good afternoon welcome to the Johnson
Space Center for the STS 46 post flight
crew press conference this is the crew
show today so with that I'm pleased to
introduce crew commander Lawrence reiber
and we'll let lon introduce the rest of
his crew glory thank you Jeff and let me
say thank you to everybody for being
here this afternoon the crew would like
to take this opportunity to fill you in
on what we feel was a very very exciting
mission you've heard various little
bites of our discussions from on orbit
and we have a lot of excitement up there
when we'd like to share a little bit of
that with you we were here about a month
and a half ago and told you all the
things that we were setting out to do on
a mission and now what we're going to do
is come back and tell you a little bit
about what actually did happen before we
do that though let me briefly
reintroduce everybody on my right as the
pilot of the mission Andy Allen and of
course Andy was also kind of the
blueshift honcho and they found out
exactly how difficult it was to shift
about 12 hours away from everybody
else's work schedule and found
themselves Pena playing tiddlywinks in
the middle of the night while the rest
of us got good sleep going into the
flight but they did an outstanding job
of course during the flight ms1 and
they're the first ISA mission
specialists to fly on a NASA space
shuttle flight quad Nicoli a clod was
also the primary YMS operator and Eureka
system specialist ms2 and flight
engineer Marcia ivan's and she did
photography and EO IM and imax and con
cap and just about everything else on
the flight as well ms3 and payload
Jeff Hoffman and Jeff of course was our
primary tether dynamics person and
expert on the flight and knew a little
bit about everything else on the fight I
think as well ms for our dr. Spock and
science representative Franklin
chang-diaz and ps1 Franklin biloba the
first Italian over to fly in space and
Franco's got some words about we'll
we'll have some words about the science
that was actually accomplished and his
impressions of first-time flyer in space
I think he was tickled pink so to speak
on his experiences so with that what
we'd like to do is first of all they
sort of a basic framework of the primary
objectives of the mission by means of
some slides some still photographs that
we took give us time to explain what was
going on and then we have video of
actually some of the scenes that that
really did happen and I think you'll see
as we get into the tether operations
especially there were some pretty
exciting moments up there and and we we
knew there would be and we told you that
would be during the pre-flight press
conference and now we have the proof so
we're going to will show you what that
looked like and then follow up with some
final slides on some of the beautiful
earth views and some of the other crew
activities that happen during the flight
so if we could have the first slide of
course every mission starts off with
getting established on orbit before you
can do your job on orbit we've got to go
through the post insertion phase and
before we come back of course the dealer
of prep phase this is our flight deck
crew getting established at the post
Miko time frame making sure everything
is going to be set up properly for
getting a payload bay doors open so we
can begin work
payload contingent next slide the first
objective of the mission the first major
objective of the mission in sequential
order was the Eureka deployments a brief
recap on Eureka age of scientific
platform developed by the European Space
Agency and built by the European
industry the plant attractor being a mbb
mo in bremen germany and that's a
platform was sitting at the back of the
cargo bay and on the second day second
blue shift today which means about 12
hours into the flight our task was to
grapple Eureka pull it out of the cargo
bay perform various maneuvers in order
to calibrate various sensors on Eureka
earth sensors and sentences then have
the remote spirit operation control
center in damp damp shop Germany
performed the deployment of solar rays
and antenna as then release Eureka
things didn't go exactly that way the
first portion that the deploy went very
well the grapple and the unbirth from
the cargo bay went well but we a little
later got some problems with
communication with a spacecrafts payload
communication with the spacecraft so
that it was only possible to command a
spacecraft through ground-based sites as
been sites in particular guru in the
french guiana so we could not command
the spacecraft either the build
operation controls that are ourselves
through the s-band communication system
and we delayed one day the release of
Eureka we release family at one day 17
hours and 10 minutes so just about one
day late after the pivot operation
control center fix their problems or at
least temporarily fix their problems and
after release there was a period of
station keeping that and yellin
performed she want to take over Andy
okay and I see the slide up the slide
that we're looking at is the Eureka over
the Kennedy Space Center
you can see the little Peninsula where
where the Kennedy Space Center is we
couldn't have choreographed a a better
shot to show for Eureka the the sequence
as it went Claude release you Rico off
the RMS and one was benevolent up to let
me do the separation burning the station
keeping which lasts a little bit longer
than what we originally had planned but
the separation burn was about point 7
feet per second velocity change away
from Eureka it went through that real
nice we went after thousand feet and
staying around a thousand feet for about
five hours we relaxed a little bit of
our plus or minus of a thousand feet to
let all the mechanics take effect and we
had already started thinking about that
we want to try to conserve as much
propellants as we could for but maybe
one of our upcoming exciting episodes so
we were working the orbital mechanics
and this is one nice shot of Eureka
winger the next slide also well I ignore
that overly looking guy in the picture
that if you look at the top of the
picture you see a keyboard and computer
that we called the science operations
control center on orbit and it was from
that little portable computer that we
conducted all of the science that was on
board the cargo bay of the shuttle and
it's kind of a new application that is
sort of the sign of things to come for
fusion future science operations in on
the shuttle where we control major
payloads really directly from portable
laptop computers and this is the example
that we positioned it clear out of the
way in the orbiter mid-deck originally
we'd intended to to keep it up in the
flight deck but it was real crowded up
there and we had a lot of books and a
lot of other things that clutter the
space so we moved it down to the mid
deck and Franklin I worked on it
basically Greg grabbing the wall
and the ladder with our legs and I think
that's that you can see that in the next
picture next slide yeah as a matter of
fact that this was the first time that I
saw the capsule flipping one once you
put yourself in a position which
originally was vertical because the in
the previous slide of the PGC seemed to
be glued to the wall but when I was
straddling the side of the wall at the
GSC looked as if it was on a table the
software that we ran for the first time
to drive the scientific experiments in
the cargo bay work to work beautifully
we didn't have any any hiccup with it we
had also quite a few updates as you can
imagine because the scientists on ground
were going through a major route
planning effort to throughout the
mission they in fact have managed to
achieve required to quite a substantial
amount of interesting data they
basically have proven the concept of
generating power in inner space through
this another concept of the tether we
where you know going through various
states of emotion hoping that the debtor
would be deployed at the full length
because that was the ultimate goal but
also with the limited length that we
achieved 250 meters we had all the
instrumentations working including the
two electron accelerators the one made
in italy and the one
in the US and we have got current
flowing through the data we have
demonstrated that this circuit in space
works I think we can move to the next
slide here is Claude prior to deployment
the tethered satellite we already
activated low-level light camera system
they're called top tether optical
phenomena camera and this is a rather
versatile instrument that allows us to
measure all kind of the low low level
light phenomena either associated with a
glow on the surface of the orbital when
it moves through the ionosphere or a
