well i'd like to begin by thanking all
of you both nasa employees and
contractors for all your work your very
hard work in making the spf 77 mission
both safe and successful
and you know when we're up on orbit
uh some 180 miles above the earth we are
continually reminded of the tremendous
teamwork that it takes to bring one of
these missions off
we're inside endeavor and it's just
humming along beautifully
and that's due in large part to the hard
work of the folks down at the cape as
well as many other centers around the
country
to turn the vehicle around to get the
engines ready to get everything ready to
fly and also to the uh
to the designers and
and contractors who built that
orbiter to operate as it's supposed to
operate
we had the experiments working with just
a few minor exceptions working very very
well and of course that's due to the
hard work of the scientists and
principal investigators all over the
country who designed their equipment to
work properly in that microgravity
environment
and then
of course we were talking to houston
and on the air-to-ground network and and
reminded of the flight control teams
that are on the ground taking care of us
looking after us the training teams that
had gotten us ready to fly
and all the people the rendezvous teams
the flight design teams that put this
incredible flight together this mixture
of
technology development and
and microgravity science
and it made us
i think i speak for the whole crew it
made us feel
very fortunate uh very proud to be able
to fly in space and
reap the benefits of all your hard work
it made us feel very very honored very
privileged to represent you in space
because in a sense
we took part of you up there with us
and we'd like to share that with you now
and show you some of our
movies and some of the sites that we saw
up on orbit and looking down on earth
before we run the movie i'd like to
introduce the the rest of the crew
to my right pilot kurt brown
mission specialist
number one andy thomas
nation specialist number two dan bursch
mission specialist number three mario
runco
and mission specialist number four mark
garneau
and if we had could have the movie
please if we could roll the movie
well we're suiting up in our launch and
entry suits getting ready for the
launch we had awakened about five hours
before launch here's kurt getting a
pressure check
dan
mark
these launch and entry suits protect us
if we should lose cabin pressure
they also form part of our survival gear
walking out of the onc building at the
cape
getting ready to get on the astro van
and go out to the
to the launch pad on my right there is
andy thomas
andy in the white room up at the 195
level
practicing a little bit of his
activities there before he gets on board
we had a beautiful morning for the 77th
launch of the space shuttle program the
first shuttle launch with a full set of
the new modified block one engines at
t-minus six and a half seconds the
manage and start sequence began and
shortly thereafter with all three
engines up to speed where
we're on our way with the srb booster
ignition
endeavor was on its 11th mission into
space
after clearing the tower we rolled to
the ascent attitude
heads down which was going to place us
in the 39 degree inclination orbit with
an altitude of about 160 nautical miles
at this point endeavour and all its
systems were consuming about 3 000
pounds of fuel and propellant per second
about the weight of your car
for a first-time flyer such as myself
the ascent was really an amazing and
wonderful experience i was on the flight
deck and i could look out the overhead
windows with a wrist mirror and i could
see the flame in the flame trench prior
to lift off i could see the flash of the
srb ignition and then feel the lurch as
we were accelerated upwards
into the flight we saw a flash out the
front windows as the srb separation
motors fired as you can see here then we
could feel the steady acceleration that
carried us on up to orbital velocity and
orbital altitude it was a wonderful ride
as soon as we got on orbit we had to
start work
first business of the day as you know is
to open the payload bay doors and expose
the radiators that uh
line the doors in order to provide
cooling for the spacecraft during its
subsequent on-orbit operations you see
the starboard door being opened and will
be followed shortly by the
port door
in the payload bay there you can see
the spartan spacecraft and the gold
covered canister which contains the
inflatable antenna which we will be
showing shortly and which we deployed on
the second day of the flight
when we first get up on orbit it is a
very busy time after the engine shut
down to configure the space the rocket
ship to be an orbital spacecraft
but the lure of the windows calls and
everybody tries to get to the window to
sneak a first view
while the flight deck crew was
configuring the ship for on orbit
operations i was down on the middeck
doing the same for the systems down
there as well as helping each crew
member unsuit and get ready for on orbit
after the post insertion phase uh andy
thomas and i were
on our way to the space hab and of
course a very exciting moment for us
here where we're opening the hatch to
the space have because this is where
we're going to spend the majority of the
next 10 days and obviously eager to see
that everything looks fine and and
certainly from our first look in there
it looked
as if space habit traveled very well
meanwhile pilot kurt brown is in the mid
deck also doing some more configuration
on orbit here you see the
