thank you very much the first thing i'd
like to do is thank all of you i know
that there are a lot of people here
today who made a lot of contributions to
this mission and the mission went very
well
because of all the work that everybody
did here at jsc
jpl and the kennedy space center and
many other places around the united
states and around the world
this mission was a real team effort
between a lot of groups that
don't usually work together on projects
just because we don't usually do that
many projects with the jet propulsion
lab but in in this particular case
everybody worked together as a team
and the end result i think uh speaks
well for that teamwork
and so i'd like to thank everybody out
in the audience who participated in one
way or another
to this mission
the second thing i'd like to do is
introduce the crew up here and then
we'll get on with the video on the
slides
to my right is the pilot kevin chilton
and
then we have the payload commander linda
godwin
and the ms-1 and uh the second shift
commander j app
and our ms2
are basically flight engineer the fellow
that helps us going uphill and downhill
uh rich clifford
and uh afraid
and then we have uh tom jones who is the
payload commander on the second shift
and will be the payload commander on
sts-68 and they're going to be off doing
this mission again in a different period
of the year
and that's basically the flight crew
and
all of them worked very hard as part of
this overall team and overall crew and
with that in mind now i'd like to get on
to the interesting hopefully the
interesting part of this afternoon and
we'd like to show you a little bit of
our crew movie and then some slides we
took of the planet earth while we were
up there so if we can roll the movie
this was our patch
uh the kevin chilton was in in charge of
uh making sure it all got approved most
of the design was actually from tom
jones
uh this is us while we're on orbit you
can tell that we're having a good time
this was our
crew press conference uh while we were
up there
and uh just gives you another chance uh
to see all of us up in space
this was uh the morning we actually
launched we're headed out to the pad uh
we went out twice and uh and launched on
the second attempt so we were we were
happy to do that it turned out that the
weather wasn't that great after we
launched so if we hadn't gotten off that
day we'd have been waiting around for
some time
the vehicle really feels great when
those main engines finally start they
run for about seven seconds or so and we
launched right at the crack of dawn
so as you can see here i know some of
you were down there for the launch it
had to be absolutely uh beautiful the
only better view was uh in the rearview
mirror
that was the view we had as we were
headed up there
and um we've got a number of launch
pictures here just because uh i think it
was an incredible launch
you can see we're arcing up toward the
north heading into a 57 degree orbit
it was a beautiful crisp morning so they
were able to track us for a long range
so we've got a lot of uh of good launch
video here
and
it feels like you're awfully small out
on the end of this giant explosion which
is exactly what it looks like here
you'll see the srbs come off and then
you'll see a shot from the orbiter
itself as the srbs come off
and then you can see the it was so clear
that morning that they've got some good
shots here of the srbs falling away or
floating away
and the main engines continued to burn
our children told us we looked like a
star going over the horizon
and
really really felt great to get into
orbit that day
here's the external tank separation
we don't see this real time and that's
probably good that you don't see all
those things floating around
might make you just a little bit nervous
but
that's all
basically ice and things like that
floating around it's not really a
problem
and the next shot is one
jay took after we rotated the vehicle to
get some footage of the external tank
and linda was shooting some 35
millimeter shots at this time to get
data on the tank
now we're on orbit this is the sunrise
and as the sun comes up it's just a
beautiful view of seeing the tail of the
orbiter come into view and then our
payload in the payload bay you can see
the large antenna structure uh the jpl
project and the german and italian space
agency it's a large antenna and in the
foreground where you can't see it is uh
the
platform for the
sensor from the langley
research center
in the forward flight deck sits busy
here putting in one of the 412 maneuvers
that we did during the mission uh
basically wait for one maneuver to time
out and then enter in the next one um
those allowed us to do some yaw
steering to help the the radar
ambiguities another major thing we
performed during the mission were all
the tape changes and tom's doing one
here we did a i think 163 tape changes
on time during the mission
uh that's where all the radar data was
recorded and we had two recorders on the
the left side of the yeah flight deck
where tom is working here and another
one on the other side for three total
the flight deck was where the action was
on this mission there's no doubt about
it and we had some extra panel covers
made with velcro squares on them you can
see them in the back and
basically it held all of our cameras and
lenses and sid was using the len hop and
chili's just surrounded by a hasselblad
camera bodies and a spot meteor or two
and
uh ready to go to work
this is our linhof film changing bag i
did it a couple of times during the
