I
good morning and welcome to the Johnson
Space Center thank you for joining us
here this morning for the joint
post-fight press conference for the STS
71 and mere 18 crew members now to start
the conference and to introduce the rest
of the crew members is the commander of
STS 71 Navy captain robert goot gibson
hoot Thank You Arlene and welcome to the
post-fight press conference for mere 18
and sto 71 it was a bit of a complex
mission and so I'm sure the debriefing
will be done in a little bit of a
complex way but first let me start off
and introduce the the two crews that we
have here in Houston today seated
immediately to my right our mission
pilot for SDS 71 Charlie Precourt next
to Charlie our payload commander and
mission specialists number one dr. Ellen
Baker next to Ellen our flight engineer
mission specialist number two dr. Greg
Harbaugh seated next to Greg our mission
specialist number three and the mere 18
backup crew member dr. Bonnie Dunbar and
then we have the crew of mere 18
starting with the board engineer mr.
guna district olive the commander of
mere 18 Vladimir does Europe and our
very own cosmonaut researcher aboard
Mary Jane dr. norm thagard and if we
could start right in with the slides the
SDS 71 slides we had a crew patch that
was designed by famous aviation artist
Bob McCall designed the the crew emblem
for the apollo-soyuz docking which of
course took place back in 1975 so it was
a real pleasure for us to have Bob
involved once again with the design of
ours we lift it off three months and
about two weeks after the launch of mere
18 and we're finally on our way after a
lot of a lot of preparations we of
course launched into a ground-up
rendezvous aimed at intercepting and
Rhonda booing with the mirror so we did
a number of rendezvous burns with the
OMB's engines to put us on the right
flight path to to intercept and actually
doc and this is one of those ohms burns
performed in the dark and I think this
was our major height adjust burn that we
did on the first day to raise our orbit
up very close to the mirror here's a
photo of anatolian Nick and a total of
the commander of course of mere 19 who's
now on board and Nick Nikolai boo Darin
the the four Russians actually all four
of them I can't take a for finer
gentleman to represent Russia as well as
for finer friends that we've come to
know them as will really be looking
forward to getting back together with
Anatolian Nick after their landing in
kazakhstan and back in Russia when we
can visit them after their missions over
the in the next month this is a shot of
the activity during rendezvous from the
flight deck you can see Greg working
away with the handheld laser taking
range and range rate marks on the mirror
and in the photo in the lower right-hand
corner operating a hand or laptop
computer to control the trajectory
control system lasers that were also
used from the payload Bay to get that
kind of information for the rendezvous
Greg and Charlie and hoot we're
operating the a flight deck I was up in
the front with the VHF radio and and my
job was to conduct communications with a
mirror we were able to make contact on
time and then to exchange various calls
on distance range rate and one
particularly important call at 55 feet
when I called out our range at 55 feet
so that the mere could desaturate their
gyre dines and then disable their
attitude control we had a very
spectacular view of the MIR space
station as we were closing in gradually
decreasing the range on flight day three
leading into the rendezvous that's an
early shot of it here's a little bit
later shot after the mirror has
maneuvered to attitude and feathered the
solar arrays getting ready for us to
dock
this kind of an interesting view and the
lower viewport there is Volodya taking
that video of us approaching and then
the smaller upper window is norm with
another camera I guess it was around
this point where who was thinking about
maybe negotiating a price for the final
closure and then this is a view from the
app flight deck showing the hard mate
what it looked like cut the window and
this picture doesn't do it justice in
the sense that that whole big space
station was just right outside that
window it was real close by you may have
seen and we're about to show a video in
just a minute that will show a lot of
this we got to recreate an event that
took place 20 years ago almost of the
day the handshake between Tom Stafford
and Alexei Leonov in the public soyuz
docking and of course we were able to
recreate this on flight day 3 of STS 71
the earlier slide should be a view out
the eft window this one gets a little
bit of three out of the four windows the
mirror of course is huge and just filled
up their view as we looked at the flight
deck so we took a couple different
camera angles with a few different
lenses but I'll tell you none of them
really can convey what it did look like
you could just catch little clips of it
with the camera we also said about
trying to get some different views of
the orbiter than what you normally see
you this is a picture that i took out of
the k'vin to mod you lata that large
viewport that veligit been taking the
movies from earlier and this view is
over the Crimea and the Dnieper River is