ergometer which is sort of an exercise
bicycle that curt is assembling down on
the mid deck the ergometer is a very
popular device
used by all of the astronauts usually on
a daily basis to get a little bit of
exercise
so that we can strain our muscles a
little bit also on day one we had to
check out the arm because we were going
to use it later on for uh spartan deploy
and retrieve and andy thomas did all the
checkout on day one with the arm and
also a payload-based survey
after andy uh checked out the arm and
assured me that it would work i had the
good fortune to
be in charge of the deploy of the
satellite uh here you see a view of the
grapple of the satellite the end
effector of the arm coming over the
grapple pin
this is a view from the camera a and the
front looking toward the aft and it's
the same view i had because the space
have in the payload bay blocks your view
direct view of this
task so we had to use the camera what we
had to do is lift the spacecraft up to a
certain level above the payload bay and
then bring it forward in this case
forward is
toward the background of the picture
where you see the the two windows of the
cockpit where the the operation station
is
in the course of uh that evolution we
wound up flying over egypt here you see
in the background the nile river uh the
aswan dam and lake nassar
that all took place in daylight the
deploy actually took place as we went
around the dark side uh after sunset
here you see the deploy we'd have to
ungrapple the uh
put the arm in the ungrappled position
and then back it away from the
spacecraft and after backing the arm
away
john and curt then
took the orbiter and backed it away from
the satellite
the deploy itself was in the night phase
but in the next orbital sunrise sun
sensors which were positioned on the
spartan spacecraft initiated the
deployment of the inflatable antenna and
its subsequent inflation
as you can imagine this was a
particularly impressive site in fact was
spectacular seeing this from the orbiter
we were just 400 feet away looking down
upon the spartan and we saw this
sequence that you can see here
doors on the spartan carrier opened and
the antenna
mylar structure was pushed out into free
space as you can see here
and then inflation started by filling it
with nitrogen gas
and in a moment you will see one of the
legs of the antenna
fill out with
nitrogen gas a bit like water and a fire
hose there you see it
antenna structures like these have a lot
of applications they can be used for
antennas for deep space probes they
could be used for radar mapping
spacecraft of planets or earth
observations or they could be used for
sun sun shades for uh orbiting space
stations my crewmates tell me here that
the legs look a bit like the number 77
when viewed from earth
this deployment and inflation took place
as we're crossing the west coast of the
united states and you can see that in
the background as we're crossing over
california
and in a moment you will see us crossing
over the dry lakes of edwards air force
base you can see the inflation
continuing the last leg of the antenna
being deployed you can see the gyrations
that the spacecraft is going through
under that action
the antenna when it was deployed was uh
nearly 100 feet long bright silver and
nearly 50 feet in diameter and since we
were only 400 feet away from it you can
imagine that it was a really grand sight
to see from or from orbit
after a few moments the instabilities
created by the inflation settled down
transit settled out and we got
a stable antenna in orbit
this shows a view of the canopy itself
after the inflation you can see some
ripples following the inflation process
we tracked it for one orbit while it did
self measurements of its shape and then
we jettison the spartan spacecraft from
the antenna and the next frame will show
you the jettison process and i draw your
attention to the canopy disc itself
where you'll see a shock wave that
envelops the canopy as the pyros fire
and dump the spartan spacecraft there
you see it
a bit like striking a 100 foot diameter
drum
the jettison took place again as we're
tracking over the united states we
didn't retrieve the antenna itself
it subsequently re-entered the
atmosphere and burned up a couple of
days later
the following day we went back to
retrieve the
spartan itself which you can see in the
lower part of the screen there is a
small black speck and this is our
farewell view of the antenna as we're
crossing over the midwest region of the
united states
as andy said the next day we went back
to pick up spartan this is a view
looking out the overhead window you see
the spartan
at a few hundred feet in the optical
site this is now view looking out a
payload bay camera looking straight up
you see the rms the robotic arm on the
right and the spartan on the left about
a hundred feet uh mark garneau uh very
carefully getting ready to retrieve the
spartan and the grapple it
the grapple occurred at night time so it
was a bit of a challenge for us to
adjust the cameras form
fortunately dan did some adjusting on
the camera parameters and and we got a
good view of the end effector and here's
a view from an aft camera you see the
end effector of the arm moving over the
grapple fixture john did such a great
job of bringing a spartan in it was rock
solid it was a very easy job for me just
to move the end effector in
over it and and to close the snares and
then to do the rigidization you might
observe when the rigidization takes
place you're pulling in the spartan
