we were going to start out with a series
of slides and follow that with a video
of course the slides and also the video
we're silent we will provide the
narration and we hope that what we can
do although it's not totally adequate
but what we hope to do is show you a
slice of what it's like to be on orbit
and to conduct a mission a fantastic
missions such as sts-80 so if we could
cue up the first slide we'll get started
well the one thing we know is that you
can't have a mission until you have a
patch and I was assigned as patched
chairman on this flight so low-key about
my goal was to come up with the patch it
told a little bit of story about the
mission before I get started I can't
necessarily take credit for this design
though real Mike sandy who was a an
artist for Lockheed Martin was moved
back east now came up with this design
but what did I tell you and the center
top portion of the patch is obvious Paz
satellite the spectrograph astronomy
satellite that we deployed on day one
connected it at the bottom of the three
red lines which are a portion of the
astronauts symbol and those are there to
represent in fact the astronaut office
involvement with these satellites the
two satellites we took up with both free
fliers and for a large portion did a lot
of science on their own but we would
like to emphasize our portion in getting
in there and help conducting the science
at the bottom portion that is the wake
shield satellite that the story was and
was deeply involved with the entire time
it was deployed you'll notice in the
dark blue background they're stars
they're 16 white stars represent a day
for each one star for each day of the
flight there's also two larger blue
stars which were to represent the eve
EAS and you've got to tell you now and I
put those on I was also hopeful that we
would wind up with the record duration
mission so if you count those two that's
18 days and in fact that's what I
mission turned out to be
pretty clever I did that on my last
flight and we didn't get that actually
yeah and then lastly around the
perimeter the gray area where the names
are encompassed if you look at that and
kind of remove the shuttle you'll see a
sea and it's kind of appropriate that
that C stands for Columbia other
commander cockle also enjoyed that seat
but the and then obviously the center of
the patch to what we really want to tell
also was the space shuttle mission and
there's the on-orbit configuration of
the space shuttle while we conducted the
science we go on to the next line we
took off on a beautiful day in the
afternoon in Florida and this is
probably about three seconds into the
flight by the time we get to the top of
the tower we're going to 120 miles per
hour but the real excitement for the
crew is during those last three or four
seconds prior to the Boosters lighten I
think NASA does a countdown so that it
can make the crew more scared when it
when it comes time for the Boosters to
light but we were we were in the hoopin
and Hollerin mode at this point well one
of the first activities during the
mission was the deployment of the
Orpheus Paz spacecraft we grappled the
spa's about three and a half hours into
the flight and we were set up for a
seven-hour deploy we ended up deploying
about eight and a half hours to to get
some of the ground configuration
corrected before we did the actual
deploy but Orpheus Paz is a spacecraft
that was born out of a joint agreement
between NASA and the German Space Agency
and it consists of the spa's carrier and
the Orpheus suite of telescopes and
instruments built by put in the United
States and in Germany and they take
ultraviolet spectrum or look at light of
higher energy than optical light of
things like stars in our own galaxy
other galaxies and also look at the
material between the stars to get a
better understanding of the star
formation process well along with the
deploy came a fairly large photo TV
requirement overhead and that helped to
make our day one not only busy but very
busy and this is a photo of Tom in the
middle of the that nest and as a matter
of fact along with that what a five
recorder set up he's a he's holding a
checklist and I'd like to mention Martha
may and the photo TV she designed this
checklist and without her help would
have never pulled this off like we did
we'll skip ahead a bit here to flight
day 4 and we were busy here deploying
the wake shield facility our other prime
payload on them on the flight and I'm
operating the RMS controls at the aft
flight deck looking back into the
payload Bay and we deployed the wake
shield after a long period of orbiter
free drift where we didn't fire the
orbiters thrusters to keep contamination
of the wake shields experimental side to
a minimum and it was a very nice ballet
designed by our friends and Mission
Control to put together this same ballet
and choreograph the release of the wig
shield while we maneuvered the satellite
to the various positions on the arm
required to get it in deployed
configuration here you can see the wake
shield being unbirth from the payload
bay and we removed it from the
protective cone in the back of the
payload bay that kept the experimental
surface the growth services free from
contamination during the launch pad stay
the ascent in the early part of orbit
and as we lift it up here we go into a
complicated sequence of maneuvers to
clean off the experimental bottom of the
wake shield or the wake side of the