mission we had to change out our linhof
film
and once your hands are in there you
can't come out to your done and there's
you've got exposed film in there a new
film and the role you're
trying to work it into and finally
success
i think jay did most of our film
changing during the mission briefly a
nice view from one of the aft cameras
showing the payload and our aft windows
um
the iflight deck was really where we did
all of our uh work on the daylight
passes we were doing a lot of
photography and support of the radar
observations
on the left there you see the linhof
camera mounted to a bracket on window
number
seven and you could tilt that to line it
up with the radar bore sight and then
rich here is working with a 40
millimeter lens out the window and we
had a lot of handheld shots of the
targets of interest to the radar and the
maps folks this is a sweeping pass
coming southeast across the california
coastline
north of san francisco across the uh
approaches to the sierra nevada and very
soon you're going to see some landmarks
out here that you'll recognize from your
geography lessons
the sierra nevada is a snow-capped range
here you come into view of pyramid lake
right here and then lake tahoe coming
into view at the bottom of the screen
and as we walk down the sierra nevada we
saw our super site for hydrology at
mammoth mountain right next to mono lake
here this is where mammoth mountain is
and then if you follow the owens valley
down the front of the sierra nevada
you'll come to
owens dry lake right down at the bottom
here stepping across to panama valley
and then death valley and here you see
cotton ball basin and the bad water the
lowest point in north america at some
200 feet below sea level this is a jet
propulsion lab
graphic
showing our radar imagery collected on
the mission laid onto a topographic map
of death valley this is the northern end
of the valley and cotton ball basin and
as you fly
through this virtual reality
presentation north out of death valley
we sweep around the northern end of the
panament range
and this is the stove pipe wells target
in death valley that we imaged many
times on the mission and we studied the
interaction of the surface there with
the wind and measured that with the
radar roughness measurements now you can
look back south down death valley to
cotton ball basin and bad water and
these are the panama ranges and the
black mountains on the left
here on the atlantic again you see uh
jay using the
90 millimeter linhoff camera so we had
two big lenses out the back window to
document the radar
sweep across the earth and i'm using the
spot meter here to get the right
exposure level for all of all the
cameras we're using on the flight tech
this is siberia it's so bright with this
snow cover that you actually have to use
sunglasses to get a good look at the
surface down there and we saw the
trans-siberian railway region many times
in the first third of the mission as the
top of our orbit took us over siberia we
had a lot of ecological and geological
targets in that region
now we have a picture here of jay and
rich conducting one of the many
maneuvers
on the flight to point the radar
accurately
and uh as they entered the mute uh
entered the maneuver into the orbiter
computers then the orbiter did a slow
walk during our passes to point the
radar uh just so
this is a the sahara desert region we
had a lot of investigations here to use
the radar to penetrate below the dry
sand in the sahara to look at the
bedrock below and the drainages revealed
by penetrating the sand sheet here show
us how those drainages were formed and
what the past climate of the sahara was
like here's our payload commander linda
godwin on the aft flight deck getting
ready for a pass down uh over the
ukraine and the caspian sea here you see
the many farms in
the ukraine beautiful area from out
there getting down to the area near the
oil fields at the top of the caspian sea
and here's the beautiful geological
feature there going out to the caspian
which is a very interesting feature
studied
by a lot of the scientists here at
johnson space center the level of the
caspian sea has changed greatly and by
studying features like the seacoast here
the folks here
can tell how high the sea level has gone
or how low it's gone it actually has
gone up about two meters in the last few
months about six feet
you can imagine what that would do to us
here in houston you see the roads and so
forth down there here's a beautiful
picture of the radar and the payload bay
showing
everything out there and here's the uh
redshift wearing blue shirts on uh
that's right on
the flight deck and you can see just how
busy it was getting ready for one of
these data passes overlaid here with on
the outside is our
tv cameras out in the payload bay on the
inside that little square is the radar
so you can see how much more is revealed
by the radar these white blobs that you
see turning into black in the radar area
are frozen lakes in canada
we were talking to some of those people
on frozen lakes uh down here on the
shuttle amateur radio experiment uh
built by folks at motorola and here at
johnson space center and we loved
talking to people on the ground with
that it really made us feel connected
with them we talked to students in nine
schools throughout the world that's not
all we did up there with the schools we
spent a lot of time on educational
activities up there both live downlinks
that some of you may have seen
in making an educational film on
geography which we hope will be released
for students in uh schools here real