and also the arm sort of goes limp and
it looks like everything's sort of
shaking around a little bit but
after
capturing it the spartan
folks wanted to have a look at it so
andy uh
rotated it a little bit and we pointed
it at cameras and then we had to put it
away obviously it had all the data that
the spartan
folks wanted to retrieve to analyze
after the flight so there you see the
spartan being put away it's a very busy
time retrieval you can see a lot of
people on the flight deck everybody
doing part of the job to
make sure that
we get spartan back
and just in case you'd forgotten what
mission number we were
very next day we deployed our second
satellite it's part of an experiment
called pam stew uh this small satellite
weighs about 115 pounds um it's
aerodynamically stabilized and
magnetically damped the whole idea is to
produce a a satellite that perhaps
doesn't need active stabilization
what you're looking at right now is the
heavy end of the satellite and we
deployed it readily towards the earth
and eventually that heavy end did orient
itself into the velocity vector
again it's kind of tough to concentrate
on the on the small satellite in the
center when you're passing over sites
such as this north africa the coast of
portugal and spain and the straits of
gibraltar that you see at the top
of the picture and coming into the
mediterranean sea again at the top
of the image
the
stew satellite had a series of laser
reflectors that were designed to be
tracked by a laser in the payload bay
additionally
i
many of us used a handheld laser in the
window
and this was to give us range
information into one of our relative
plots that we had on board so we could
maintain station keeping with the
stew satellite we station kept about
2000 feet behind the satellite which is
something that had never been done
before and we did that three times
kurt flew two of those rendezvous
in front of the laptops you see right
now kurt's looking at to the right hand
side you see he's looking at a
station keeping box that
and they both john kirk did a great job
of keeping us
in the station keeping you see the pam
stew now is only about 20 degrees off it
did end up with about a 20 degree cone
in addition to these rather spectacular
satellite deployment retrieve operations
we also were lucky enough to have a
space hab module
in the payload bay which provided us a
lot of room to conduct some scientific
experiments
here you see mark working on one a
crystal growth furnace that ran very
successfully throughout the flight
and dan and i working on various
experiments in the space hub we had 12
experiments in all
looking at the effect of microgravity on
physical processes materials science and
some
biological or biotechnology samples
it's a very good working environment to
have the space have module and
we enjoyed working back there some of
the experiments were mounted in the mid
deck and here you see mario activating
one of the biotechnology experiments
that we carried in the mid deck for this
flight
and of course we had our usual uh
unofficial experiments here we have the
the ball of water with a ball of air
that's been injected into it and a good
demonstration of physics one image is
inverted and the other is back upright
and
about this time dan was getting thirsty
and asked me to prepare a tropical punch
ball which
he uh very
adroitly
took care of
well as with most of our shuttle
missions our own orbit timeline was uh
very busy thanks to our flight activity
officers and however we did find some
time
to have some meals together and share
our experiences on orbit the mid deck is
quite small but on orbit
with six people you're able to take
available all space
also other activities taking care of the
morning mail from earth for upcoming
rendezvous and he's busy typing some
family mail to be sent back down to
earth at next available opportunity
and on the mid deck john is busy
exercising again we all try to stay in
good shape for an inevitable return to
earth and mario is putting away the
vacuum cleaner he's been busy doing some
scheduled maintenance that we do each
day to keep the orbiter atmosphere in
pristine shape
mar excuse me andy wasn't quite that
busy he was catching some sleep
back in the space half this is our
sleeping configuration in the sleeping
bag with a head restraint and a little
eye patch and relax with the bungees
across to give you some pressure in the
middle personal hygiene is always a
challenge in space
dan here is working with some contact
lenses
we do use contacts in space and they
work quite well well in the zero-g
environment and
and there you go
i think andy and the flight design team
got together to plan sts-77 so it would
pass very frequently over australia
shown here
uh this is a view of the northwest coast
uh sharks base specifically uh rather
spectacular just
when you look at the earth the blues and
greens are just spectacular here you see
from our low light level camera looking
down at the earth over florida
specifically the flashes you see are
lightning flashes from a line of
thunderstorms that were passing over the
state at that time
and in the center on the left there that
those lights are cities and that one
moving off the top of the screen now is
tallahassee
here you see a view a rather spectacular
one moving over mexico this is a view
looking over the rockies westward toward
the gulf of california baja california
and out in the distance the deep blue of
the pacific ocean
unfortunately all great missions have to
come to an end and that's signaled
rather dramatically by the closing of