satellite and story I'll tell us a bit
more about that science here's the
weight shield after a time is released
it management awake shield program and
the science is conducted on it is out of
the University of Houston it's
manufactured right across the water
there in South Shore harbor by space
craft industries wake shield is a
satellite to study the manufacture of
semiconductor materials out there and a
perfect vacuum 10 to the minus 14 it's a
battery-operated has thermal passive
system it has its own attitude a
termination system that looks at earth
horizon and it controls its attitude
with torque errs the orange structures
that you can see magnetic torque and a
reaction control feel it performed
absolutely perfectly
operating wake shield we do that using
portable computers I used a pilot seat
here and I strapped to personal
computers to the pilot seat and it looks
something like a pipe organ where you
had different kinds of keyboards one of
those computers was used for monitoring
the system and the other was for sending
commands to it of the scientists and
mission specialists on the mission we're
real excited about the science on
glenwood shield but the pilots we're
pretty excited about the fact we get a
rendezvous with it to pick it back up so
here's taco the app station on Rhonda we
did our fight day 7 the wake shield had
accomplished all the science it
attempted during this mission which was
a pretty aggressive schedule and tacos
at the app station flying that
rendezvous in flight day 7 it's not a
one-person show getting right a good
with a with an orbiting satellite of
course it's a team of scores of people
on the ground and in flight and each
crew members got a job to do and in the
case of this flight we wanted to take
some independent measures of the
distance of the satellite and the rate
that it was closing on us and we use a
police laser speed gun to do then that's
exactly what that is it's something you
may have seen face-to-face sit in
and your everyday walk of life and it's
a very accurate machine and we had Tammy
stretched out across the carpet looking
up at the two satellites on each of the
rendezvous measuring their speed in the
distance from us meanwhile somebody has
to run the show well I'm back having fun
doing the flying and up until the time
that we take over the manual flying
Rommel here in the in the commander's
seat did the or the trajectory
adjustment burns that are used to get us
right on track to be ready to rendezvous
with the whichever satellite we're going
after and he also monitors all the
systems on board Columbia which I might
point out we're working perfectly and
and gave us no trouble at home here's a
shot of the wake shielded just after a
grapple and we're swinging it from the
raffle position into the payload Bay
again to be berth on flight day 7 in the
background there it's very pretty view
of the Pacific Ocean the Gulf of
California on the right and the island
off the coast of the Baja Peninsula is
the island of the guardian angels in
Mexico and we had a spectacular view of
the the wake shield orbiter and the
earth below throughout all of these
phases of the flight and it just takes
your breath away when you're trying to
work in the payload Bay and something of
skimming buying in the background the
spectacular is this here we have our
wake shield RMS operator Tom did all of
the RMS operations on the wake shield
and here he's performing some attached
ops meaning the arms attached to wake
shield the day after we did the
retrieval and you can see the wake
shield through the aft window and the
tail and of course all of this is done
against the backdrop of the earth as we
orbit around it this slides in here to
represent some of the mid-deck science
experiments we had on board and
especially mid-flight about how seven
eight nine or so the we had a pretty
large host of mid dec experiments the
one that tan is working here is called
view Cpl that's a capillary pumped loop
which the concept of is to try to prove
out that we can in fact hump a loop to
remove heat from the
struments in space without using a
mechanical pump but rather using the
fluid mechanics properties as well as
heat to drive it hard to doing a
spacewalk we do an extensive check out
of the spacesuits and the life support
systems on the back several days before
going to do the EV a we also configure
an done stole all the tools and arrange
them in the airlock so we've
choreographed that tool flow before
going out the door this is EV a day here
and Tami's getting suited up and you can
see I'll be in the picture to my hand
down there to the left putting on
Tammy's club getting suited up I'm
called the IV person all the suits all
the tools everything we did on board I
performed absolutely flawlessly and they
were ready to support a spacewalk well
as everyone knows a screw and a
mechanism in the hatch precluded us from
performing the epa's and Tom and I had a
lot of creative ideas about how we might
actually get that hatch open and we also
had a number of tools on board not just
the EBA tools but the ifm tools and so
we went looking through the bag of
tricks and and chose a hammer and a
crowbar which also might be used as a
chisel and took this photograph in jest
as if we were going to go and take one
more crack at the hatch before we called
it a day
not dividing up the slides to see who
will talk about them it's normally a
democratic process but the vote in this