glow the faint lights that is produced
by chemical processes in the high
atmosphere about hundred kilometers hide
or the phenomena associated with
electron beams being generated in the
cargo bay in association with the
tethered satellite so even prior to
deployment of the denison that we
activated that camera to gather some
data that we were going to be able to
compare with the data we were going
together when the satellite was deployed
so this is a view of the aft cargo bay
with the camera installed on one of the
overhead windows finally after about a
little over 24 hours of pre deploy
science and after the first sort of
false start which was not a successful
deployment the the picture you see here
is of the second flyweight attempt which
was successful out to 179 meters as you
can see in this slide we've got about
five meters to tether out and if you
look hard in there you can see the
tether is straight there's no
oscillatory motion the satellite was
completely stable and the orbiter of
course was in what we call free drift
which means that it was not attempting
to hold any kind of stable attitude we
were just letting it do what it would
while
satellite flew away the reason for that
was that we were a little bit uncertain
as to how the large translational jet
firings might affect the stability of
the tether and the stability of the
satellite system in case one of those
jet firings would kind of yank on each
other and therefore yank on the
satellite and upset the satellite we did
not want to do that sort of thing too
too soon so the idea was to let the
satellite get about 10 meters away from
the show before we tried to do anything
like that in actuality it didn't quite
get there our simulations were very
stable in free drift but in the real
flight it seemed like the orbiter and
the in the yard erection of the boom tip
took off a little bit faster than we had
ever experienced during simulations and
I began to fire some of the vernier Jets
are small controlled Jets well before 10
meters and it turned out not to have any
effect at all really understood of the
tether so although that was an unplanned
sort of maneuver it turned out not to
have any impact next slide well the as
the satellite went out further we
started to see successively more and
more motion in the tether there was
always tension in the tether as it went
out through a hundred meters or so and
yet there was far more wiggling I guess
then we had sort of imagined a question
in the simulators we don't see the the
tether moving at all with with this
oscillatory motion so everything we were
seeing here was new phenomena however
the the deployment continued to go out
very stable I'll review a little bit
what happened we'll see some of this
footage in motion in the film but it
goes by very fast and I have to admit
that when things got the most dynamic
tended to be the times that we we threw
the cameras
and we're just glued to the windows to
make sure that we were all doing the
right thing that was sort of the
watchword of this mission do the right
thing and I think we did at any rate we
we did get out to about 180 meters we
had gone through our first nighttime
pass it was extraordinary to us how the
tether almost completely disappeared at
night you could still see the satellite
we had a large searchlight which we
could shine on the satellite
occasionally we played it up and down
the tether and you could see small
sections of the tether but I remember
that moment when the when the Sun first
row is on the on the tether was about a
hundred and seventy meters of tether out
there it was a glorious sight everybody
everybody sort of came to the window and
we have exclamations of joy and other
things when people looked out the window
at the the tether and the sunlight then
the next thing we knew there was sort of
tether flopping around in all which
directions and what had happened was
that the the tether had just stopped
moving this we recognized very quickly
what had happened we had seen this in
the simulators we reacted we did the
right thing and we were very pleased to
see that in fact the the whole system
regains stability and that gave us time
to sort of sit back together with the
ground and think about what to do next
the ground came up with a plan by which
we in order to clear what we assumed to
be a jam we didn't know where we pulled
back about five to ten meters of tether
and then started it going out much
faster than its normal rate and you'll
see quite a dramatic sequence of that in
the movie where we started basically
spewing tether out all over the sky but
again despite the intensely dramatic
look of the situation the system became
stable we were able to go all the way
out at this point again we thought we
had a nice deployment going but then we
got out to a little over two
150 meters once again the system hung up
at this point the redshift had been up
for well over 20 hours we went to bed
the blue team took over station-keeping
in science operations the next day we
attempted to repeat this running start
to start the deployment again the tether
did not go out anymore we never did get
the tether to go out any further we
attempted now to reel in a little bit of
tether and we found it would not real in
at this point we were stuck between the
proverbial rock and a hard place we
couldn't go out we couldn't come in
there were three options we could cut
the tether which we didn't want to do we
could go out do an ETA and pull in the
tether hand over hand and Franklin and I
were very willing and ready to do this
and I think it would have worked the
alternative was to come up with a
another plan which Mission Control did
and by moving the broom in and out we
were able to free the jam and we
proceeded to retrieve the tethered
satellite in a very stable manner and
you'll see as I say some of this footage
in the movie but it does go by very fast
so I think now you have the framework in
which to appreciate it and we can go on
with the slides one of the optical
devices we attached to the top
experiment that Claude talked about was
a telescope that the top experiment was
really an image intensifier with some
regular camera lenses at one end of it
we extended that camera lens into the
telescope world and we had a basically a
celestron telescope to put at the end of
that this was quite an effort pre-flight
in order to aim the telescope at
something you needed a way to to find
what you were aiming at it aiming with
and so we had a couple of devices you
can't see built around that telescope we
put this in the window unfortunately the
telescope or the satellite never got far
enough
a to really use this but Claude used it
one night I think but this you can't
really appreciate it takes up one entire
window next slide I'm not trying out a
new dance step here for the Houston
Ballet a couple of people have already
mentioned that we were doing a lot of
nighttime observations and we we used
every trick in the book that we could to
optimize our ability to see low light
level phenomena beings glow and all the
other things that the Claude mentioned
and one of the tricks we use was to try
to get pre dark-adapted so that even
during the daytime some of us would wear
these dark goggles we also had red
flashlights that we wore I think you saw
a picture of Claude with his red
flashlight on early so it was often
quite a quite an amusing scene of
various crew members and their goggles
and flashlights traipsing around the
cockpit next this mission had some
significant data recording requirements
that were beyond the capability of the
orbiter as it presently flies and so to
accommodate those requirements we added
some additional recording camcorder and
another little hi8 recorder which
required external cabling in order to
make all of that work we were recording
from two sometimes three sources
probably constantly for the entire time
that the tether was out and satellite
was out and with that if you can imagine
seven people now clumped around all of
this it should give you a feel for what
it was like during the heat of battle
for the TSS operations next slide this
is a this is a picture that that doesn't
quite do the scene justice but this is
the this is the glow around the orbiter
when we were down in our lowest orbit
the last part of our mission was to drop
down into
is low in Earth orbit as we could
probably get to 124 miles and and work
the EU IM experiment which was basically
a tray of different types of materials
and in spectrometers and what we were
trying to see there was was part of the
materials would give us a real good idea
of some of the things that we may be
able to use in future future endeavors
such as a space station but we get down
