oh good afternoon glad to have you folks
here glad to be able to be here to do
something we haven't been able to do at
the center for a little while they due
to the efforts of all the folks and the
whole shuttle team is we got one in the
air so without further ado I'm going to
turn it over to the commander this
mission captain dick Richards Thank You
PJ
can you hear me in the back yes okay
well thanks for showing your support and
interest by coming out here this
afternoon we put together about a 20
minute video tape with your highlights
of the things that we all did on sds 41
I'd like to introduce my crewmen I was
very fortunate and to have a great set
of people on this particular flight
we've been asked to comment about what
makes a successful flight and if you put
good people like we have in this room
and at this Center together with a good
hardware it really gets easy and with
it's a it's a great great thing that we
do here we we launched on time we've
done that before in the past I knew we
could do it and we did it and we're
going to continue doing those sort of
things but let me introduce my crew
immediately to my left a one of our
first-time Flyers and my pilot very
fortunate to have in this fight a marine
lieutenant colonel robert cabana
and they keep changing the order of
sequence here to see if I mess this up
here but in the middle of another
first-time flyer just reported here in
1987 and spent three years here and got
an opportunity to fly in space the first
US Coast Guardsman ever to fly in space
commander Bruce Melnick next to him are
other experienced commissioned
specialist he was the bosun's made on
our flight for those of you are not in
the Navy they don't know what a bosun's
mate is the most amazing the one that
keeps good order in the ship and bill
Shepard did that Navy captain flew on
sts-27 and I can't tell you how
invaluable he was not only to me but to
the other rookies providing us with the
right words at the right time on what to
do and earn those four days captain bill
Shepard and lastly all the way to the
end but certainly not least bill Shepard
referred to him in our welcome home
ceremony at ellington as our secret
weapon and that's and I'll second that
Tom Akers real quiet individual but I
signed him the responsibility of getting
ulysses out on time and he did that
those of you who worked with him know
that as tremendous individual and really
was a contributor and was absolutely
essential to making a success of STS 41
happened for us not a bad job for your
first flight Major Tom Akers
and without any further ado here if we
can get the lights down and we'll roll
this videotape will try to narrate you
through some of the highlights for sts
41 well here we are we were pretty happy
at this point because no flight crew had
made it this far at least being able to
walk out of the astro van in about six
months so we felt pretty good i had left
word overnight that if if we had to had
anything to wake me up and i had a nice
sound sleep so i was rough domestic when
we got up particularly when we got off
the launch pad and saw the weather Bob
will describe a little bit about what
it's like to fly in the shuttle for the
first time and have an innocent well as
pretty as a day as we head for everyone
watching yeah and as nice of you as it
was let me tell you it was from a
first-time Flyers point of view was even
more spectacular inside the Cape
provided us with a super vehicle and
discovery and she performed flawlessly
it was a extremely smooth ride uphill
especially once we got off the solid
rocket motors it was just a nice steady
acceleration out Tamiko and really
surprised me how smooth the ride was as
you can see from our our smoke trail
going up hill here there's a very little
wind shear it was just an absolutely
super day in a super day to start an
absolutely great mission during the
launch count it was absolutely and
almost identical to the one I had about
a year ago the everything was nominal
all the calls were as expected and we
had a real clean vehicle the only thing
we were concerned with the last few
minutes was a couple of unplanned holes
that we could tell would probably be
we'd be able to get get past those and
the launch count proceeded then we had
one cloud nearer that held us and I
think we were think we're about five to
ten minutes late from our plan takeoff
time but well before the end of our
launch period about an hour and a half
after launch Bruce opened the payload
bay doors as you see here and he and I
began the check out of the
upper stage booster system that is going
to put Ulysses on its way to Jupiter and
then ultimately the Sun as you can see
in that picture we have an extremely
clean payload bay and that was true also
in the crew compartment the folks down
at KSC did a great job on this vehicle
the checkout comprised the next three or
four hours looking for about a six-hour
deploy of Ulysses and in that time we
checked out the upper stage booster
system the crew interfaces with that
prepared to activate the tilt table that
would raise it to 60 degrees for deploy
Bob our pilot maneuvered the orbiter to
several different attitudes to provide
the ground with the corrections they
needed to give the upper state system of
precise attitude correction here you see
the deploy and as the upper stage and
Ulysses are pushed out of the payload
bay at about four to five inches per
second you'll see in a moment in the
background there things that look like
particles or stars flying back behind
the vehicle and those are just ice
particles that continued to come off of
the orbiter for the first several hours
that first day and was really a
spectacular show at about a minute after
deploy here which again occurred at six