case was four to one that I would begin
the one ended up talking about this
washing your hair on orbit turns out
there's not much different than than
washing your hair down here especially
for used to me especially for me but you
don't want to put too much stuff on it
cuz you haven't got that much water to
get it off but I'm just like it's
somewhat like you know watching a car
you get too much soap on it down here
but some people wash their cars and
other peoples polish them
and that Tami took the liberty of
converting some of the orbiter air
conditioner system to her own personal
hair dryer she was hands down the one
that needed a hair dryer the most on
board what we'd like to do now is go
ahead and show you some of the Earth
Observation slides that we've got and
this one just came out beautifully in
all five of us claimed were the ones
that took it but the what this is as a
Sinai Peninsula the Red Sea on the left
side and from the leg of the Sinai from
the Red Sea the Suez Canal is on the
right just above it is the Nile Delta
Cairo is in there there are some
pyramids in there we actually shot the
pyramids from space and fortunately for
me the pyramids are very close to what I
thought where I thought the pyramids
were so they did come out my slides and
then the Nile you can see the Nile above
the Red Sea with with the large band in
it also I just like to point out the
curvature of the earth and something
that's always stuck out to me is how
black space is it is absolutely the
starkest blackest black I've ever seen
expression next to the earth we spend a
lot of our time over water in an
equatorial or 28 degree inclined orbit
and most of the time you just pay
attention to the clouds only in passing
however late in the flight on a couple
of our wave off days that got added to
the end of the flight we glanced down
and the Indian Ocean while we were
strapped into our seats waiting for the
deorbit burn that never came and saw
cyclone Daniella here in the Indian
Ocean off the east coast of Madagascar
and we watched this storm over a couple
of successive days and were able to get
some pictures of this hurricane down in
the southern hemisphere I is very well
defined there and penetrates right down
to the sea surface and the other detail
that you might notice is that the spiral
bands of this storm are in a clockwise
direction and that's just the opposite
of hurricanes up here in the northern
hemisphere so you can really see
Coriolis forces at work in the different
hemispheres and this was the only big
hurricane we saw in 18 days so we
managed to grab it at the end of the
flight thanks to the extension days
this is a view of one of the islands in
the Bahamas the Great Exuma Island and
to the right on the dark portion you can
see the tongue of the ocean the depth of
that water is about 3,000 feet whereas
the depth close to the island is about
10 feet so there's a tremendous gradient
in depth I'm over a very short distance
I must say that I'm always struck in
particular by the coastlines when I view
the Earth from orbit the blues and
greens around the the chain of islands
in the Bahamas is extraordinarily
beautiful and I wish that you could all
enjoy such a view this is probably the
winner of the most photographed spot
award on sts-80 it's not Everest the
highest peak on the planet just a bit
over 29,000 feet and it's the large
mountain right at the center of the
picture with a very large shadow going
off to the upper right so the right of
this picture is the high plateau of
Tibet average altitude about three miles
above sea level and stretching towards
Mount Everest is a very deep V shaped
Valley that makes it easy for us as crew
members to identify it from space when
you pick up that Valley can walk right
up it to the left there to Mount Everest
in the center of the picture and
surrounding the mountain or a number of
glaciers coated with boulders that you
can see in the fine detail and some of
our pictures off to the left would be
the Indian side of the subcontinent here
and of course not Everest has shoved up
to the heights it's reached because
India slide cramming into the Asiatic
continent and thrusting news Mountain
skyward one of the prettiest mountain
chains that we saw anywhere on the
planet this is a view of Mount Pinatubo
which is a volcano in the Philippines on
the island of Luzon it erupted several
years ago and we continue to photograph
it and a note in this photograph down in
the lower left corner is clark air base
you can just see the runway running sort
of up to the left and down to the right
and the mud flows that are coming down
from this mountain after after the
eruption a lot of the vegetation
was removed and so the mountain is
eroding at a more rapid pace than would
be normal for a for an older mountain
that has all of its vegetation in place
the Earth Observation scientists here at
JSC track can successive photographs of
places like this and can use that to
determine how ecologically various areas
the world's are being affected by the
changes that have occurred to them
sometimes we go after very specific
targets on the earth with our earth
observation photos we have a list that
sent up each day from Mission Control
with our targets for the day that the
best opportunities for looking at change
on the globe for example or weather
phenomenon sometimes we just shoot the
pictures for aesthetics and here we are
way out over the Pacific Ocean well west