that low in the atmosphere we actually
get a glow around the orbiter much much
more predominantly than we do at higher
atmosphere and this is a picture taken
out the back window of what it kind of
looked like going through this dense
area much more dense than 230 miles of
atomic oxygen and how it kind of reacted
with hitting the orbit or payload bay
into the velocity vector here there's a
little bit of a purple beam off the side
there which is one of our jets that had
just fired when we took this picture in
next slide okay I think now we're ready
to we've kind of given you an overview
taking time to explain a few of the the
details because the sequences as Jeff
mentioned pass pretty quickly in the
movie so why don't we go ahead and
transition to the movie now and will
narrate this as we go along as I
mentioned time flies and we we had a lot
of fun all through the whole thing first
thing of course prior to getting ready
to go was getting ready for the orange
suits all of us getting prettied up
doctored up we didn't know neither hair
braided but here's clogged get an
initial TSS familiar ization we enjoyed
going out to the vehicle in daylight
this was my first experience with that
and that was kind of nice to be able to
see what was going on for the first time
I've seen a couple space shuttle
launches from different viewing areas
and it was always very spectacular being
on the inside
was quite a bit more spectacular launch
countdown was about as perfect as it can
get and I apologize we were 48 seconds
late and I was just I was hoping that we
could do it in 46 seconds but it missed
by a couple seconds the thought that
really crossed my mind more than else
going through all of this was was what
it took to make all this happen it's
hard to think about and imagine the
thousands of people are the tens of
thousands of people that can make all of
this work and it takes such a complex
piece of machinery and make it look so
simple and look so easy it's very
graceful and very easy as it goes up on
his asset there's some shock waves that
are coming as we're going through Mach 1
which is about 40,000 feet or so well
this was the first of 126 space sunrises
that we saw just soon after we got onto
orbit we opened the payload bay doors
and the complement of payloads that we
carried you can see the tethered
satellite up towards the front of the
cargo bay behind at the Eureka which we
soon deployed and then the eoi n payload
so first order of business was to get
the arm out and pick up Eureka this is
the grapple of Eureka and the cargo bay
I'm approaching Eureka with the arm and
this was a view from the end-effector
camera and this is a position i had from
operating the remote manipulator system
at this point I'm very close to Eureka
and I'm going to grapple it press the
trigger to grapple it's while Andy was
maneuvering the orbiter and Franco was
taking pictures it was a blue shift
activity at this time now I'm unbirth in
Eureka from the cargo bay this black
structure that you see in front of
Eureka are the folded solar arrays and
this whole operation took about six
hours were lifting Eureka out of the bay
and also performing various maneuvers
and as I mentioned before to calibrate
sensors now you see the folded solar
array on one side of you recap pretty
clearly and it's about at that point
that we started having problems with
payload communication that when we were
flying over some sites like guru french
guiana the ground will command for
instance solar a deployment which you
see on this picture here where
spectacular to see the solar a
deployment quite a delicate mechanism
also but it worked very well and in a
few second you'll see that tensioning
process at the end of the solar array
deployment you see the solar array that
take a stick shape and waved somewhat
indicating a proper stiffening and
tensioning of the cables that were used
to deploy the solar rays a spectacular
view of a pass over the Red Sea and the
Middle East with you Rick at the tip of
the arm shortly before release of Eureka
and here we go after release this is
coming back over the kennedy space
center again we just really like this
picture the separation burned when real
fine we moved out to a thousand feet and
we actually kept it to work over ELQ
annex and save liberal propeller we
actually work from about nine hundred
twenty feet after that eleven hundred
fifty feet this is basically what Eureka
look like at a thousand feet away from
us and then we did the otm burn which is
about five hours later which put it in
his proper attitude Jeff went ahead and
took that picture for us a beautiful
picture of the moon on by eureka here we
are setting up the science operation
center down in the mid deck we have this
personal computer being up to date
technologies coming into the space
shuttle to and now we're raising the
boom getting ready to deploy the
tethered satellite so far everything
with tss has gone perfectly the boom
rose when we got up to the top we had
the first difficulty we attempted to
extract one of this that's little
umbilical at the top it didn't pull out
so we rotated back and forth a little
bit we put it in a position where we
could expose it to the Sun heat it up
here's a nice close-up view of it
in attempting to keep it exposed to the
Sun we ended up with a site that we
never thought we'd see the TSS boom and
the satellite pointed down towards the
Earth someday on a future mission we may
actually lower a tether satellite down
into the upper reaches of the atmosphere
and that will also be very exciting but
in any case finally Lauren moved the
whole orbiter away and you can see the
umbilical pulley we did then we were
ready for fly away we had in the first
attempt didn't work that finally we got
the thing going and here it is and this
is that portion then that where the
orbiter is in free drift and the
satellite as you can see here is moving
very slowly away from the boom tip but
notice also of course that it is very
stable there's no tendency for the
satellite to roll off or do any pitching
moments and the tether was very stable
also each of us had an assigned tasks
that we were doing all through the early
to deploy phases and that always entails
somebody checking CRT displays upfront
and looking out the windows to make sure
that the satellite and a tether system
were in a safe configuration we
continued to fly it away you're about 15
or 20 meters here notice that the tether
is still very straight and very stable
in this configuration it wasn't until we
got much longer lengths that we started
to notice any significant tether
oscillations at about a 25 meter length
then we deactivated the k-band system
for communications and converted it into
a radar and started tracking the
satellite so we could tell an additional
means of where it was now the tether it
was getting long enough that we've
started to see a lot of vibrations this
this may look like a very loose tether
but that there was normal tension in
this tether this is just the way a
tether behaves this is the system after
we hit the first snag it it already has
pretty much reached stability and we
were
ready now to run the tether out for this
so-called running start it and here it
goes you can see we were spewing tether
out of we have probably about 20 or 30
meters of slack tether you can see how
it takes up the coiled shape that it was
on the real but before long the
satellite keeps moving the way it pulls
out the slack tether and it's basically
until we reach the next snag it
continued to move away and even after
the next snag it basically went into a
stable configuration I guess the next
part was the redshift have been up for a
pretty long day here and now we need to
get them put to bed so we put them to
bed and for the blue shift it was pretty
much watching the satellite that night
normally we're going to be watching
about 20 kilometers and doing our normal
station keeping this is a site out the
class which is a optical alignment site
which is one of the ways that I could
judge how the satellite was maneuvered
force was actually extremely well
behaved in over an eight hour period I
never invited yet during all the on
station phase of course all the science
instrumentations were working and we
were also watching with the top
instrumentation the satellite which care
shines against the image intensifier a
picture of this guy we weren't able as i
said to continue the deployment this is
how you retrieve a satellite you have to
move the shuttle underneath in order to
get the tether to come back in the
proper place and that's what we're about
to do all of our operations were really
conducted in the manual mode and I think