the payload bay doors which you see here
the starboard door coming in to close
and you can see spartan not looking
quite so big in the payload bay now that
it's lost its inflatable antenna
but we proceeded through the deorbit
prep phase as it's known this was
choreographed by mario rather well and
he's taking care of people putting on
their their suits i won't describe the
feeling of sticking your head through
you probably can imagine what it's like
but obviously we have to wear these
suits and here we have our pilot kurt
brown and looking out the window to his
right you can see the orange glow that's
beginning to increase and this is an
overhead view through
an overhead window and you can see those
those lights
the light show that's going on sometimes
rather spectacular as
arcing takes place in the plasma above
you
we're now getting back into gravity as
you can see john is holding this cue
card up and it's about a half a g
in this shot we've slowed down from our
orbital speed of 17 500 miles an hour to
about 300 miles an hour
and i'm hand flying the orbiter around
the heading alignment circle
at about four to five miles above the
shuttle landing facility
it's always amazing to me that this
vehicle which has been our
on-orbit uh laboratory and
and spaceship now is configured and
comes down and lands like an airplane
with of course one big exception there
are no engines running so we're a
high-speed glider
but very very versatile
uh spacecraft and of course the only one
in the world that will that can come
back and land on a prepared runway
touching down here a little over 200
miles an hour
we'll deploy the drag chute to help us
slow down
our flight had covered about 4.1 million
miles
we're uh trying to file for frequent
flyer miles
and we've been around the earth 160
times the total
flight duration was a little over 10
days
and as you can see it was beautiful
weather at the cape on time launch
on time landing at first attempt
as we roll out
to about 60 miles an hour jettison the
drag chute
and a very happy crew after the flight
well we've got a few uh slides that we'd
like to show you
of uh some of the earth views that
we weren't we're not able to capture for
you on the film i'd just like to make a
special thanks to glenn peterson from
the photo lab who put this
video together for us a lot of
long hours and thank you very much for
that effort
our mission patch
and a unique view of the orbiter rollout
uh as it's rolling out to the cape about
two weeks before the launch
dramatic view of the sunrise launch
launched at 6 30 in the morning just as
the sun was coming up
one of my favorite photos
and a
a rather dramatic earth shot here of the
some of the views that we saw there with
the spartan on the
on the arm
this is a you've seen the
inflatable antenna but we wanted to show
you this slide because it's over the
grand canyon and if you don't notice
through the middle of the
picture and just slightly to the left
behind the
inflatable antennas the grand canyon
very beautiful in this sunrise shot
and then later on in that same sequence
we were passing over the united states
during this after the deploy or after
the inflation of the antenna this is the
norfolk virginia area chesapeake bay on
the right running up to the top of the
photograph
and some of that area the rappahannock
river at the top
york river james river behind the
antenna
um although i don't actually sound it of
course i am american but i was raised in
australia and this flight was a splendid
opportunity to see the country where i
grew up and this is a view of the
south coast of southern australia from
orbit and we had some spectacular places
over australia every morning the crew
would alert me when we were coming by so
i could get some pictures and this is
the area of south australia where i grew
up
flying over australia is interesting
because if you ever visit australia and
go to the outback it seems very desolate
and
not much topography but when you see it
from orbit it's really very impressive
as the next slide will show
this is a view of an area in the
northern territory of australia uh
called the mcdonnell rangers in that
wavy form that you see across the center
part of the slide but what is unique
here is if you look in the upper part of
the slide you can see a feature which is
known as goss's bluff but it's actually
an impact crater from an ancient uh
meteor impact um this crate is thought
to be about 140 million years old uh and
it's about 22 kilometers in diameter so
it's a very large feature
um
in the countryside but as you can see
there is a lot of texture and coloring
in the outback of australia
the next slide shows the countryside we
saw following australia which was new
zealand and one of the amazing things is
you go from this desolate region of
australia to this lush region of new
zealand and you're struck by the amazing
uh geography of new zealand with its uh
jagged mountains and snow-covered peaks
and very rough terrain and this is a
volcano in new zealand
called mount rajpiu and this actually is
an active volcano it last erupted
sometime last year with some loss of
life actually
and it's still
issuing steam and mud as an active
volcanic site
it was very impressive to see these
kinds of volcanoes from orbit
as andy mentioned the the volcanoes do
catch your eye and here is one shown
over uh the high altiplano of the of the
northern part of chile and in south
america and the center uh central part
of the screen toward the top there what
caught our eye was the steam plume
