like to welcome you all good afternoon
to the sts-61 post flight crew press
conference
uh joining us of course is the seven
member crew and uh as usual with all of
our briefings the crew will show some
slides from the mission as well as some
video that was shot on orbit
and after that we'll take our usual
question and answers from here at jsc
and check with some of the other nasa
centers with that i'll turn it over to
the commander of the flight richard
covey
thank you kyle
uh well good afternoon uh it's really a
pleasure for the sts-61 crew to be here
today a month ago today we had
snugly tucked uh
hubble into the payload bay of endeavor
and we're beginning to embark upon
the rest of the great adventure that was
the hubble servicing and repair i'd like
to briefly introduce reintroduced to you
the crew members
just so you can recognize them in their
coats and ties and
nice
suits
on my right immediately is is the pilot
and rms uh operator uh backup rms
operator uh ken bowersox uh probably
heard him called sockslot during a
mission
uh next to him is claude nicolier
claude's european space agency uh
astronaut that we were really privileged
to have on board
uh served as the rms operator and also
as flight engineer for ascent and entry
and other orbiter functions
next
are the
the odd couple and they're called the
odd couple because they perform the evas
one three and five and that's dr story
musgrave is also a payload commander
and
dr jeff hoffman
and last but
certainly not least are the even couple
performed bbas two and four
and that's tom akers air force
lieutenant colonel and dr kathy thornton
we're going to move right on into
to our film
the night assets pretty spectacular you
look out the window and it's like a
welding torch going off when the srb is
light
kt got to look at the overhead windows
and i think that was pretty spectacular
too
it looked like uh daylight behind us on
the pad and and i could follow it for
maybe 20 seconds before it went into
just
light just fire behind us
the vibrations and the the roar is
pretty much the same as in the daytime
probably the big difference is up when
you get towards srb sep
when the rockets go off to separate
those boosters it really flashes outside
the windows and it
gives me a thrill just seeing that right
there
tried to warn these guys yeah cubby
warned us but it was still exciting
the engines worked pretty well and the
next thing you know we were up on orbit
saw beautiful sunrise
because of the altitude of the hubble
space telescope we got to go into a
relatively high insert into high orbit
what we found almost immediately is this
orbit allowed us
greater views than we had seen before on
any of our flights
this was what houston looked like at
night in fact you can follow a gulf
freeway down to the bottom part of the
picture you see clear lake and texas
city and galveston all in in there
we never saw the u.s uh in the daytime
we saw it at night but this shows you uh
some of the view of the lights if you
see new orleans just going off the left
side of the screen at the far top left
is chicago
center screen is atlanta
as we come across here you can see the
lights of florida and on up the east
coast
uh post insertion is a busy time for the
crew you're adapting to zero g and uh
spectacular views uh but uh
we were able to get everything cleaned
up this and and ready for our uh stay in
orbit it shows the crew members at their
different positions and
being busy claude and
jeff
and story
and tom trying to work on our rat's nest
of photo tv equipment over in the corner
there's our beautiful payload bay again
just waiting for us to go to work out
there
here we're getting ready for the
rendezvous yeah before those guys could
go to work we had to get the orbiter up
there
and uh this next sequence will give you
a feel just how busy it is during a
rendezvous
cubby claude and i were working up front
most of the time maneuvering the orbiter
and then covey moved back to the ass
station
everybody else was busy taking pictures
like with this imax camera shooting a
laser out the window
and
getting pictures like that of the
telescope
the closer we got the more excited i got
and i was pretty impressed when i got my
first view out the window and that's
just what it looked like you can see the
blue glow from the earth below
and this is the final approach to the
telescope
cavi was flying the orbiter
in a
very professional way and
stabilized the orbiter versus a
telescope in such a position that i
could
grab it that the
remote manipulated system had been
already put in the poise for capture
position about an hour before the final
grapple and this is the final grapple we
saw the target that i was using in order
to position the end effector on the
telescope and grab it and rigidize it
and then move it in the aft cargo bay to
install it on the flight service
structure
we had checked out the suits on flight
day two so we knew we had four good
suits going into this we'd spent a lot
of hours training in the water tank and
we were all excited and ready to go do
it for real
here we are doing it for real on eva day
one uh get up stuff some breakfast down
and while you're eating breakfast you
start putting electrodes on those are
biomed electrodes to
get the electrocardiogram off
next thing you do is uh
kt and tom put you in a suit here's jeff
inside the suit
and myself you check out the suits and
uh they're all checked out uh
depressurized to your lock go outside
it's an exciting moment when you first
open the airlock and you look out and
there's the entire universe staring you
in the face here i am coming out the