that's important to note because this
system was supposed to have been an
automatic and he points out the value of
the human being in the loop the
satellite was being controlled by by jet
firings from keyboards and the teller
was being control those from the
keyboard and everything was very smooth
the in lines were turned in turn on a
little bit later than expected but the
dock
was very very smooth after ducking the
satellite of the docking ring we
commanded the retraction of the room
which you see here and there was still
some alignment with satellite to perform
prior to latching the satellite in cargo
bay and there was of course a big relief
in the crew at that time what you see
now is the ohms burn that lowered us
from 160 mile altitude down to the 128
mile altitude and now while we had our
EO IM experiment in the bay looking at
atomic oxygen we proceeded with some
different medical experiments in a
little bit more relaxed time for the
crew while Jeff is doing his medical
experiments those of us they could now
get to a window we had not been able to
see a window we're upstairs taking
pictures he also see in my hand there
the controller that ran the IMAX camera
we had in the payload Bay now we had the
opportunity to see the earth out of the
windows whereas before we've been
looking pretty much at space and and we
took advantage every time we could we
noticed one thing at 128 miles that the
earth appears to move much more quickly
past you than it does it any higher
altitude and we had the opportunity to
look at 230 and 160 miles the earth just
smoked right by this is a java you can
see the line of volcanoes that look like
they've been laid out with a straight
edge you can also see how blue the
planet looks I mean that it always
amazed me how very blue things looked
one of the things that most interest us
these days is the burning of the Amazon
forest and this what you see there are
little plumes of ground fires in the
area of central brazil and then of
course we got to be able to zoom in with
a very powerful lens and you can see
some of the patches of deforestation in
the state of rondonia in Brazil isn't it
it's an area that we've been watching
over and over us missions go by and we
see all the patterns of deforestation
xinlong geometrical lines as roads
and population expands into that area we
also tried to photograph the entire
Caribbean Basin and of course Brazil and
Central America we managed to to get
pictures of all of the Central American
capitals but we're not able to get Costa
Rica because it was always cloudy over
there I guess this is a part of the
russian girl a dispersion awesome oil
slick and a big big storm is a Javier
audio champion somebody else this is
Baja California and we come on down
through Central America and southern and
southern Mexico and we're able to zoom
in into the city of Acapulco I think you
can appreciate the power of that lens
it's hard to it's hard to keep the
camera steady when you're zooming in
that closed until you have to wedge
yourself against the window I said most
of the area was cloudy but we were able
to get the few good shots so feel for
what it would take to do a simple task
in orbit like changing the batteries in
your camera it was sometimes more than a
two minute we've been using the cameras
a lot so the batteries are pretty hot
but keep it I mean think about this try
to change batteries one day without ever
dropping apart and you were playing our
volleyball lib against Switzerland
against Italy it's a good way of keeping
in shape in space and of course learning
about dynamics in space this is
something that we ran as a way of
explaining in a in a future your visual
to youngsters how that works works in
space this is the principle for angular
momentum conservation and as you see
when we elongate the tetteh we have a
slower rotational speed and of course
the principal investigator of this
research at the end of the
the experiment that has the right to
take advantage of the of the apples
physics works well some of us still
thought it was necessary to do a little
bit of work during this final couple
days you can see we did have an odometer
on board that was one of our medical
dsos but jeff still found found time to
play with his all metal yoyo there and
demonstrate yet more principles of
physics with that the hcf the growth
hormone experiment was there one mid dec
experiment it required that you take it
out and rotate it five times in ten
seconds every day so instead of rotating
the box I'm holding the box of
Franklin's rotating me well eventually
it gets time that we got to come home
and this is just for an eye on the
flight deck down the flight control
check out you can see some of the yellow
lines moving there in the picture there
as we check out all the flight control
services then we put the red team to bed
and make sure we're all set to go for
over the next morning when we launched
it was just about a new moon we were up
for eight days one day more than we had
planned and this is what the moon looked
like when we finished 126 times we got
to see the moon rise and then the sunset
over the payload Bay and it was just as
beautiful every time we saw it but it
was finally time to come home by the
time we were ready to come home we knew
that we were coming home either to que
se or to Edward so it was a simple
matter of putting on the suits and
getting ready to do the entry we just
didn't know where we were going to burn
to for a while but KSC cleared out the
weather as you can see here is only
scattered clouds the very smooth error a
lot of moisture we didn't see the
condensation trails that you folks did
on the ground but it was a pleasure to
fly the entry and the final approach
through that nice smooth air for a
change as we come in start to pull up
about 1,800 feet and pass through 300
feet and he got the gear down another
major task I assigned him a long time
ago and he did a marvelous job with that
probably much better than my subsequent
landing but it it looks ok and it really
did look good from the inside as well so
we touched down there about 1,900 feet
down the runway roughly and then rolled
to a stop on runway 33 at KSC this is
really some kind of an experience here
after eight days in space and it took us
a while to want to feel like jumping up
and walking around the orbiter I
remember sitting there doing switch
throws and everything that wasn't too
bad but that initial attempt to stand up
with something else eventually we all
found our legs though and stumbled out
of the spacecraft and had a look around
ok we need to go back to the slides now
and pick up with some of our other
activities that we didn't get a chance
to show you before and I will start off
with Andy here I think they shaved all
the hair off my chest so I could do this
so I could do this medical DSO here two
of us Franklin and myself had to do what
they call it intense exercise DSO where
we had pretty much be hooked up to a lot
of telemetry for EKG and heart
monitoring to the sort of folks here on
the ground and the flight surgeons could
take a good look at us why we were
trying to do an intense workout trying
to correlate the day that we had given
them pre-flight as to how we were
reacted in how our hearts work why we're
up in space and then also immediately
after flight next line we did not only
wear goggles and gloves to perform the
top experiment that is to get dark
adapted during the day in order to
perform low-level light work during the
night and to manipulate a delicate
filters we also had some problems with
the bathroom or the toilet or the WCS
waste collection system as we as we call
it nicely and we had to clear some
pass it had been become clogged and we
had one of the so-called fan separators
are two of them one of them has to work
one of them failed and the other one
showed weaknesses so we had to do some
work in order to maintain that's
important facility finally it held on
till the end of the mission we're very
glad it did the cameras something near
and dear to my heart we carried a
standard complement of hasselblad and
icon and Arriflex cameras and some
camcorders and pretty much used all the
film that we took on board here I'm
using two at one time max effort which
didn't make the rest of the crew very
happy because I had been two thirds of
all the cameras on board next slide we
slept with the Sabbath observation views
this is a set of old volcanoes in
southern Bolivia it's in the northern
akadama desert one of the driest part of
the earth you see some some snow there
but i would say ninety percent of the
time you're a sky is clear over that
part of the world okay we continue our
trip over South America going back to