hours in about a minute mission elapse
time after one minute dick did a minus X
or a back-off maneuver where we backed
away from the spacecraft which gave us
about two and a half feet per second
separation
as you can see we deployed in darkness
you'll see in a minute when the
spacecraft comes into the sunlight it
was really a again a very spectacular
show after 15 minutes from deploy we did
a gnome separation maneuver that
ultimately placed us above and behind
the spacecraft at about 40 miles
separation you'll see here in a moment
the curved object you've probably heard
about that appeared in the screen the
first time we had noticed it and they're
still investigating as to what that
possibly is they think it's ice of some
sort that came from the rear of the
vehicle and don't think it came from
anything associated with the spacecraft
or with the deploy
and there you see that object coming
into view this was essentially my view
looking out through the overhead window
and during the deploy sequence I didn't
even see this subject and it wasn't
until after we replayed the videotape
that we finally picked it up and then
again as I mentioned at about 65 minutes
after deployed we went into a window
protect attitude so we could no longer
see the spacecraft and of course it was
a long ways off by then also and the
first solid rocket burn of the upper
stage occurred and was exactly as they
expected it to be and then the second
stage and then finally the third stage
the AMS solid rocket motor burned and
after about 16 or 17 minutes after that
first burn the folks on the ground
started looking for Ulysses data and
founded the Ulysses exactly where they
expected it to be so it was the almost
as precise in fact a little more precise
than anybody on the ground had expected
the three burns to be and as of today
Ulysses is over six and a half million
miles away and doing much better than
expected Tom and I cranked up the remote
arm on the first part of day two and put
it in this Ram position you see here in
part to support the space station but
mainly to provide some data on the Intel
SAT solar array erosion that has been
estimated this is a shot of the
activation of the SSB UV or the shuttle
solar backscatter ultraviolet experiment
it's a major secondary payload that we
carried in the payload bay here it is it
flies in a gas can it get away special
and the SSB UV is going to be used to
calibrate the NASA Nimbus satellites and
the NOAA tyro satellites which are
presently orbiting the Earth measuring
the ozone layer it does this by
comparing the radiation that's emitted
from the Sun with the radiation that's
back scattered from the earth the ozone
absorbs the radiation and therefore they
measure how much of the radiation has
been a
orbed and can get a grasp on how much
ozone there is in the atmosphere this is
a shot of us getting ready to activate
the ssce or the solid surface combustion
experiments which you've probably heard
about our fire in space the data from
this fire in this enclosed container was
recorded on that with two cameras a
16-millimeter film and as a backup chef
came up with the neat idea of using our
fiberscope to put down in front of the
one of the windows and recorded on board
are one of our onboard cameras and TV in
the vehicle and this is a recording of
that that we downlinked subsequently of
one of the two views of the flame purse
the intent of the experiment is to
evaluate the characteristics of flame
spread in the absence of buoyant
convection or in microgravity we did
this by in igniting a small piece of
paper in this container and then just
letting it burn and photographing what
happened with those cameras experiments
going to fly seven more times with
varying fuels oxygen concentration and
pressure in the container and of course
the application is going to hopefully
improve our fire safety aspects of
spaceflight this is a shot of activating
the ipmp or the investigations into
polymer membrane processing STS 41 was
although it was a short flight only four
days in length though was the first
flight to start medical tests for future
extended duration orbiter flights when
we when we attempt to fly for in the 15
to 20 day timeframe and even though we
had such a short flight there was of
course they want to anchor their
database with with the low end as well
as the high end this is I'm hanging on
top of the escape hole there and and tom
is wearing me up with a blood pressure
cuff device which we wore tom
war for about 48 hours on the ship and
slept with it as well too and and
hopefully give them some good data about
how the heart adjust to the sudden onset
of zero gravity this is a plug for my
alma mater they simply at the last
minute sent me a sweatshirt which turned
out to work pretty good to contain all
of this extraneous hardware on this
particular medical experiment here Shep
and I are participating India so for 72
and 474 it's retinal photography and
also measuring his inner ocular pressure
we did this three times on orbit to
document fluid shift in the body and see
if there was any correlation to SAS we
all got a chance on board to work with
three different types of laptops and we
also had the first orbital floppy disk
and we're looking at various kinds of
displays and also cursor control devices
here's one call of felix that will take
the place of a trackball and may have
some application down the road in space
station that previous sequence there was
the one a lot of us a lot of times we
get accused of doing this in a hangar
someplace in Texas and so that last
sequence whether the disk was our proof
that this was onboard the orbiter and in
a micro g environment no no flight crew
movie can be complete without somebody
being filmed playing with her food and