first eva
um
grabbing onto the manipulator arm while
story is coming out now and i've took a
whole bunch of tools on the arm and the
arm is now
under claude's skillful guidance
carrying me over to
where i'll get the manipulator foot
restraint which will then remain
attached to the arm
we should tell you some of these eva
shots are actually speeded up two or
even four times because things move
pretty slowly
this gives you the basic idea of how we
work one person on the arm one person
moving helping free floating
the first task the the gyros
inside the the bay here i'm opening the
doors and story's coming up and
we're ready to go and jeff positions me
very carefully inside and puts my feet
inside the portable foot restraints and
here we're as we talked about earlier
changing out
four out of the range gyros
here we're working on the doors as you
recall during the flight we had a
difficult time closing the doors so with
jeff on the central handle myself on a
come along we were able to position the
doors and then work the striker plates
and get them closed
and that was something we didn't expect
and now here's myself getting this a leg
up on the solar rate change out for the
next day i'm just
undoing various bolts there so when tom
and kt come along they won't have quite
as much work to do on eva day number two
while story was doing this i was working
on the fuses it was pretty spectacular
working you can see right underneath the
the solar array there
that
this is a view from the elbow camera
looking down from the top of the solar
array
and we replaced a whole bunch of fuses
the solar rays were slewed to the xy
plane to prepare for retraction after
the end of that eva
you can see the one on the left is the
one that we expected to behave well and
it did
this uh footage is also sped up a little
bit it took several minutes for this
slew to occur
i spent most of this time when it was
happening down in the mid deck in the
airline cleaning up suits and getting
ready for the next day but i did pop my
head up every now and then to watch the
retraction so we'd know what was going
to happen for tomorrow
this is the good solar array the plus v2
array which retracted normally the
bystims are being pulled up in the
cassette and the blankets rolling
smoothly on the drum
and this is where we wanted them both to
work
the other one we could tell by a kink
and the bystander it was unlikely that
that was going to be pulled up in the
cassette that we would have to leave
this thing partially deployed
the retraction is ground commanded
however we do have a stop command on
board
and we did exercise it when this one was
retracting when the blanket began to get
a little bit slack
it seemed like the prudent thing to do
was to stop the retraction at that point
and let us take care of it by hand when
we got out there the next day this is
the kinked by stem
the bystander is two pieces of metal
that are flat when they're in the
cassette and when they're released from
the cassette roll up into tubes one
around the other
and it appeared that one of those tubes
was eight or ten inches longer than the
other so it made some loops in the
bystand
story and jeff were ivs they put
me and tom in the suits as we had done
for them the day before and sent us out
to do our work
as i said earlier this
jettison had to be done and
the disconnecting of the electrical
connections had to be done at night
because with the solar rays still
deployed it is still producing
electricity when the sun is on it
so tom had to cut some lock wire and
take some connectors off and
open the clamp while i was holding it
because the solar ray tended to flap and
move around a lot anytime anybody was
touching it
i held it up there and let it go it with
no rates on it at all it was very very
stable quad pulled me back away from it
and then
socks did the separation maneuver that
that pushed us away from it and you can
see some of the jets fire the solar ray
begins flapping and it looked like a
giant bird a giant soaring bird over the
desert it was just the most incredible
sight i was mesmerized for a period of
time just watching it
there's not much more you can say about
it it's just fabulous
you see the red sea and the gulf of aden
and it was it was one spectacular sight
on the solar array that retracted
properly they were not unable to stow it
by ground command because it wasn't
slewed in the right direction the
latches were not going to mate when it
came up to the top so we did that
manually as well tom was driving up with
a wrench although it was actually
posting on its own pretty much and i
went up to the top to be sure that i had
my hand on it when it got close to the
telescope so we didn't
do any damage
by slamming it in
we removed that one put it on the solar
ray carrier it's been brought back to
earth for people to study and see what
life is like in orbit for three years of
orbit for solar arrays
and what we can do to future solar rays
to make them better
this was our first mass handling
exercise it weighs between three and
four hundred pounds and it moves as if
it's nothing
just put your hand on it and pretty much
the just the natural forces in the suit
cause your hands to wanna be in a
semi-closed position and that's all it
takes to hang on to it
i held it in place while tom closed the
clamp
to mechanically connect it to the
telescope and then i came down to help
with the electrical connections the
connectors are driven in place by one
drive screw and we were very very
concerned about stripping that screw
because it had happened other in ground
testing at times