the to the Amazon basin this is kind of
a still of what you really saw in the
movie it's more of that deforestation
pattern going on in the state of
rondonia nothing new but it it shows how
the patterns have grown over over the
years next slide another main objective
that we had was the mouth of the Amazon
River another area kind of dear to my
heart because I used to live in that
area so the the entire Delta's is
pictured in this in this slide and you
can see the sedimentation that is
emptying into the ocean which has grown
over over the course of the year of
course all the all the effluent and all
the nutrients that are coming off of the
of the rainforest as they cut the trees
end up on the river and ultimately in
the ocean next
the blue shift my shift was up at work
mostly when we were flying over Africa
Asia and Australia when we're over
Africa of course like this slide shows
in over the Sahara Desert I was staring
at the horizon to see Italy my my
country and in fact when we were at the
higher altitude for the Eureka deploy I
could definitely see Italy and I have
some pictures which are not perfect as
perfect as these but they are much more
dear to my heart this is one of the most
desert and unpopulated areas of the
world it's in the northwest part of
Sudan in Africa and John just could tell
you all the history of this land I just
like the colors and the incredible view
from from the sky the next picture is
the Nile and the lake nasser in fact in
the top part of the picture you may see
us one and the dam which was built some
20 30 years ago it looks like this
natural lake which is the second largest
lake in the work artificial lake in the
world is kind of plea by a couple of
problems first the lack of water through
the 80s the drought that afflicted that
part of Africa and also you notice that
the left side or the west side of the of
the lake is much more radish than the
right side because of the wind blowing
and the sand moving it looks like a lot
of sand falling into the lake therefore
diminishing the overall capacity of the
lake the next picture is the
kuwait and gold and arabian sea type of
environment you see the Euphrates and
Tigris Rivers and you see in the bottom
part of the picture the scars of the oil
well fires these dark patches the south
of Kuwait City are kind of disappearing
now and observing flights over flights
and throughout the different Shuttle
missions we have noticed that sand is it
slowly but surely covering up at these
darker patches or so in a while possibly
these cars would be disappeared moving
on a little bit further to the east this
is a portion of melville island which is
part of the Northern Territory of
Australia it's a relatively uninhabited
island but I think it's obvious that
somebody is there and there they've got
a fire going most likely to burn off old
pasture land underneath the open canopy
trees to try to restore pasture land you
can also see a lot of sediment and silt
in the coastal areas that in this case
is not due to erosion of the uplands
like in Madagascar because they're the
tropical growth is still there most of
that activity is due to waves coming
onshore or title activity that's
carrying a lot of silt and sediment back
out into into the shallow areas there
it's also if you look real closely the
inline the inland waterways are not
clogged with silt and so it's not due to
erosion of the island itself next slide
this was we had one very direct pass
toward the end of the flight right over
the top of Mount Pinatubo and that's
what you see in this picture I think
it's fairly obvious that a large portion
of the top of that volcano is
a gone or have been displaced and
perhaps you can see the gray streaks
then in the rivers that lead down from
that ash clogged and and then the whiter
spots if you look really close the white
areas in that in those rivers and those
flows are the the continuing washing
down of new ash deposits as they
continue to receive a lot of rainfall in
that area but this was relatively cloud
free and just we just couldn't pass up
this shot clark air base is just
directly to the east of the of the
volcano and of course is a deserted air
base now because of that volcano next
slide well we don't just take pictures
of dirt rock and trees in fact
four-fifths of the earth is covered by
water and there's atmosphere on top of
everything with lots of weather so we do
work with meteorologists and
oceanographers before the flight to get
sensitized to the sorts of things which
they're interested in seeing and then
during the flight we often get sent up
direct messages alerting us to
transitory phenomena which they'd like
pictures of such as typhoon janice here
of course we can see cyclonic storms
with the geosynchronous weather
satellites but from the shuttle we can
provide additional information
particularly as we fly over we can take
stereoscopic photography which gives a
good three-dimensional view of what's
happening we also at times this this
typhoon happens to have a closed eye but
there have been others where you can
actually stare right down the eye down
to the ocean so it was pretty
spectacular and we enjoyed watching this
storm evolved over the several days that
we were able to look at it the next
slide there's a story behind this as I
say people send us up messages we got
this message this was from the
oceanographers that they really like us
and they gave us a certain time they
said we'd be flying over the equatorial
Pacific just look out the window and
take a picture every 30 second
and I remember long I we're looking out
the window snapped wait snap wait
nothing but you're looking we were
looking at in a part of the ocean the
angles were such that the Sun was
reflecting and we were looking what we
call the Sun glint which is able to
bring out certain features and after
about five minutes of weight snap a
picture weight snap the picture we
started saying what are we doing here
you know what do they possibly expect us
to see and all of a sudden bingo this
huge line this is probably several
several hundred feet long what this is
it's this is a front you can have you
know cold fronts and warm fronts not
only in the air but in the water and
this is an this is an oceanic front
underwater where a cold cold water
upwelling from the bottom comes up
against warm surface water and the
exciting thing is that there's a big
oceanographic study effort going on in
this part of the ocean right now so they
have this picture which we were able to
take two combined with the on the ground
or on the ocean data which they were
taking and so it turned out to to really
pay off next slide very hopeful that
somehow I get a chance to see
Pennsylvania from 230 miles knowing that
we were in low inclination orbit and
really this picture is kind of it this
is a shot over over Florida we're a
little bit south of Florida you can see
the key some of Cuba and some of the
Bahamas but this particular pass the
whole coastline the whole east coast of
the United States was basically visibly
clear you can follow those cloud lines
as the small cloud lines all the way up
the east coast of the United States so I
was pretty happy with this pass next
slide 16 times a day the Sun came up and
went down and each time the Sun went
down it was more spectacular than the
sunset before it from 128 miles the
atmosphere is noticeably thicker and
more banded than it was at the higher
altitudes you can see clouds which
probably stop at 40,000 feet or so and
the atmospheric guys tell us that there
is a thin band
they're under the white stuff that's the
debris from the Mount Pinatubo eruption
a couple years ago but we never got
tired of taking pictures or watching the
sunsets well you may think that this is
the CDR finally enjoying a relaxing time
but actually rather than candy-coated
chocolate coated candy this is a
gigantic tranquilizers that they were
feeding me after our tss experience and
just to get me calmed down a little bit
but no next slide we really did have a
lot of fun we had we had a great time we
saw a little bit of everything we ever
hope to c plus a little bit more as you
saw from the movie some things that we
had hoped not to see we didn't quite get
to a 20 kilometers of tether out in the
case of TSS but we've got enough tether
out to prove the concept and allow I
think every science instrument to get a
little bit of data at least some about
quite a bit in the interest of maybe
anticipating a few questions I thought
we'd have the folks give you a brief
update on things that we have learned
about the successes of the mission since
we got back last Saturday morning so
just clawed once you start with Eureka
and just give a little short update okay