soon
it's shift handover and sids kick the
blue shift down to the mid deck and
that's what you see us doing tom coming
down and i'm shortly followed by myself
here we're coming down to the mid deck
to do some of the orbiter activities
associated with uh with maintaining the
spacecraft in good condition you're
going to see a shot of tj here working
out on the ergometer right behind tom
over his left shoulder is our rowing
machine which we also carried up there
some people use the rower some people
use the ergometer for longer flights
these things are almost critical to the
operation and the infamous galley is
just above the rower there where we had
some problems this was an experiment of
moving a rigid body in space
getting ready for the sleep shift it's
uh sped up a little bit it's two to one
just so we can get it done in time
then we had to slow the film down to
show it to you
but the sleep stations were really handy
we had a good time with them we used a
four-tier sleep station the bottom tier
was used for strictly stowage
and
and we did hot bunk
but the the sleep stations really
provide a good quiet and uh
light tight area for us to get a restful
six to eight hours of sleep during each
period you're going to follow this with
some more orbiter activities
mainly some meal operations and some
cleaning and you'll see the crew doing
different operations and how we maintain
good hygiene in space
this is chile trying to show off his
what a body
but it's interesting to take a sponge
bath up there which is of course the way
we had to do it you just use the hygiene
hose and put some liquid soap on the rag
along with uh some water and wash off
your body especially needed after an
exercise period a quick view of some of
the food operations behind
the crew on the forward flight deck
lockers are three food trays which you
can see are in use right now
they were useful for stowage this is a
water dump a unique view of that chile
has set up the water dump looking out
the pilots window number one and then
giving you a close-up view of how it
forms the the ice particles immediately
on expulsion into space
and following this we're going to have
some other experiments with
space science here this is seeing how a
gyroscope works in space these are our
gyro stabilized binoculars and what i've
done is i've just turned them on and you
can see how they try to maintain a
position in space these were
particularly useful for looking at some
of the earth observation sites for
close-up views
now uh
now we're over to chile
well you'd think someone had flown
before and know how to eat cashews in
space but
i got a little help there
she knows
got a lot of help i should say
you gotta enjoy yourself while you're up
there in the little free time that you
have between in particular when you got
the whole shift for both shifts together
and tom found a unique way to use the uh
tips paper roll when the roll was out he
turned it into a blow gun for shooting
uh malted milk balls across the cockpit
there
i think jay was declared the champion
the only one who could successfully grab
one
rich had done an experiment with fluids
on his previous flight and so uh he he
convinced us that we needed to do a
little experiment on this flight and
this is always a good thing to show the
school children how fluids behave
floating free in gravity and to
demonstrate to them that this is not in
fact a bubble but a solid sphere of
liquid and
rick demonstrates that here as it wicks
away onto the
towel just before it hits the overhead
window
this is the entry into the beginning of
my favorite part of the flight which is
entry and here we are on fcs checkout
day
the day before our first attempt to come
home we didn't have many payloads that
moved on this so we had to throw the
elevon in here coming up during the
fcs checkout
that the radar is pretty static back
there in the aft
but entry was pretty uh fantastic and of
course there's always a little bit of
regret with your final uh view of the
last
sunset on orbit before you come home but
as the sun sets on endeavor here we come
back to a spectacular sequence here that
tom jones shot
carrying the camcorder in the back seat
during entry here you can see over
should sid shoulder in the front the
orange glow out the front and now tom
zooms in on his mirror to look out the
overhead window and here's the wake of
the orbiter during entering so you can
see the hot plasma forming a plume of
fire behind the orbiter
outside the window it's still hot and
glowing out my window you can see that
i've gone into daylight and then this
tremendous right turn that we made for
the majority of re-entry around the
crater lake and mount shasta and mount
lassen in california and on down the san
joaquin valley was just a tremendous
re-entry view as we came down the whole
length of the state of california
sid did a beautiful job rolling us onto
the hack
and flew right on the money all the way
around here you see him rolling out on
final on the outer glide slope
tom still holding this 500 pound camera
now
looking out the uh over my right
shoulder you can see the uh ramp there
at edwards air force base and tom was a
real trooper carrying that thing all the
way down
through landing here having at the ready
to film a few sequences here
an absolutely beautiful day to land at
edwards air force base and sid made an
equally beautiful touchdown nice and
smooth on the hard runway there runway
2-2 we were constrained because of our
weight in cg to land on a hard surface
runway so we had no choice other than