so we opted to drive that by hand
very very gently so that we would feel
if there were any kind of torques that
we weren't expecting we could back off
and try it again
after each eva we had to go through it
was really about a three hour process to
clean up the old suits pack them up for
the night get the new suits out before
we're ready to go here we are on the
third eva we talked about uh the use of
these searchlights from inside this is a
good example of what it was like working
at night and the people inside would
shine the light to augment our helmet
lights here i am putting
the guide studs these little two ended
bolts into the wide field planetary
camera this is so that uh
this handhold that i'm picking up now
we can then attach it and we have a
little set of nuts which we then put on
top of those
guide bolts or guide studs as we call
them so we take the hand hold up we
install it
onto the wiff pick you can see story
free floating over at the right he's
going to get into the foot restraint
right below him
i'm undoing the bolts here that hold the
whiff pick in
and then the two of us working together
actually
pull the wiff pick one out from the
telescope
and it slides out on some tracks and it
just came out
really beautifully
claude
doing the driving on the arm
claude did this so beautifully i you
know it was hardly necessary to say what
you wanted to do he almost anticipated
where we needed to be
both claude and sox did an incredible
job driving the arm
we stowed the whiff pick one on the side
of the
shuttle in a temporary stowage bracket
there
and then
extracted the wiff pick number two and
remember this is about four times real
speed we were doing this very slowly
so slowly that you probably wouldn't
want to watch the whole thing
in real time
but it came out with without a hitch
and then the
delicate process of inserting it in
again with me on one side and story on
the other side went very well just just
beautifully this was a
very finely designed instrument
for eva repair and handling it's a good
example of what you can do when you
design something right
the story was around back in the apollo
days and he had commented that nobody
had ever taken a hasselblad into space
since apollo and so he arranged to
have this reactivated and there i am
using it and it we got some fabulous
pictures
with that
here we are putting on the the
magnetometer it's it's a unit which we
basically put on top of the old
magnetometers so we never remove the old
ones and then we we screw it in into
place
um and we're 50 feet above
the payload bay and uh so not only was
it uh quite a view looking towards the
earth but looking down towards the
shuttle was pretty spectacular
eva day four uh as we mentioned the swap
out
the new costar
instrument for the hsp
opening the doors they're getting into
the bay and then it got dark fairly
quickly so we did the hsp removal
in the dark
and you can see the searchlight
providing extra light for us there
kt then took the
hsp
down and stowed it on a temporary
fixture over on the port side
then came and pulled out the new co-star
unit from its
stowage container
brought it up and then
held it here and then pointed the corner
down toward me as i came around to
remove the dob or deployable optical
bench
protective cover
all those little mirrors and coast are
right in that corner and they're
retracted down inside there and then
those were deployed several inches up
out of the co-star
several days
after we had come home
getting ready to
put co-star in again we spent quite a
bit of time making sure it's perfectly
lined up and again with only about an
inch of clearance
kt did a super job of just giving me
millimeters of control when i asked for
it
guiding it in
and she might want to say something
about how it felt
uh it was very easy to move but it was
uh all i could see in front of my face
was a box so tom was my eyes to put it
in that little hole
this is uh getting the new co-processor
out and then we did a swap out on the
end of the arm and i got on the end of
the arm and kt uh behind me there to
manage tools and the co-processor
went up using the power tool as you
noticed here
all the bolts that we had to do except
those
solar array connector bolts we used a
power tool on and our tools really held
up well
and served us well during the mission
coming back in this is a good shot of
coming back in the air lock again this
is four or five times actual speed i
think you have to be really careful
coming into the airline it's got a
fragile
covering on it
going out at the end of every day we had
to untether the mfr or manipulator foot
restraint so if we had to get rid of it
overnight it would come loose from the
arm
see all the tools hanging off of each of
us as we come in you had to be very
careful coming inside
and then again at the the end of each
eva
getting out of suits reconfiguring tools
and suits changing out batteries for the
next day
it shows uh covey clawden socks
configuring mli for the covers that we
were going to put on the magnetometers
on the last eva ev8 day number
five and here's eva day number five
i was on the mfr day five and the other
two days that jeff and i were out uh
jeff was on the mfr so we took turns at
that here's jeff is getting the
ghrs that the goddard high rate
spectrometer our repair kit
out here's myself and jeff working on
mercedes the solar ray drive electronics
changing that out
there's not much to look at here it's
just very intensive workout doing mostly
electric
connectors
for about three hours this is one of the
more spectacular views up on top here