as I mentioned before Eureka had some
problems during the deploy process as
well communication with the spacecraft
and also during the so-called otm burn
orbit transfer maneuver burn this burn
had to be abandoned early because it
didn't was not nominal as the ground was
expecting it to be so when we left
Eureka it was in fact in a
in a transition orbit that was
unsatisfactory to perform its scientific
mission eventually the ground
controllers in damaged after Germany
were able to fix the problem perform
subsequently a satisfactory otn burn to
bring the apogee of the orbit through
about 580 kilometers at which time they
fired again their thrusters you know the
circular trajectory of Eureka the right
now it is on a stable founded kilometers
high orbit which is a nominal orbits
they have activated nearly all of the
scientific experiments on board
including and important interorbital
communication experiments communication
between eureka via olympus isa
communication satellites to the mass
Palomas ground station in the Canary
Islands and this is working well and by
the end of this week all of the
experiments onboard Eureka which is
finally the purpose of this whole thing
will be operating for this period of age
29 month until the recovery by flat 57
next year right all the instrument all
the science instrumentation that has
worked during this mission and which as
you probably recall is sort of fifty
percent from Italy and fifty percent
from the United States 12 major
investigations all together had their
share of data during this mission in
particular the ultimate goal which was a
the one of proving the concept of
driving current through this circuit to
me by the satellite the shuttle and the
wire in between the two and using the
natural battery created by the movement
of the wire and the earth magnetic field
this concept has been proven we have got
to say one point in the curve not to the
whole curve and we are anxious to get
more points with future missions but the
essential thing is is there there was a
current flowing through the tether this
current was about 23 milliamps
when the Italian electric generator was
working it was about 15 milli amps when
the American accelerator was working not
because the American accelerator was
better the configuration was different
but these measures were confirmed both
by the instruments in the cargo bay and
by the instruments on the satellite at
250 meters in addition all the
diagnostic instruments in the cargo bay
and on the satellite measuring spectra
of the electrons have confirmed
different signatures while current was
driven through through the wire so I
think we have a sound set of data which
of course is not as a satisfactory as it
would have been if we had the chance to
go out of 220 kilometers but it's still
a very remarkable point in the story in
the history of debtors in space we have
also found that the famous paint and
there was on the satellite has a very
lower resistance this was a an
incredible project that was run in the
very last weeks before launch and I
think we have to give credit to the
people took the risk of disassembling
these skins of the satellite and change
the pain to just to have a lower
resistance on the on the satellite
external shell had we not done that
perhaps we would not not have seen the
currents that we have seen so altogether
I would say we have a very working set
of instruments for electro dynamic and
dynamic experiments with tethers in
space and we are looking forward to a
second chance to really do the thorough
mission and finally say one or two
things about the dynamics investigations
we stressed before this flight that this
was a test flight of a new space system
and the measure of success of a of a
test flight is how much information you
got the bottom line is we got an
incredible amount of information in many
ways
we learned a lot of things that we would
not have learned had the flight been
completely nominal science
investigations every time you go out
twice as far you generate twice as much
voltage that's not the way it works in
dynamics I think you need to think about
things in terms of a factor of 10 in
other words we were able to get data on
many different flight regimes the first
two meters of deployment had a whole set
of problems which we didn't know how it
was going to work and we did have a fly
away aboard in that region and now I
think we have a very good understanding
of what it's like to initially deploy in
the final retrieval of a tethered
satellite from 2 to 20 meters a whole
other set of problems opens up in order
to retrieve the satellite we knew that
we were going to have to fly the shuttle
underneath the satellite and there were
real questions as to whether this would
cause perturbations in the satellite
which might lead to instabilities and
all the tests find that that Lauren was
able to do to stay underneath that
satellite showed that that that whole
concept works from 20 meters out to
about 200 meters or a little bit longer
one of the biggest uncertainties in this
whole system was how would the system
perform with low tensions on the tether
and we showed that not only could it
perform with low tensions but even when
the tether went completely slack that we
could control the shuttle and can
control the satellite and that that is
an unexpected and very exciting result
from 200 out to 2,000 meters we never
got to go that far but the biggest
uncertainty was that's the the range
where you enter the the resonances
between the tether and the satellite and
I think we showed that the satellite
control was so good and so positive that
I think when we do enter that region
will do it with a lot more confidence
than we when we could have done before
this flight
and so it's only that final region I the
that last region from 2,000 meters out
to twenty thousand meters which we
didn't get to explore and yet this is
the region where the the tension and the
tether is the greatest and where I think
we had the most confidence because
that's the region was really tested on
the ground so all in all the most
uncertain areas we were able to explore
on this flight we have a tremendous
amount of data a lot of things for
people to look at of course we have a
lot of work to do now and there's
already a study board set up to try to
determine why the tether hung up and to
make sure that we can solve the problem
so that hopefully sometime in the future
it'll be able it'll be possible to to
test this system again and this time run
it all the way out and I think we're
back to you okay we'll start with
questions here in Houston before going
on to the Kennedy Space Center you do
have a question raise your hand wait for
the microphone and then identify
yourself
mark if you get all for just a min let's
bring the other mic over and get the
question on the air for the benefit of
our viewers to it again please
okay we've got a little bit of a
breakdown in our audio connection with
the the mics if you guys could just very
briefly summarize a question for you
answer the question was that even though
we have the investigation going on into
the to try to determine the causes of
the snags of the problems and deployment
that we had during a mission do have we
found out anything during the week that
we've been back that would point out
what the causes really were I think to
say to try to say categorically that we
know what happened would be a little
presumptuous I don't think we do and the
team is just now beginning to get a look
at the the actual hardware there was a
lot of I guess a prime contender in the
first snag especially was that down in
the real witch lives down on the pallet
down in the bottom of the payload Bay
that there may have been because we're
operating at such a low tension value
when it got to that point the tension in
the system was unable to pull that
winding up and and free it so that's
again that's a guess that's not the
final answer but that may have been what
stopped us the first time when we backed
up and got the running start apparently
that was enough momentum to go on
through that point and then as we slowed
down to try to get back on the profile
so we didn't continue to create that
massive amount of slack tether that you
saw briefly in the video then we came to
the second stop there at that point and
I don't think we're really quite sure at
all what may have happened there it may
have been something very similar may
have been something totally different
and then from then on i would i would
think we'd be really guessing after that
because we eventually got to the point
where we could neither go out or in
either one and that
suggests some kind of snag up in the