emanating from the volcano you see here
and interestingly enough this volcano
was photographed by the crew of sts-55
back in april of 1993
and at that time the volcano had erupted
and put out a large ash cloud as well as
a lava flow and then the lava flow flows
north here toward the top of the picture
and then it turns left and what's
interesting in in just the three years
time since the eruption unlike the
ancient uh crater that andy just showed
you in in australia that that has not
changed its character very much because
of the very dry climate there
this climate being very wet the the gray
feature of the lava flow is uh all but
disappeared and now it's uh covered over
and appears to take on the hue of the
surrounding countryside as
as erosion takes place
and uh we had a quick shot of this view
in the film this is a view looking
westward across the western
mediterranean sea uh the alboran sea
being the western extent of the
mediterranean the strait of gibraltar uh
the rock of gibraltar is actually off
the peninsula that emanates from the
right side from the coast of spain there
uh sticking out into the water to the
left
the rock of gibraltar and that part of
gibraltar is a
territory of great britain
morocco is to the left and the atlantic
ocean is out in the background of the
picture toward the top rather
spectacular view and and sometimes we
like to look in great detail as you've
seen in the last couple of photographs
and and sometimes just the panoramas
take your breath away
and hear another panorama although
there's a great bit of detail in here
this is of the sinai and israel uh you
can see uh the the dead sea rift valley
here the dead sea being uh in the
northern part of
the photograph the dead sea had opened
had a is about 1300 feet below sea level
and it had there was a passage that had
opened to the sea many millions of years
ago that passage is closed up and the
water is now uh remaining there and that
is the cause for the high uh saline
content as much of it has eroded and is
now fed very uh uh
meagerly by uh streams and underground
springs the rift valley extends
southward to the gulf of akaba here and
interestingly enough if you can make it
out
to the left center of the picture
there's a diagonal line very faintly
showing across here which is actually
the southern border of israel and even
though this is a political boundary we
can see it and and the differentiation
there is between the land use patterns
the irrigation that goes on to the north
of that border and and the lack of
irrigation or the natural desert state
to the south of that border
and
very close to the last slide that mario
just described is another one that uh
shows a lot of egypt uh it doesn't
matter what inclination you're on you're
generally always going to go over this
part of the world and it's always going
to have clear weather so you get a good
view of it and it's particularly
attractive because of the the history of
the location and also because the
contrast between the very green triangle
which is at the top center which
represents the nile delta and you can
see it threading down towards the bottom
left more like a ribbon as it works its
way into the very dry part of northern
africa
at the apex of the green triangle just a
little bit to the right is cairo and a
little bit
to its left
is the location where the pyramids of
egypt are
located as well you can see over on the
right side the famous gulf of suez which
up in the right hand corner empties into
the mediterranean at port saeed and the
lake that's halfway down the
suez canal great bitter lake and finally
going further down emptying into the
gulf of suez always a very striking part
of the world to fly over next slide
please
of course
one of the most
startling set of islands that we have on
our planet are the galapagos islands
which are off the west coast of south
america
and
we were fortunate in being able to see
them several times in a cloud-free
situation
the biggest island is quite striking
because it does look like a horse's head
and
it if you went from the bottom of its
body towards the top you'd be pointing
in the northerly direction and of course
this is a
a set of islands that became famous
because charles darwin spent quite a bit
of time there in the the 19th century uh
looking at the unique animal and bird
life on these islands in it and it was
this animal life that helped him to uh
to uh
develop his uh theories on the evolution
of the species and and natural selection
and and even today uh
there are still unique life
life forms on this island on these
islands next slide please
well this one is a little bit difficult
to see but it's very important to me
because as a canadian i was not going to
be allowed to go back up to canada
unless i showed everybody that i'd seen
some of canada during my mission
if you look up in the top left corner
you can actually see
some of lake ontario and i have to admit
i did not see this view and i'm very
grateful to
my colleague dan who took this picture
because he's also from new york and i'll
let him describe the other part of it
it wasn't until we were in space that i
realized how close uh the areas that
were our home towns were where we grew
up because
where mark grew up on the northern part
of this slide or the top part of this
slide i grew up in the south part you
see these are some of the river valleys
down to the bottom this is actually the
susquehanna river right here river
valley towards the
bottom center and left of the of the
photo um my hometown is just in in the