kennedy and edwards 2-2 for for coming
home this day and we were happy to come
home
after waving off the first opportunity
the drag shoot worked as advertised and
rollout was great again tom looking over
my right shoulder here as we jettison
the drag chute uh rolling out on the
runway at edwards air force base to
wheel stop
i think after wheel stop is kind of a
bittersweet moment for the whole crew
you're certainly happy and pleased
to be back home uh you hate to see the
mission end but uh one more time around
the cockpit here uh congratula
congratulations for sid for a wonderful
landing and a happy flight deck crew and
no longer a rookie tom jones getting
ready for his next flight
we've got
a lot of ways of sharing with you and
one of them is the film for the things
that moved on board but mostly what
moved on board was the earth
and us so we'd like to use a few of the
uh remaining minutes to show you a
number of still pictures that we took
with a lot of the cameras that we had on
board and uh
the first fewer of some of the crew
all right this for those of you in the
audience who created it is our morning
mail
and uh it would come out of the
teleprinter over here or out of the tags
i beg your pardon and uh
tips tips
you just went through the whole history
of the faith that's right
and uh would come out and uh the crew
would get together and look it over and
post it to the books
this is uh another shot of waking up in
the morning here's the redshift in their
bunks we thought the bunks were really
swell pieces of gear and we all got real
good sleep in them
this is what it looks like getting ready
to come home this is linda and her best
friend on the
crew and uh it truly was a good friend
of all of ours the suit we got to know
it uh real well after uh three wave offs
attempts uh at the cape and uh we're
very glad to use it finally to come down
to edwards
and uh finally this is a a still shot of
our flight deck and you can see the
myriad of cameras here in a little uh
more organized fashion than we normally
had them uh including the big four inch
by five inch arrow linhoff camera and
what we're going to do now is to show
you some of the results of some of these
cameras and i should point out uh also
on the flight deck since there's some
folks here that are from all of the
centers that contributed these are the
integrated science timeline from the jet
propulsion laboratory down in the lower
left
some maps from jet propulsion laboratory
right under the linhof camera and some
maps that we created here at johnson
space center right by tom's belly there
and we used all of those to find the
features that we're going to next show
you
well on the next slide is uh one
introduction to the earth this is up
around uh alaska right on the coast and
i think you can see how low we were
this uh which is just about the view you
head out the window shows you some of
the beautiful glaciers and the mountains
on the coast of alaska
as jace mentioned we were pretty low on
the trip and
probably the the most uh exciting thing
to do is to look through some of the
cameras we had with the magnification on
them most spectacularly i'd say was the
35 millimeter with a 300 millimeter lens
and then a multiplier which gave you a
600 millimeter effective
zoom and watch the world go by this is
san francisco bay
in the lower center you can see the
golden gate bridge and if you look
closely on this photograph you can
actually see the towers of the golden
gate bridge
as we flew by so it was the detail that
we were able to enjoy up there was very
dramatic
also from a mission point of view here
we see just off the coast at the or past
the mouth of the golden gate you can see
the extension of the san andreas fault
here that runs
up the coast of california and then off
into the ocean as you go a little
further north here of san francisco
my hometown so i had to show this
picture this is los angeles and we had
believe it or not three clear days over
l.a
and actually some really pretty
photography of course some interest the
san andreas fault continues on down
through this area and just off the
photograph to the north is would be the
epicenter of the last major earthquake
they had in southern california out by
northridge
but of course the most important picture
here and i point this out for our
training
lead don thomas is dodger stadium which
is located right here
on into some of our science objectives
this is the mammoth mountain area mono
lake california in the top right hand
corner of the picture you may have heard
of
and then just down below that area is
crowley lake and those are the pointers
we used looking out the window to take
photography of this mountain area right
here in the right center of the frame
which is mammoth mountain california
it's a big ski resort but we weren't
taking pictures to for future ski trips
the interest in this area
of course for california is a hydrology
interest
you know they've come out of a period of
drought
and now they're in a pretty reasonable
shape for water consumption out there
but there's always the threat of a
drought in this area because of the
large population in southern california
taking the water out of the sierra
nevada and using it for drinking and
other purposes
one thing we've never been able to do is
predict the amount of water runoff from
the snowpack we're still using the same
techniques we used 50 years ago sending
skiers up into the mountains during the
winter and pounding pipes into the snow
to estimate the depth of the snowpack
but that doesn't really give you the