upper control mechanism that
subsequently we were able to clear out
but only after a lot of several hours of
thinking by the folks on the ground who
built the equipment as to what we might
try to get that free it was at that
point when we could not go neither
outboard with the tether or pull it in
that I think the focus of everybody
concerned including us on board I
believe we sort of you Nana unanimously
shifted our attention toward freeing
that jam if we could and then bringing
the satellite back either via the
natural means which we ended up doing or
using the EV a that we began to prepare
for also Zelda notify Luna vocal teacher
mrs. Shriver you have been three times
in the space until now you have been
last time with the Space Telescope and
it was not to really really is a great
success after after the fright is it not
frustrating to have such mission there
is a crew work fine and after that
somebody did a bad job and the
experiment doesn't work flying in space
is not a frustrating experience let me
tell you know we we've tried to stress
especially here that we were involved in
a test flight and I don't think we have
any real not really any right to expect
it everything is going to go absolutely
perfectly it is always nice when it does
of course but I think we got enough
tether deployed as Jeff explained to
investigate a really critical part of
the tether envelope that really needed
to be looked at and I think we were very
successful in determining that we could
control a tether system at short
distance we could control the satellite
as long as we have stable endpoints to
the system the tether can be doing an
awful lot of fairly wild gyrations in
between and you're still basically okay
with the system so I think we learned an
awful lot even though we didn't get out
to the full length there's always a
little bit of disappointment one doesn't
something doesn't go exactly as planned
to go back to SD s 31 for a moment the
furthest thing from my mind is that that
mission was not a success I think you
have the wrong slant on the Hubble Space
Telescope if you think that it's not
working or if anybody thinks that it's
not working it's got some fantastic
images and the public I hope is getting
reeducation all the fantastic things
that it really is doing even with the
aberration that it has now something
because i think you know you ask how do
we feel about it and i think what i'm
going to say applies to Hubble as well
as to what we just did from an
astronomical point of view what Lauren
said is absolutely correct the Hubble
has been a great success the computers
on the ground have been able to correct
the aberration the only thing it hasn't
been able to do is get down to the
lowest light levels that eventually will
be able to do when people go up on
another shuttle flight and fix it and
what I'm trying to stress here is the
extreme value of having people in space
who can respond to unexpected situations
and that's what makes us feel good about
our flights looking at this right that
we just did when we first started
working with the system it had been
designed as an essentially an automated
system where you tell the tethered to go
up and it would go up and you tell it to
come back and it comes back I would have
felt very bad if I had devoted several
years of my life to training for a
flight push the button to make the
system work and then it didn't work and
there was nothing I
do about it that would really be bad but
that's not what we do when we get
involved in a flight we looked at the
operations we determined that there were
many areas were having people on board
we could build more flexibility into the
system and I won't go into any detail
about what we did except to say that
almost every operation that we ended up
doing than this tether both to finally
deploy it as far as we did and finally
retrieve it was done with purely manual
operation we basically had complete
override of our automatic systems and it
worked so the many years that we spent
working on the system and developing all
of this capability for people to use the
flexibility that we have in space paid
off and I feel great about this and I
think everybody in the crew does he
declined from the daily tacos on tiger
in Zurich Switzerland my question goes
to Russia Ivan's this crew is a mixed
crew in a variety of categories male
female Arjun languages Spanish Italian
French English question one how about
harmony within this family second what
language did your colleagues use when
there were these problems with PSS when
they tried to do it again and again 11 x
12 times of all of the apples and
oranges that you described we have one
thing in common and that's we are people
and that's all that counts among this
crew or any other crew that you put
together as for your second question
everybody spoke whatever language got
the point across at the time and
everybody understood what everybody else
was saying ok we can come back here and
take some questions afterwards but right
now let's go to the Kennedy Space Center
take some questions there KSC go ahead
this is Jim Bankia Florida today I guess
a question for Jeff perhaps in the
investigation going on
Kennedy will you or any member of the
crew i guess be coming here to help or
take a look at the hardware and point
out anything to anybody i think we have
a unique perspective to to lend to the
investigation i think the first thing
that that we're going to be trying to do
is to go through all of our voice
records and the video records that we
took make some order in them and make
that available to the formal
investigative board and then i suspect
that that will do well i know that will
do everything that we can both in terms
of looking at the hardware and reviewing
some of the the data to try to correlate
what we saw on the spot with things that
happened from the grounds point of view
and see if we can figure this system out
quick follow that means you'll be will
you actually be coming here to florida
to do that anytime soon to that day
schedule I it's not scheduled yet you
know what what's being done now is I
think the the first formal meeting of
the investigation board is this coming
Monday they have a certain amount of
proprietary work to do in looking at
some of the possible faults to prepare
for taking the the hardware apart you
don't want to go diving into the
hardware and destroy evidence so they'll
do some very careful groundwork before
coming down to open up the hardware and
I don't know when that will be and my
second question for Lauren Shriver as
you came in here to florida and the
clouds were building a little bit was
you came in on the hack and around a
final did you have any problems seeing
the runway or did any time you fly
through clouds and obscure your ability
to touch down well we do we were doing a
right-handed turn and the shuttle
cockpit of course is a like a normal
fairly large airplane cockpit and i'm
sitting on the left side so I I really
couldn't see the runway until at least
halfway around the turn but on the other
hand I wasn't looking for it because I
knew I wouldn't be able to see it anyway
and that's a that's an artifact of the
way the shuttle is bill but it was not
due to weather
I think I think your question was
slanted toward was there any problem
with the weather and the answer is no
yeah I've seen some of the videos since
I got back of the landing and I know
looking at that video from the ground it
appears like the clouds were a lot more
there was a lot more to the cloud deck
then there really was it was really from
our point of view just thin wispy clouds
that never did obscure the view of the
runway or the aimpoint lights or
anything like that this is a filter on
earth news for Claude it appears that in
your conversations to the ground of
Mission Control they were treating you
somewhat more formally than the other
mission specialists wondering how did
you have any problems as far as
adjusting were you treated as another ms
on the crew or as somebody who is
different as a guest and any advice you
might have for the Europeans Canadians
and Japanese will be joining desarmar
course well I think I was treated
exactly like any other ms and they could
maybe ask the question to other crew
members this flight but I really felt
that I was and I well maybe it's in my
nature I talk sparingly that is I I
speak when I feel I need to speak but
maybe not I don't add words when I feel
that he's not needed but I when I had
something to say I expressed it and what
I felt it was not needed for me to speak
I cannot speak but really I feel that
not only doing this mission but during
the 12 years I was here and doing the
whole mission preparation I was