very clearly evident there
and then here's a shot of hoot that we
took also from the same window nice
close-up he could see he's got a big
smile on his face sir this is a view of
the orbiter tale of course in the top of
the pictures starburst view of the Sun
gleaming through some of the equipment
you see the dark docking targets they're
located on the MIR structure and this is
from a port in the crystal module as you
transfer immediately leaving the ods or
the orbiter docking system headed into
the mirror as you float by there you
have this porthole that gives you this
view and every time you float by there
you think yourself you just got to
capture this photo some Helen it the
colors are so brilliant and the size of
the vehicle is so impressive sitting
there right next to you that it's a
really inspiring view and on the inside
coming from where I took the picture
forward towards the module the base
block part of the module this is in the
crystal and it gives you a great
perspective on how Titus squeeze it was
to get through from the orbiter into the
crystal and a lot of the equipment
that's located in the modules as we head
towards the base block well immediately
after opening the hatch we exchanged
positions and various modules this
happens to be after one of the
ceremonies in which we presented Anatoly
with his houston's rockets shared it was
a little hard for him to I think to
remove it this is in the base block and
it's in front of the table I had to
mention that Anatoly became a fan in
Russia one Sunday there was a houston
rockets game broadcast over to russia
they won by one point we were in class
the next day and all he could talk about
was that game so he's a real fan
and of course that immediately after
opening the hatch it was like coming to
the home of a bold friends because the
mere 18 crew invited us into the base
block and I got to say hi to the people
we'd watch launched in march and it was
a real nice experience to be greeted by
a Gennady well we had a lot to do of
course once the ships were connected and
part of their main objective was to
gather some physiologic data on norm and
naughty and Volodya after their three
months stay and so we got busy in the
lab right away in fact we got the lab up
and running prior to docking and the day
after docking got busy with a lot of our
activities in this photo i'm working
with gennady on the barrel experiment
will be a lot of discussion has been a
lot of discussion about the various
physiological experiments that we've
conducted but the baroreceptors of the
neck are partially responsible for
making sure that you keep blood in your
head when you stand up very rapidly or
for people who come back from long space
flights are able to walk around it's
involved in cardiovascular system it's
an experiment that's flown before on
space and life science of space lab
flights and gennady what Gennady was not
only a real trouper when it came to
taking the measurements he was really an
active participant and making sure we
got good data as well and there was a
bit of transition for the mere 18 crew
to transition to be STS 71 crew members
so I had to go rope the loggia into
getting into the lab occasionally he had
a lot to do in the mirror to to get
ready for his departure and we of course
had a lot going on in the spacelab
getting
for our return one of our big activities
during the duckface for those of us who
were not doctors or scientists was
transferring equipment and here I'm
filling a water tank we actually
transferred roughly two and a half times
the amount of water that was originally
targeted and we transferred from the
orbiter to mirror I think 250 pieces of
hardware and returned 200 pieces of
hardware with a success rate of about
ninety nine percent there were just a
couple of things that evidently were not
accounted for who actually came back
with a couple things we didn't plan on
coming back for silly we did better than
one hundred percent all told this is a
photo taken from inside the Soyuz
descent module while we were doing a
communications check out the day prior
done docking I had the distinct
privilege of being able to climb in
there with anatolian Nick well we did
this check out and snapped this photo
while we were talking through the real a
communication system with Houston and
with Moscow was a real enchanted moment
for me and here's Nick with his two
buddies getting ready for the the next
day's activities they were doing suit
checkouts of course to prepare for the
Soyuz on Duncan one of the cornerstones
of this program from the very start with
adaptability and flexibility both on the
ground and in flight and this is the
small update to the undock procedure we
received the morning of undocking
and here's a shot this was taken of
Anatole and Nikolai just before closing
the hatch prior to prior to undocking
the night before undocking and this was
our our last chance to shake their hands
and tell them farewell until we get to
see them again when they come back this
is a shot of the Soyuz after and had
undocked and prior to our undocking
actually during it Nikolai was up in a
window in the front called the blister
taking pictures of video of our
undocking we could see the whole soy use