density of the moisture in that snowpack
because if you've ever skied or been in
the mountains you know you can have some
dry snow days some wet snow days and so
just measuring the depth doesn't really
answer the question and there's a lot of
hope that the
imagery taken by the
radars on this particular flight and on
future flights will help us to better
predict the actual moisture content of
the snow
in the sierra nevada and at other sites
around the world
so that we can better predict runoff and
forecast the
possibility or probability of droughts
for the coming season and then we can
better manage and ration our water
system
further on down the sierras and just a
little bit to the east from mammoth
mountain was our another major site we
had and that is uh death valley and as
we pointed out earlier on the film
the area and around death valley was
interesting to us
from a scientific point of view for a
couple reasons
uh scientists are studying the uh
movement of sand in this area uh aeolian
effects they call it
the movement of topsoil if you will due
to the wind effects and so one of their
test sites up near the sand dunes in the
northern portion of the valley was being
observed in addition to that areas known
as alluvial fans which are large runoffs
mostly caused by water
eroding the mountainsides and there are
huge fans out in the
death valley region that we think were
caused back in the last period of of
glaciation in this area and we don't
have any real good method of dating
these fans or mapping them around the
world and the radar provides this
opportunity to do that and turns out to
be a good platform for measuring them
and once we've calibrated the radar
based on these sites in death valley
we'll be able to to measure them all
around the world
i'd like to go to a radar image of the
same picture
uh here we are looking at death valley
again
and a similar image that we saw in the
motion picture
that tom narrated where we flew down
into the valley
using the radar imagery so
the big advantages to the radar is it
gives us an opportunity to look at these
things in a way we can't look at them
and get information that we cannot get
from visual photography or for or from
infrared that gives us a year-round
capability to do this whether it's sunny
out or cloudy
so
next frame switches us all the way
across north america to the east coast
and
if you look
in western virginia you'll recognize
i've got this one okay you'll recognize
the two forks of the shenandoah river
here as they run up towards the potomac
this is the
south fork and the north fork of the
shenandoah river
in the shenandoah valley right here and
the two forks join and then run up
with the shenandoah river to the potomac
up here in western maryland at harpers
ferry
this is a great picture because it shows
how sun glint can light up
hydrologic features like these river
valleys and we looked for this all
around the world as part of our
documentation of the areas being imaged
by the radar but it also just gives you
a great view of some
regional history this is the blue ridge
running right along here from front
royal virginia you can actually in this
photograph trace the skyline drive up
here along the mountain ridge as it goes
south towards north carolina
also uh from front royal all the way
south past
mata sutton mountain here you can see
the whole area that stonewall jackson
made famous back in 1862 when he
confounded the yankee armies in this
entire shenandoah area and then later at
cedar creek in 1864 phil sheridan
cleaned the rebels out of the shenandoah
at a famous battle here so this is a
great uh view for me personally i've
tromped over a lot of this area and it
was great to see it from orbit
and this was just to the
south of a big radar swath that we
repeated on many days that cut across
the appalachians in pennsylvania
this is a superb view of
the
new york city area at night and
we were all struck by the beauty of the
cities in north america and around the
world but particularly in our own
country
by the um the the star-spangled effect
of the cities on the black velvet
background of the earth and you can see
a lot of detail in this picture this is
manhattan island here with the dark
oblong of central park
uh in the original uh negative you can
see the two lights from ellis and
liberty islands and the statue of
liberty is about right there
jfk airport is here and of course this
is brooklyn and queens
and
long island stretching out into the uh
the ocean to the east over here is
staten island and the new jersey coast
up along the hudson river proceeding on
up towards west point which is rich's
alma mater and these these sites were
just uh stunningly beautiful each night
as we came up across the continent
here we skip across the atlantic one of
the oceanographic sites that we imaged
uh almost every day was uh the straits
of gibraltar and the radar imagery here
was aimed at looking at internal waves
and the circulation of ocean currents in
and out of the mediterranean
as we flew over each day now you can't
see any of the currents here in this
picture but you can see a lot of the
regional geology
this is spain
the sierra nevada here is snow capped
over along the mediterranean coast
you can see from gibraltar here around
the
headlines out into the atlantic this is
cadiz
and sevilla
one of the larger cities in southern
spain is right here
across the straits of gibraltar is
tangier and then you see the first
traces of the atlas mountain stretching
off into north africa in this picture