then in the in this case it was me who
got caught by Chef up there a set of
canned peaches that I had a lot of good
time with Tom mentioned that the K
provided us with a very clean vehicle I
thought Columbia was clean on my
previous flight but this one was even
better we found very few extraneous
objects a total maybe of three that we
put in our things found in discovery bag
and we worked we work very hard to to
try to maintain
maintain the cleanliness of the orbiter
in you see Tom tucking away is a drink
container and also gave him an
opportunity to plug this place in
Missouri and he can talk about that this
is an advertisement for my hometown
eminence Missouri and of course the red
wings as the high school athletic mascot
another important aspect of the flight
was the time that we spent observing the
earth beneath us as you know we use a
variety of cameras to document changes
in the Earth's environment we saw a
number of them here we are coming up
over the two besties mountains in
northern chat in Africa this is a an
active volcanic region on the earth we
noticed a lot of fires throughout Africa
and South America and changes in the
levels of lakes and also different
volcanic areas
well being in a Coast Guard the only
time they let me take pictures of the
ocean was when we're over shallow water
and here we are over the arabian sea
just off somalia and if you look at the
clothes in the middle you'll see a
ship's wake in the Sun Glenn we also
observed several other oceanographic
phenomena that are really only visible
from Earth orbit such as the Sioux loi's
that the ocean waves and also some
spiral Eddie's and we got to get a good
look at some of those things while we're
up there looking at the ocean in the Sun
glint also took some other earth observe
and masses we crossed Central America
and South America quite often up there
and a lot during our awake cycle and
also we covered Australia quite a few
times here's a view going over Shark Bay
and looking in the shark bay on Western
Australia and then we jump to a scene in
this central area of Australia in the
lake eyre area the lake eyre is very
important to observe from space because
of the different amounts of rainfall it
gets really determines how much water
there are in a different watershed areas
as we've already talked about we have
very many cameras that did we use in the
orbiter and the next clip coming up is a
demonstration of how we might be able to
more automate how we use the cameras on
the space shuttle in specific the TV
cameras the last several days in space
and we thought you'd like to see how
it's been working for us George Salazar
and his crew down there at this Johnson
Space Center put together a system that
allows us to control the cameras without
using our hands we can just use voice
commands to talk to the cameras so
here's a quick demonstration on how they
work voice command activate TV one Delta
action right stop tilt up left stop
right stop change rate tilt down
stop change rate tilt down stop right
stop too much too much too much zoom in
as you can see it's a great system and
we really like at the end on day four
one of the one of the things you have to
do is get ready to come home and we Bob
and I started off the process by doing
the FCS check out a flight control
system the orbiter ap Bob cranked up one
of our three auxiliary power units to
provide hydraulic pressure out to our
control surfaces and just like any
airplane do to have out at ellington or
hobby one thing's the pilots do before
they go flying is wipe out the flight
control system and move the control
surfaces around and we do that just by
letting the computers do that everything
was extremely nominal and told us that
we probably could expect a smooth entry
know the evening before we do orbited
Tom Bruce and I stood the arm after
having the Intelsat array out in the
flow frugal over a day and a half and
all the arm ops were completely normal
we couldn't resist putting at least 1
orbiter sunset that we saw the 60 or so
that we did see
here we are with one of our long-range
tracking cameras coming in we had a calm
beautiful day out there at Edwards just
like we expected and for myself the
first time I've ever flown this vehicle
for real it matched very closely with
our shuttle training airplanes that we
have out here at ellington Field and the
fact that I had done this about a
thousand times prior and our shuttle
turning airplane it felt very at ease
with the orbiter coming into Edwards Air
Force Base landing on the concrete
runway out there runway 22 this test we
did have a test of the carbon brake
system on this particular flight for
those most some of you may know we've
got a new braking system here and this
was the second flight of it and our
objective was to put a moderate amount
of energy into the brakes and this is a
series of three flight tests of which
after the third one the carbon brake
system will be cleared for na Molina
mission usage and appropriately having
the Sun go through with the Ulysses
project their landing world up we
thought that was an appropriate thing to
conclude also the braking system very
very smooth to me and the orbiter II
responded just like it did in flight to
exactly to my expectations and was a
rule fifteen thousand foot runway and we
landed about 2,300 feet down the runway
with about a nine thousand foot rolled
up and as I turned to my crew just
before we walked out the white room they
performed perfectly in my opinion for
four days and I said this is the last
time you guys can mess up and fall down
the stairs and as you can see they did
did that just as equally well as they
did everything else for the previous
four days in the previous nine months
here that we've been together a great
flight