't quite
see the damage to the solar ray
in this view
but in the next view i believe you can
you can't see the soyuz spacecraft at
the bottom of the node there the black
and gray
spacecraft that's
doctor mir and used by the cosmonauts to
to rendezvous and dock and for entry
and in the case of an emergency escape
it's comforting to know it's there
as we continued our flower around
through our last 90 degrees or so this
is the picture that you would have seen
from mir had you been there with us and
we're prepared to do our separation burn
to move away from here enter a different
orbit and
continue our preparations for coming
home
in this view in the middle you can see
the in the middle of the spacecraft the
space station you can see the node
and above that is the parota module and
below that is the
crystal and the docking module in orange
down below it to the left of the node is
covant 2 and to the right of the node is
the spectre module and if you look from
left to right the first array that you
see on top there is a ray that was
damaged in the collision
and the last view here is from mir as we
burn to
enter a new orbit and you can actually
see the uh could see the lights of
cities below the earth in the picture
as big as that looks our new
international space station will be
three times as much volume inside and
increase our science productivity
after we left the mirror it was back to
science this is a canadian built
experiment called orbiter space vision
system i'm going to use this to build
the international space station actually
uses the orbiter's cameras sort of like
electronic eyes to help determine the
exact position and orientation of
grappled payloads
we carried four gas cans or gateway
specials on board
two from germany one from the university
of michigan and one from the chinese
academy of science
this is how you take your weight in
space this device takes advantage of
newton's second law of motion actually
allows an astronaut to measure his mass
it's going to be important for long
duration space flight members who want
to keep a close track of their health
and fitness you know i lost 20 pounds
we don't know why exactly
this is another experiment that we flew
up there called cebus this was a closed
aquatic ecosystem and aboard this
aquarium we had over 200 sore tail fish
variety of snails and aquatic plant life
here's salazan taking a few brief
moments to look at the earth out of one
of the many viewports
we have to use our timer wisely up there
nine days without gravity takes a toll
on your legs so it's important for us to
exercise keep in shape
the shadow provides a great platform to
view the earth here you see terry using
some of our cameras to take some
pictures of the earth
we below a lot of computers on board the
shuttle and we use them for a variety of
things here you see joe typing out an
email message to his wife back home he's
actually on the ceiling of the orbiter
while he does this
first time space fliers just cannot
resist playing with their food
you see joe using a bunch of m ms to
simulate the expansion of the universe
strawberry drink can be used to
demonstrate some pretty advanced
principles of fluid physics
you know in the absence of gravity
surface tension alone is enough to keep
a fluid in a perfect sphere
if you blow on it you can cause it to
wiggle but it still stays together
pretty nice and neatly there
of course the best part about an
experiment like this is when you're all
done you can actually drink it
but when we were finished with all the
science we put everything away and
closed up the space hab and prepared to
come home
just like when we went up there we
opened up the payload bay doors now it's
time to close the payload bay doors we
get our final good view of the earth
below and get ready to say goodbye you
know we sort of do this with mixed
emotions we're
kind of sad to go home and and leave
space we've had a really wonderful
mission had a great time up there and
really enjoyed doing what we did
but at the same time i think everyone
was sort of eager to get home and share
this experience with their family and
friends and their loved ones and really
tell them what it was like up there in
space
this is a view over my right shoulder in
the commander seat during entry you can
see the earth down below south to the
left windows
we go from 25 times the speed of sound
or about 17 500 miles an hour down to a
landing speed
of around 230 miles an hour
we usually overfly the landing runway
and then descend in a left turn down to
line up with the runway to touch down
our descent path is about six times
steeper than a commercial airliners and
again we're decelerating the entire
direction here we are in the left turn
down at the kennedy space center
on final doing about 300 knots you'll
see the heads-up view here in just a
moment yeah here's a view out the
pilot's window
and it gives you all your descent glide
path your airspeed your altitude we're
doing almost 300 knots going through 11
000 feet and you can see the runway
overlay
well this view really gives you an
appreciation of how quickly we're
descending
and about 2000 feet we pick up the nose
of the orbiter to ease the descent rate
the pilot joe put the gear down at 300
feet
it's about 15 seconds prior to touchdown
view out the back
if you look carefully you can see some
of the smoke from the tires get caught
up in the wingtip vortices
touchdown's around 210 miles an hour
shoot gets deployed at about 200.
even though the runway is over three
miles long it's nice to have something
like that drags you to bring you to a
stop
you continue to roll out and then you'll
see in jettison
shoot at about 70 miles an hour
when that hatch was open the smell of
that grass was almost overwhelming after
four and a half months of processed air
and then after 138 orbits and 3.6
million miles in a little over nine days
it would come to a wheel stop and terry
gives them the call
and that about wraps it up
you