and this is a wide angle shot
that gives you a good sweep over the
mediterranean
we were actually much closer to the
ground visually by using the naked eye
with our telephoto lenses
this is a shot of kuwait city
in the head of the persian gulf
and
this is the persian gulf stretching up
here to the chatel arab and the border
with iraq and this is the city area
itself and the amount of detail in this
photograph is really quite amazing you
can see the large international airport
here even down to the white blocks at
each end of the runway
we could also see a lot of the street
grid very clearly the docks here in the
harbor and down to the
left edge of the photograph are some oil
fields and you can see a faint trace of
the soot left on the sand from the fires
of about three years ago and linda notes
that um when she flew with jay on
sts 37 three years ago this entire area
was uh black
soot covered and there was a huge smoke
poll of course over this entire area so
the change is quite dramatic
in the previous view if you just move
north of kuwait city up into just inland
of the north end of the persian gulf
this is another area in iraq
most the time we fly around the world we
don't have a whole lot of insight into
the politics that are going on on the
ground
but in this area of iraq the
the marshy area
in the i guess as you're viewing this
the photo in the upper left corner most
of the upper part has been drained and
now sudam hussein has set fires in that
area basically to try to drive out the
his foes that live there so these were
one type of the
human made fires that we we did identify
on orbit for uh
uh
science reasons in terms of our air
pollution sensor but also it's just kind
of interesting picture here because that
gives you some insight into what's going
on politically on the ground in this
part of the world
and this is lake bolkas in kazakhstan
a couple of things to point out here
first of all you'll notice that it's ice
covered and in a lot of the northern
hemisphere that we flew over during our
mission we saw a lot of ice and the
state of the water on the ground is of
interest under the radar people because
uh their instrument receives a different
signal from the ground depending on
how the water is whether it's
flooded arid or frozen or some in
between state and you can see the ice is
beginning to crack on our mission in
april we really saw this kind of uh both
in canada and in russia and siberia and
kazakhstan and basically the northern
hemisphere we saw the change of state of
the world they're going from winter to
spring another thing that we tracked and
north is basically down or to the lower
left corner in this picture and you can
see the snow line here
and this is typical of how we could see
the snow line on the ground and at
various parts of
the world as we went around we did see
it receding toward the north during the
mission
that's typical the kind of observations
we tried to keep to help out the
investigators so they can interpret
their radar data
and this is the aral c at one time it
was the fourth largest uh body of fresh
water in the world and it's slowly been
shrinking now this is an area that's
been photographed several times from
space it's one way we've been able to
keep an eye on it and that's basically
induced by humans uh softening off water
for irrigation for their cotton fields
so this part of the world definitely is
a changing state and we had a radar site
about 100 miles north of here so
we had our ground tracks take us near
this area several times during the
mission
this is uh
the burma and bangladesh if you can
imagine at the top of this slide is
is south
and over here another example of how we
could see fires from space it took a
little practice by the way to make sure
that we were identifying fires and and
not smoke that i mean not clouds uh but
become came easier during the mission
and when you look real closely you can
tell the difference because there are
always a point sources basically for the
fires although in this picture there are
so many of them they almost start to
look like clouds if you can't see the
source of the fire
and over here is mouth of the ganges
river
and
just shows you the kind of things we can
also see from orbit the sediment
washing into the water and if you can
imagine almost uh east of here and out
of the the upper right corner of the
slide is calcutta
and this is yeah that's a view of lake
baikal again in central russia it's just
above the mongolian border
and this is as you can see the entire
lake is covered in ice
i saw the same view last december 92 on
sts-53 and uh one of the interesting
things that tom's going to be able to
see is by look flying over it in august
he's going to see that the lake should
be free by that time and should have a
different color another interesting fact
is that the lake looks almost white the
ice is white however when you look at
lake balkash it was a kind of a blue ice
so that's interesting feature which both
of them were imaged by the radar it
might be interesting to see the
difference between them you can see some
features here
this is the salinga river delta shown up
here and the city of varcoust is just
right around in this position here
continuing our walk across asia we're
looking at the kamchatka peninsula here
a radar site looking at uh several
things one ice floes in the city of cost
which is here we're looking to the uh to
the south on this view here and uh
volcanoes the bessie miani and uh
kirchikoya and chile is looking at me
very funny about my russian speaking
capabilities