out the commander's window on the port
side of the shuttle was a busy time the
docking undocking and fly around time we
were lucky that we could get the camera
out the window every now and then we
intended to take a lot more pictures
than we did but it was just so busy on
the flight deck doing the real work that
we didn't have the opportunities that we
thought we would prior to flight and as
we left the Soyuz you can see it in the
horizon eventually receded into darkness
and became a star which we saw for
several days following that
and of course as Bonnie said we once the
fly around was done in the separation
was done it sort of disappeared into the
distance and we could kick catch a
glimpse of it on some of the night
passes it was hard saying goodbye to our
friends and we do look forward to seeing
them again we did get a few shots not
many of for Earth Observation this shot
actually it's the coast of California
gives a look at the weather stopping at
the coast and some of the topography and
in some of the fault lines in that area
we shot a couple of interesting photos
like like Bonnie said we didn't get a
lot of time to look at the earth but
this was one of the shots and once in a
while over cold water over the ocean
you'll have cold water clouds above them
and when a ship goes through underneath
it will precipitate a change in the
clouds and you're able to see a ship
wake reflected in the actual clouds up
over the water and that's what we see in
this picture here had some nice passes
over South America this is a pass over
the Andes Mountains
my crewmates reluctantly reluctantly
allowed me to put this photo in here
since i'm from this area it's one of the
more recognizable features of land on
the planet at least for those who are
from there you can see clearly Boston
Cape Cod at the bottom of the picture
Martha's Vineyard my hometown is up
under the clouds that are in the upper
left corner there Hudson Massachusetts
thanks to my crewmates were let me share
that with you it's always cloudy person
as you probably saw we came back and
landed at the end of a of a 10-day
mission and for the first time in space
we had together a 10-person crew and so
we were able to make one of the largest
starburst pictures on orbit that anyone
has ever has ever been able to put
together we had an 11th person taking
the photo for us here with that why
don't we move right into the video we've
put together a film clip of the
activities of SDS 71 and again the the
crew emblem designed by by Bob McCall
the breakfast in this case was a lunch
and of course the crew members again the
pilot Charlie Precourt Nikolai butiran
who's aboard the MIR still the mere 19
commander anatoly solovyev boot gibson
of course our payload commander Ellen
Baker
and dr. Bonnie Dunbar and Greg Harbaugh
we walked out at early afternoon this
was a whole lot nicer day to be walking
out to the orbiter than the previous
attempt had been when they had to
actually put the crew van under the
awning because the rain was coming down
too hard and so we had to make a quick
ingress into the end of the vehicle
there's a good shot of hoot when we
finally got to go for launch two minutes
visors down pseudo to on and have a good
flight we were off and running most
folks maybe don't realize that
rendezvous started right here we had a
five minute launch window and we had to
wait for the moment in time when Mears
orbit was right directly overhead of us
and we could insert ourselves into the
same plane that they were in and we hit
that right on time on this particular
day the weather cooperated and it was a
magnificent launch Anatoly and Nick were
very impressed with the vehicle and we
were off and running with a great start
here ok once we got on orbit we had an
awful lot of work to do to get ready for
the rendezvous we opened the payload bay
doors you can see the docking mechanism
sitting there with the six black dots on
the forward end of it we had just a
tremendous amount of activity at the end
of flight day one and then all a flight
day to getting our computers ready to go
getting a rendezvous tools set up we had
one or two unexpected events including
the little work that had to be done on
the handheld laser but we got ready to
go on time we flew an intercept on the
mirror that had us pick up the radius
vector or essentially come in right
underneath the mirror and fly up below
them all the way into docking this was a
pretty intensive period as Bonnie and
Greg have alluded to on the flight deck
with the the three of us flying and
everyone else helping as we come in this
is a shot that you saw earlier from the
from the mirror of the orbiter over the
Red Sea we had a very narrow corridor
that we had
intercept and fly up so as not to
disturb any of the solar arrays on the
mirror with our plumes and as we got
into about 500 feet or so the mirror
started its maneuver to the final
attitude for docking and as it did that
we were able to start locking on with
the TCS laser system because on the end
of the docking module where the
reflectors at that system could lock
onto so I'm coordinating that activity
here with the ground controllers and
you'll see a shot here briefly of that
final maneuver you can see the docking