looking straight down to earth 370 miles
we're getting ready to do uh put the
covers those mli covers that we had
constructed on top of the magnetometers
here's deployment of the main solar ray
boom it just took a couple ounces to get
it started down but the motors were
unable to deploy that so jeff and i just
with a couple ounces on a wrench we're
able to deploy the
what's called the primary drive
mechanism but it's really just the solar
ray boom
here's deployment of the the new solar
rays the blankets
which will go out there and convert
solar energy into electrical energy
but this is the the final completion
really of the eva here they're able to
deploy these while we were still out and
also to be able to deploy the high gain
antennas and all these things it was
great to get these things done because
they did have eva backups in case any of
these mechanisms
did not work
here we are coming inside after the
final eva eba day number five and uh
we never really did let our hair down
until uh this final
this final day here we breathed a slight
sigh of relief on each day when we
because we got each day's job done
but i'll tell you we've been working at
this for years incredible attention to
detail and we did have a moment of
jubilation
here although of course we had many
weeks to wait to see that hubble really
did work
this is flight day nine the release day
you saw the telescope in the back of the
bay ready for release first we had to
capture the telescope using the arm you
see here the final approach
to the grapple friction of the telescope
then we release the latches
on the flat surface structure lifted
hubble over the flight surface structure
over the cargo bay
and here you can see the release of the
telescope
the arm is being pulled away
and the socks is at the controls of the
orbiter for the separation maneuver
yeah after claude released the telescope
i fired a few pulses to get us backing
away
and the telescope slowly started
drifting
once it was at a safe distance we put
some cameras up in the window and i hope
we got some good photos especially with
the imax camera
and that's what i look like a pretty
majestic sight with that big telescope
and its brand new solar arrays drifting
away
we got lots of film and
we can't wait to to see it i think we're
making an advanced screening here on
thursday or friday of some of our imax
footage
after uh deploy uh we did this as sax
talked about earlier had a day off i
showed some of the activities on our
light day and actually on every day
reading the mail that we'd get up on our
to our computers uh
here's uh socks uh doing some trash
compaction and management and kt's
taking care of the laundry
and um
we also uh on the day before entry uh
uh practiced uh
uh landing with our new pilot simulator
it's a little on board
computer simulation of the landing tasks
and it true proved extremely useful to
us for getting ready for landing
we had
great passes over
north america and europe and this is a
passover
the mediterranean sea or south of melton
and sea you can see sicily and the
southern tip of italy
we just
could see a row on the disappearance on
the left hand side and brindisy on the
right hand side
a little later we had passes over the
delta of the nile and you can see cairo
in the middle
and a little further north the lights of
tel aviv and the
west coast
and here's the west coast of the us as
we complete our trip around the world
you can see san francisco bay up in the
center los angeles down at the bottom
las vegas coming into view las vegas is
outrageously bright
you could see the strip from 350 miles
this is houston take a look in the upper
left corner and you'll see a very bright
fireball meteor come through the
atmosphere
there you go there it is
and you can also see dallas and san
antonio
this is looking up the east coast you
can see lightning storms you could see a
little bit of aurora up there looking
back towards the west now over florida
you can see all the way back to houston
we had a lot of long hours and intense
days and when covey said it was time to
go to bed it was time to go to bed and
he covered the windows and sent the kids
down to the mid deck with five of us
sleeping down there it was pretty cozy
you knew if you moved you were waking
somebody else up
but we managed to all find a place to
strap our sleeping bags and set story to
the airlock
for that on our get ready to come home
day this is flight control checkout
we're making sure all the orbiter
systems are working we brought home
everything that we had intended to bring
home with the exception of that one
solar array and the solar ray carrier
looks like a tool board in your garage
with one tool missing so we call that
our dead tool silhouette
this is hst it continued to stay with us
through the rest of the flight and we
called it our morning star because we
would see it every morning when the sun
was reflecting off of it
all missions have to end they end with a
deorbit and landing hopefully and this
shows us getting ready for uh for
deorbit and then
the infrared pictures
from ksc and uh cape canaveral air force
station of our uh of our turn around to
hack
and and approach to uh runway three
three at the kennedy space center like i
said before there's nothing like
bringing a space shuttle back to kennedy
space center
we had an extraordinary night to fly
across florida with the lights and and
to make this landing
onto on the runway 3-3 orbiter flies
exceptionally well for a
a big glider
and we felt
very good about safely rolling out to
stop and bringing sts-61
the servicing and repair mission to a
conclusion
you