of Christmas Island and well southwest
of Hawaii over nowhere in particular but
the Sun was going down to the west and
we caught the cloud layers and the Sun
glint in a nice golden glow there and
it's just one of the prettiest sights
the clouds here almost three-dimensional
as they float above the surface of the
pacific here and we all had a keen eye
for these shots thanks to story I think
he was more aesthetically inclined than
the rest of us in his views out the
window and he always called attention to
spectacular sights like these this is
the island of the wahoo one of the
islands in the Hawaiian chain that is a
well eroded extinct volcano we passed
over the Hawaiian chain every day we got
a lot of good photos of it because a lot
of times it was clear and also we passed
over the islands during a cruel wake
period and when the earth was lit at
this point at the very bottom of the
slide there you can see a straight
structure on the bottom shoreline that
is a Honolulu International Airport
Hickam Air Force Base you can see the
body of water on the bottom that is
Pearl Harbor to the very right lower is
a diamond head in the beach above from
that is Waikiki Beach the very top of
the slide is why I may obey the North
Shore where they have
very large surf some personal thoughts
on that slide is I do have a boy that
lives down there in the bottom in
Honolulu off to the right I can do ebay
i was stationed in the Marine Corps
there 40 years ago now we did waive off
two extra days and that brought us to a
landing on a pro Harbor Day well here we
are on flight day 15 having rendezvous
with the orpheus spas and preparing to
retrieve it one thing you might notice
about this space quot spacecraft is that
its equipment equipped with some black
and white dots and those dots were used
as part of the space vision system
experiment which is basically a camera
and some computer smarts that looks at
the position of these dots on an object
like a spacecraft can determines things
like position and attitude very very
accurately and we're hoping to use the
space station the space vision system
when we construct the space station and
so we wanted to perform some tests on
that system and the orpheus spas folks
were kind enough to let us use their
spacecraft as a testbed but on flight
day 15 we did rendezvous with Orpheus
and retrieved it after 14 successful
days of data acquisition on a variety of
astronomical objects here we are on what
we thought was landing day we got a
tremendous amount of practice that
deorbit preparation but story and I were
responsible for suiting up our crew
members and then of course ourselves and
here you can see we have our commanders
suited up in preparation for his landing
of the shuttle actually a couple days
later and we're all very proud of him
and as you can see the smile on stories
face he's very excited about the
prospects of waving off
all good things have to come to an end
we didn't have to land on flight to 18
we actually had enough fuel on board
Columbia to fly through four more days
we were out of some of the undergarments
that you might want to use for
successful days and we were also running
a little bit of short on food we had
lots of food that maybe you'll Givens
would like but we were kind of short on
the basics and entrees but we weren't
ready to land we were we were happy
where we were we'd I think by around the
10th or 11th day we were very a'kla
mated to zero-g into living in this
little environment of the space shuttle
and enjoying it very much and having
such a great time that we could have
gone on for much longer the landing that
we were given was about 15 minutes prior
to sunrise it goes in the books
efficiently as a day day landing but it
looked dark enough to me to log it in my
personal log book is a night landing and
so it did give us a beautiful view and
here we are as we are approaching
touchdown with the xenon lights
illuminating us from behind and you can
see the humidity in the Florida air is
has turned into some vapor before you
switch off the slide talker I just like
to add that the as pilots talk and I
train for months and months hundreds of
landings and practices to try to touch
down hopefully within plus 10-15 knots
of the speed that were supposed to touch
down and the point we touch down can
vary on this day we were supposed to
touch down around 30 100 feet though
taco won't mention it that I'm what I'd
like to tell you is he absolutely nailed
it we touch down at 30 100 feet we touch
down inside the two knots of the
touchdown speed I what along came with
that was a touchdown that was so smooth
that the as i was calling off the speeds
I really wasn't certain if we touched an
turn up but I knew because my HUD voted
into the touchdown mode and I felt a
little bit of vibration which were the
wheels spinning up on the ax Rolla so I
just like to add the taco
absolutely nailed that it's worth 100
more points out of a twine thats it for
our slide presentation and as soon as
you can cue it up we're ready for the
video there it is well columbia said on
the launchpad the five of us were having
breakfast and then getting suited up
Here I am waving to the kids rommel is
just about to go through the pressure
check of his launch and entry suit and
that's what Tammy is doing here as well
these suits are not totally
uncomfortable but they're not the kind
of thing that you'd like to wear here's
Tom for any extended period of time and