node in the center they're starting to
come more in alignment with our axis and
you can also see them the relative
motion of the solar arrays in this
particular view and we were pretty much
at the end of this event when the mirror
was in attitude we were ready to go on
with it been diluted it was a very busy
time we had to again several calls going
back and forth between the mirin and the
shuttle is docking occurred we brought a
little bit of video from the american
crew on that sequence as you may recall
we moved into 30 feet and held for five
minutes waiting for the timing to get
exactly right it was our objective in
the course of the rendezvous not to have
to fire any breaking pulses towards the
mirror and we were able to work the the
timeliness the closure rates and the
distance is such that that worked out
just fine we're able to utilize natural
orbital breaking to bring us all the way
into docking and never did have to fire
a breaking pulse all the way in this is
the actual moment of docking as seen
from the aft flight deck from the one of
the payload bay cameras looking out and
this is a shot that came down to the
ground that showed both the centerline
camera view as well as the view out the
out the a flight deck as you probably
recall we had a very tight window on the
actual ducking well this was the hard
part we had six people with cameras on
one side of the hatch and two people
with cameras on the other side of the
hatch and of course everybody wanted to
get a good picture
we had a variety of different cameras
stills videos imax you name it we had it
we didn't want to miss the hatch opening
in the handshake and you'll see we're
flashing lights in each other's faces
here but it was an awfully exciting time
and we just couldn't wait to get that
hatch open and and greet our Comment we
had been training and preparing for this
moment for so long over the preceding
year working together with the mere 18
in the mere 19 crews when the actual
moment came we found ourselves looking
around and saying are we really here and
if we really have we really made this
work
we had just a very brief greeting in a
very brief ceremony if you will at the
actual hatch and of course this was the
first time that we had seen norm and
Volusia and gennady i guess in the
previous what eight months i guess it
had been since we had seen and the
course going a little that a plan we had
we had a plan prior to this and first
thing we did was take that plan i'm toss
it and we all lined up and and went into
the mirror at that time all all ten of
us i guess we're in there at that time
and i kept the camera running as we went
through the crystal module and arrived
in the base block where we did our
welcoming ceremony i think
so there we were all accumulating
ourselves in the base block or the core
module obviously elated really happy to
see Gennady and Volodya and norm and
they were I think happy to see us I
think it's the first time there have
been ten human beings in one spacecraft
and to commemorate the occasion Bonnie
put a STS 71 crew patch up in one of
their come pieces of equipment the
following day then we congregated back
in the space lab and we performed a gift
exchange and we also made it a model of
the MIR space station with the Space
Shuttle little bit of drift
there's also a tour of the space shuttle
that was conducted for Russian audiences
norm did this and in these sequences
he's taking Gennady around the shuttle
and he later narrate this for a Russian
audience first in the commander's seat
and now back in the a flight deck where
charlie is showing him the controls for
the docking adaptor once we got all the
PA o events out of the way we could get
to work on some of the science
objectives of the of the flight and the
day after docking we did start on some
of the experiments we had a small series
of experiments to do on this flight that
looked primarily at the cardiovascular
system exercise fitness endurance those
sorts of things and also some metabolic
studies to look at biochemical hormonal
changes in the blood changes in the
blood chemistry things like that and
Bonnie and I orchestrated most of this
couldn't have done it obviously without
our subjects participation in full
cooperation and it was a pretty long day
as Ellen mentioned we had had rehearsed
this before and with our payload
operations control center down here on
the ground the POC I'd all went as
planned as was previously performed
several barrel experiments on all three
of the subjects that's an excellent
quality data we're very happy with it
Ellen also performed a number of
metabolic experiments called em gas here
she's connecting up re breathing bag to
Volodya
and we also flew the lower body negative
pressure device as a joint experiment
between the Russians and the Americans
we had principal investigators from both
countries on all of our studies the
Russians use lower body negative
pressure as a countermeasure we use it
as a research tool and we used it as a
little of both on this plane Greg is
wincing because he's having his blood
taken there and he'd rather be jogging
like I am here I think okay we as
mentioned earlier we did an awful lot of
transferring of equipment scientific and
material here who'd is transferring