lower uh left center of the picture near
binghamton new york actually vestal new
york and and uh fortunately this was an
early morning uh pass it's why it's a
little bit a bit hazy and how the fog
still
lingers in the river valleys the
chenango
river right there next slide
seemed like every time a few hours after
we woke up we always had a west coast
pass very close to
san francisco uh you see the orbiter
tail and just to the left of the tail
you can see
uh san francisco bay
uh golden gate bridge it can't quite
make it out in the photo here just to
the right of the tail is monterey bay if
anybody's ever been in that part of
california
and uh
actually you can see some of the the
surface waves uh
approaching
the uh
the mouth of the san francisco bay
next slide
this is uh town of el paso el paso
happens to be one of the oldest set
settlements in north america it was
first settled in 1598
got its name from el paso del norte from
the spanish uh it was a pass through the
the rocky mountains this part of the
mountains extension the rocky mountains
is called the franklin mountains
the river itself if you've
if you follow kind of like the dark area
and avoiding the mountains itself but
the dark area comes down here and that's
the rio grande
we fly out to el paso a lot it's we
routinely stop there when we fly out to
the west coast the pilots fly there all
the time because they use it kind of as
a fueling stop where they pick up the
sta and then they fly to the north north
is is to the upper right part of the
photo and where they fly towards new
mexico
in white sands and and do a lot of their
training runs in the sta
there next slide
this is a picture a little bit closer to
home
towards the bottom you see the coast
this is uh galveston island right in the
middle
i believe this was about in the middle
of the flight you see some of the puffy
clouds which and i i remember this day i
called down to mcc and i said looks like
a clear day but the only word that came
back would says
bill mcarthur said yeah but it's hot
so i think that's when you all were
having some 90-plus degree weather at
that time while we're in orbit you can
see this is a dyke that extends out
and also here's the
the causeway that goes over to galveston
island itself just in the lower
center part of the picture next slide
this slide is a
an example one of the techniques that we
use in earth ops observations
we call it sun glint we use the
reflection of the sun off the surface of
water bodies on the earth to gather more
detail with that glint we're able to see
the activities
and the condition of the surface of the
water
this particular
shot is taken of the west coast of
florida
of the florida peninsula i should say
the little island you see dead center of
the photo is
sanibel island and fort myers is just to
the north or just above that on the
coast and in naples florida is on the
far right
of the coast but with this sun glint on
the surface of water we're able to see
quite a bit activity in this shot this
occurred on sunday afternoon
and you can see all the pleasure boaters
out the little v wakes which is actually
the
real wake behind the boat we're able to
gather a lot of information about
activities and conditions of the water
from shots like this
one of our most favorite
shots here is i'm sure everyone
recognizes
is the
our launch or departure site from from
earth
almost dead center of the photo you can
see the shuttle landing facility the
little straight line about a 15 000 foot
long runway
if you look a little bit to the right of
that along the coast of
the land there the atlantic you can see
the pad bravo and alpha pad 39 that we
departed from the northernmost pad
and you can see the qualler tracks that
lead out to the pad from the vertical
assembly building
if you look a little bit south of that
the little
cape that sticks out cape canaveral you
can see all the launch pads that have
played such an important part of our
history in the space program
during the early days of
mercury gemini and apollo
you can see the town of titusville and
also within the bodies of water about
center of the photo you can actually see
the intercoastal waterway that the ships
use to get up and down the atlantic
coast this is a good shot of landing uh
after 10 days of a very successful and a
very exciting mission we obviously have
to come back to earth
and we landed on runway 33 at the
kennedy space center the weather was
very nice early morning right after
sunrise type landing and and john did an
excellent job bringing us all home
safely and we're very happy and sad
happy to be back home to our loved ones
but very sad to have completed
our short stay in space looking forward
to our next trip
here's another shot of the crew out in
front of the orbiter about an hour after
landing
and getting the traditional thumbs up
again happy to
be back safely after an amazing
and very successful 10 days on orbit
our closing slide is the
sunset shot of looking across
and in uh in closing i would like to
again thank all of you for
uh coming here today and uh
for the part that you played your in
this mission your your dedication your
hard work
and i'd ask you to keep it up because uh
sts 77 is is now history we've got
sts-78 on the launch pad
ready to go
and uh next year we look forward to
launching the first
component of the international space
station so we've got a lot going on in
the future and i would ask you all to
keep up the good work all the great work
that you put in for sts 77 keep it up we
need your help thank you
you