considered as one member of the team for
projector Lauren it seemed like a lot of
the problem-solving to get the tether to
move seemed to be almost made up on the
spot wondering how much of this you
encounter during assimilations ahead of
time and how much of it was the smart
keep on the ground and the smart coupon
the orbit figuring out how to do
something on the spot one of the things
you learn in simulations is to think on
the spot when we hit the snags in the
tether we knew what to do because we had
simulated that and it was really quite a
comforting feeling despite the fact that
there was tether moving all over the
place the tether didn't get in the way
of controlling the shuttle or
controlling satellite so we flew it like
we had simulated it and it worked great
on the other hand some of the
troubleshooting plans that was
definitely real time real time reaction
at its best people coming up with new
ways of doing things which we had never
really dreamed of before yeah that's
exactly right simulations we we tried to
you know gather together a set of
procedures and a way of operating that
would cover anything that we might run
across and that included practicing for
sudden stops of the tether the satellite
on the way out or on the way back either
one and I think we used we probably used
ninety-eight percent of all the things
we ever did in a simulator at some point
in this 24 hours of deployed operations
we exercise that so the simulator was
invaluable to us in preparing for the
mission but the actual cause then of the
sudden stops and all that was a took
real-time analysis to figure that out
and then come up with something else to
try to learn your last mission the STS
31 set the altitude record for the
shuttle and this wondering you do IM was
the second-lowest shuttle mission and
can you tell us from your point of view
how different is from being on top and
being on the bottom as far as seeing the
earth yeah and marcia alluded to that a
little bit at 330 miles with the space
telescope that was really eye-catching
in that the panoramic views the the
aisle Blake views that we had of
thousands of miles of our surface at one
time was really amazing and we try to
take along cameras and lenses that would
capture those views and I think we did
that and we had the imax cargo bay
camera as well and it had some fantastic
shots you kind of like
you get the impression much like you do
and a commercial jetliner here at 40,000
feet on a close to the ground you look
down and you seem to be kind of floating
over the surface and that's kind of the
way it was at 330 but when we drop down
to 128 I just couldn't believe how fast
we it appeared that we were moving over
the surface and it didn't you know it's
almost like well how will we ever get
pictures of any of this because we won't
be able to hold it you know focus on one
spot long enough to get to the
photograph and we have imax again we had
to cargo bay camera again and i think
that might be a good depiction of the
real difference between 330 and 130
miles i think it's going to be
interesting to look at some of those
late pictures and for francoeur Claude a
lot of us were following the Olympics
while we were following your mission in
orbit and just wondering who won the
first Italian Swiss volleyball game in
space in fact it was a great experience
into being space with an old friend of
mine code and and with all the other
crew members who have become also very
good friends of mine this is a great
experience that I will never forget it's
also a great pride to be the first
Italian in space with this satellite
made in Italy which after all has
performed so well throughout the whole
mission and with all the people will
come over both at the Kennedy Space
Center to see the launch and landing so
we are really building a new culture a
new aerospace culture in Italy which I I
think it's really a great thing to think
of technically done or no TKD phaser for
Franco malerba how did you feel and how
do you feel now about the decision to
real the satellite back in well I share
very much of the decision that was made
at that point it was a very unclear what
what would have happen
if we had reeled further out to the
satellite of the risk of losing the
satellite was very high and the hope to
manage to get a detective fully deployed
was relatively slim a plus the satellite
was running out of gas as you know ago
there is a bottle of nitrogen inside
which is what makes the some of the
science experiments possible and more
important to help the retrieval actually
Japan Franklin and Lauren managed to
retrieve it almost without gas but we
couldn't count on it right right off the
bat so altogether it was a very rational
decision to make I think however that
because we've gone through all this
experiment to D deploy in the retrieval
we have the satellite so to speak ready
to go we have also a case to reply this
mission yeah this was my second question
both acid Italian space agency and
Elena's patio said they have strong
hopes for a tss reef flight is there a
chance we'll see a Franco Olympus the
flight well personally I was very happy
in space I lifted off with a little bit
of anxiety as to what my adapt a Shinto
zero-g would be like and what my ability
to work in that extraordinary
environment would be like things went
very well and perhaps because it was
lucky enough on the blue ship they went
to bed right right away when I was in
orbit so I didn't have to do you know to
work too hard when still the world looks
very strange because of the of the
zero-g environment so now I feel like
have gained an experience which which is
very valuable and and also I still have
this excited to see this this experiment
work in the full bloom in the full
deployed length so I believe it first
first of all we need to get this a
second chance and if I had enough
to fly on the future mission I would be
very pleased with that Rob Navy is CBS
News for Jeff Hoffman from the capture
bar used in the int'l saturday travel to
your deployer mechanism we've seen some
very costly equipment go through
extraordinary ground testing only to
betray astronauts on orbit is there a
feeling that there may be something
generic about the environment of space
that may be crippling such high-tech
gear and making efforts in orbit more
difficult than they need be no
absolutely not the problem is in the
difficulty of testing on the ground I
mean in in lsat I think the the
post-mission analysis showed that the
satellite behaved exactly as high school
physics would predict it would behave
the problem was that the the difficulty
of recreating that behavior on the
ground was not sufficiently appreciated
and so the practicing that was done was
not done with a system that really
behaved like the system did in space and
I think the same thing is probably true
and and I don't want to speculate on
what the cause of the failure are the
failures because we think there were
probably different things that went
wrong were on our mission however we
always knew that the the most sensitive
part of this whole system where you're
reeling wires around around pulleys is
when there's very little tension on the
wire if you're pulling on the wire it
stays where it's supposed to and it's
it's going to going to work but
recreating this environment on the
ground where there's almost no tension
on the wire was essentially impossible
we always knew that there was a regime
right at the beginning of the deployment
and the end of the retrieval process
where we were in untested territory
we've designed I say we the system was
designed so that it we thought it would
work but obviously we're smarter now and
we've got to figure out how in the
future we can properly test
and that's that's an important thing I
think we're getting out of these boats
both these flights when we're doing
fundamentally new things we've really
got to pay close attention to how we're
doing the testing than the ground else
we're going to continue to get surprised
this is Marsha done with the associated
press for Jeff Hoffman I'm wondering how
the Silver Bullet worked how you
incorporated it into the educational
video and did you get to try any tricks
on orbit the the what you saw in the
movie was about what we got we were
pretty busy than this flight as you
could see you know I we are on my very
first flight we did I think a very nice
educational sequence in on toys in space
and I think the the yo-yo was one of the
stars of that show this was for me I
think a little bit of nostalgia as well
as the fact that it was it was fun that
wraps up our questions at the Kennedy
Space Center we can come back and
entertain a few here before wrapping up
if we have any