but you can see clearly some of the sea
ice that's formed along the coast here
along the pacific ocean
this is uh in the curiel island chain
just off the the southern edge of
kamchatka this is only cotton island and
you see the remnants of two large
volcanoes with their calderas
this was a very pretty site to us this
is osaka airport the floating airport
they built in the
in the osaka bay
and that's one long runway
possibly using it for a contingency
landing site
maybe not
uh
we're in the philippines now a little
bit
south of
kimchatka and we're looking at mount
pinatubo
which is
one of the volcanoes or the volcano in
the in the philippines that made so much
noise and news
some years ago when it erupted and
you'll recall that
as a result of that clark air force base
down here eventually wound up being
closed as a result of that and the
political climate but the eruption put
so much ash on it that it was
economically
not smart to go back and recover it
one of the concerns now is
because of
all the flows and everything coming down
from mount pinatubo uh they're becoming
concerned about eventual mudslides and
what that may have on the area around
the volcano is around as well as the
villagers and the villages and
everything that are located around the
volcano
we imaged it uh with our handheld
photography and we also imaged it uh
with the srl with the radar and this is
a picture of what it looks like from the
radar you can see that you get a lot you
get different detail you see different
things when you're looking with the
radar so they complement each other and
it's nice to have both of the
photographs to compare the two
and
and and learn more about what you're
looking at and what you're studying
without actually having to have people
all over the uh all over the site
that you're imaging at that particular
time
this is a shot of another site that we
imaged a lot it's a real close-up of the
galapagos islands and um you can see
several volcanoes on them and um they're
basically a giant uh shield volcanoes
down here and uh the galapagos are very
interesting uh islands because there
hadn't been a lot of contact between
them and other parts of the world so
there are some very interesting species
that live out there as we were flying
over the islands on our on our
flight you may recall one time we called
down and indicated that we saw a rather
dark cloud
over uh part of one of the islands and
we weren't sure exactly what it was but
it was darker than uh than
the typical clouds you would see from
space and about 24 hours later the
ground uh
payload community got back to us and
told us that there was indeed a fire on
the islands you may have read about it a
little bit since then the fire's
been burning and it's been threatening
some of the
interesting species down there including
some
large tortoises i guess
so we took some srl photography of this
area also with the radar
this is um
the one constellation
that i can recognize i've always
decided that if nobody else could
recognize additional constellations if
we ever lost our inertial units on orbit
we'd have to go around around the world
till i found orion
and uh this is orion here you can see
the most uh most visible part of it here
and um
it's
as you see it it's uh just above the
atmosphere and you can see some of the
aurora
here
and so overall we think this is a pretty
spectacular photograph obviously
the stars are pretty big because we had
to expose it for some period of time in
order to see it because it shot at night
i was very excited to see the aurora on
this flight because my last flight was
into a 39 degree inclination and we
couldn't didn't get to see the aurora
from there
i'll tell you a couple things about it
first of all it's um seeing it the the
photographs really do do justice to it
in terms of its um
color and
and basic visual characteristics so
being able to look at a photograph of it
is very close to seeing it up there in
orbit the big difference is that it
actually dances around a lot so if you
can see um and we and we there is some
motion picture or a camcorder
photography of it and uh that does a um
pretty good job of capturing the
movement of it it's it's amazing that it
jumps around the way it does
and um
and the last thing that you can't see
from the ground unfortunately is the
fact that you're actually flying through
it i mean here we're kind of looking out
at it but uh in this case we're either i
don't know whether we're nose forward or
tail forward at this time but we've
either just flown through this or we're
getting ready to fly through it and it's
actually amazing seeing this stuff up
there
going up you know well above what you
would normally consider the atmosphere
and then you're actually flying through
it
and this gives you just a little bit
better shot of what it what it looks
like out there this is the payload bay
of the orbiter
and the tail
and
you can see we're
flying
through or have just flown through it
and you can also see an rcs thruster jet
firing here
so it's a it's a pretty uh amazing
photograph um
we shot quite a few photographs in order
to get a few of these that actually
turned out because they're so difficult
to expose
but we thought it was worthwhile and jay
got a lot of film on board for us
to be able to expose a lot of
photographs and wind up with a few
to bring down to i think really capture
for folks here on the ground what it
looks like to see this up in space it's
probably the most beautiful part of this
particular mission i thought was looking
out and seeing the aurora