something called the PCG and it's just
one example of the the tremendous amount
of effort we put into those five days
and moving stuff back and forth between
the two vehicles one unsung tremendous
capability of the shuttle is its ability
to return Hardware back to earth and we
took full advantage of it on this plane
one of the more pleasant things we had
the opportunity was talked to school
kids around the world we had sorry X
context in California Texas New Jersey
Massachusetts and over in Russia we used
dis Oryx radios on board both the
station Mir and the shuttle and as we
showed in our slide where the big
moments for us was to be able to show
the new rockets inland and present the
shirt to Anatoly who promptly put it on
and decided to demonstrate his
basketball style which I'm sure that
it's the envy of anyone who's been in
zero-g here we are closing the hatch and
we've already set our last goodbye there
and then there's Anatoly saying goodbye
to us eating a tortilla through the one
of the viewports on cloth crystal I
guess
Greg and Bonnie were talking there about
getting pressure checks done as we
prepared for this moment the Soyuz
undocks from the mirror on the opposite
end of the station and begins its fly
around we watched it with amazement at
how well controlled it was and how
stable and ellen's in the process of
snapping it on the imax here which came
out quite well we got to review that the
other day but anatoly flew out of plane
here as you see him moving between the
panels to a position about 60 80 meters
to the commander's side of the orbiter I
guess the port side and station kept
there while we prepared to do our
undocking these scenes make the Soyuz
look pretty small and look pretty far
away let me tell you how close he loved
when he was sitting out there is s he
had a laser rangefinder you can see some
of the jet firings here as he was
holding attitude just right out the
window we felt like we could reach out
and touch him because he was that close
to us his range i think was about 65
meters but again he looked very very
close at the as the actual time for
undocking approached
at about three minutes prior to the
actual separation i sent the command to
open the hooks and everything worked
just like clockwork that mechanism
worked superbly and there was a set of
push off springs that separated the two
vehicles initially and then at about two
feet who'd initiate a separation
maneuver for pulses to complete the set
sequence this is a view I guess from the
Soyuz looking at us as we do that
undocking
of course when finally separated the
Emir 18 crew came up wave goodbye we had
some exchanges on the VHF radio as well
as we said sayonara you're also seeing
on the left there the Soyuz read aki it
was a little departure from our plan to
Dhaka an orbit later but you just see it
start to close in there and it totally
did an excellent job he I was in the
commander's seat he flew from the port
side of the starboard pok aside the
vehicle did it very smooth three docking
as we come completed that part of the
fly around and got the photo there we
started a complete revolution around the
mirror and got these real pretty views
of the station and here you can see it
rotating the folks on the ground very
interest to see views of the different
sides of the mirror to see what kind of
condition it's been in after a long
exposure to space as Charlie mentioned
we flew all the way around the mirror
doing more than a 360 degree fly around
and finally got to a point overhead the
mirror on what we call the minus R Bar
and in our final separation burns
started translating away from the MIR
Space Station
well shortly after that we continued our
work in the lab which one of the things
that would be important for Norman and
his crew members to do is to maintain
their conditioning and anticipation of
entry the intent was to exercise twice a
day I think we missed that a few times
for for those guys but they did manage
to get some of their exercise in and
another modification we did was to use
the recumbent seats at the shuttle so
that they would have the gravity vector
going through the chest rather than from
the head to the toes and make the
g-forces of reentry a lot easier on them
this of course shows the shuttle as we
re-entered flew around the heck and came
down final approach
the one little surprise we got on file
was a master alarm which proved to be a
false sensor indication but we just
pressed right on at 300 feet i lowered
the gear here and who set up on the
outer glide path just nice and solid and
brought it on in we were a relatively
lightweight orbiter about two hundred
and nineteen thousand pounds coming in
for landing so we were shooting at a 195
not touched down as opposed to the
heavyweight flights where we shoot at
205 knots and this is us touching down
on runaway 15 at the Kennedy Space
Center on july the seventh ending a very
successful ten-day flight
we of course use the drag chute we had a
normal drag chute deploy for this
landing we had a little bit of crosswind
not enough to cause us any real
difficulty and were able to fly a normal
approach and landing all the way through
the drag chute deployment and drag chute
jettison that you see here