getting into and out of them is not real
pleasant so it was nice that we launched
on the first day it would have been well
it was a is a reasonable trade to have
to get in and out of the suit two or
three times in order to get the extra
couple days on orbit it lost it was
absolutely a beautiful day something
that new to me on the last flight time
of the vehicle several times before we
win anywhere here the engines are light
and six seconds prior to liftoff that
the vehicle stat goes through its twang
but when the solid when the solids light
like this there's no doubt in your mind
you're going somewhere we had a cadence
Tom started it he said 10 to 10 to the
computers run mode one or two I said
Otto Otto pitch and will yes we're in
Auto and Nazi SS and taco was supposed
to say go there goes the tower but by
the time he could say there goes the
tower the tower already gone and we're
doing a more than hundred miles an hour
to hear the solids what's interesting
they've got 550 tons of propellant and
they're burning that propellant at the
rate of about five tons per second so
that explains why they're giving us
about six million pounds of thrust at
this point about 150,000 feet they
detach we're going about 3,000 miles an
hour here and once they detach on the
solids it's a pretty rough vibrant ride
and then it becomes a very smooth ride
from there
first order of business after getting to
orbit is to convert our rocket ship into
a laboratory or a satellite deployment
platform in this case and so we swing
open the payload bay doors about an hour
and a half after getting orbit taco is
working with rommel to convert the
computers over to an orbit mode while
we're getting ready in the back to check
out the arm and get the satellite out of
the bay we are we grapple the spa
satellite about three and a half hours
into the flight and some checks were
performed both by the crew and the
ground and here we are taking the
satellite out of the payload bay and
maneuvering to the release position Tom
of course is assisting me here with the
arm there everyone in the crew was
involved in the rendezvous in the RMS
deploys but spas was a model satellite
the spacecraft performed flawlessly the
group of folks that we work with in
Germany were just incredible to work
with incredibly professional and
enjoyable to work with so we were
pleased to be part of the the spas that
were phia spas mission here we are
maneuvering again the spas to the
release position once spas is in the
release position in our window for
release opens this is the in defector
view we maneuvered the arm we release a
spacecraft maneuver the arm away from
the spas and then very shortly
thereafter approximately one minute taco
fire some jets on the orbiter so that we
would induce a separation velocity
between the orbiter and spas and send
it's on its two-week mission of
astronomical observations
here we are on the mid deck and this is
the same secondary I'd mentioned earlier
running the capillary pumped loop
experiment and here you can see it and
this is about as exciting as it ever got
but it was a tremendous experiment run
by the University of Maryland at
michaela bay we had the space experiment
module gas can type experiment with ten
experiments provided by students in high
schools and colleges around the country
and they use microgravity to a great
effect on our 18-day flight now here you
see the sequence of bringing the wake
shield out of the protective cone in the
back of the payload Bay protecting the
source cells that spray material onto
the wafer growth surfaces on the the
wakes side of wake shield this is again
flight day four and the first place we
took the wig shield satellite was over
the port side pointing into the RAM
direction so that the contamination on
the bottom of the shield here would be
cleaned off by atomic oxygen in orbit
after a couple of hours during free
drift while we cleaned the wake side of
the satellite we then swung it over to
the other side of the payload bay and
check out the attitude control system
and so we were doing a constant series
of RMS maneuvers with some pauses in
between while the shuttle oscillated
slowly in free drift getting ready for
the deploy sequence here we go over to
the other side of the payload Bay
towards the attacks checkout or the
attitude system check out to location
you can see the Sahara sweeping by in
the background tom was saying here we
maneuver the arm and study where the way
she'll thinks it is in terms of its
attitude determination system and we
watch the responses of the satellite to
the RMS after going to the attacks
deploy and then we go to a deployed
position tom has dropped it here we
study the attitude determination and
control system its performance for one
minute we did get into a little higher
reaction speed here than planned and as
well we had an eight degree roll
excursion and so what the wakes your
community wanted to study this respond
for a few minutes longer we did observe
to watch the clearance with the f TV
cameras I'm waiting here too to start
the thrusters their coal gas nitrogen
thrusters and hira the wake shield is
thrust and away from the orbiter it's a
20 minute burn here the two satellites
in formation with each other after wake
shield has been deployed there about 15
or 18 miles apart at that point and
we're going to fly between those two to
rendezvous with wake shield as you can
see we we do need to eat on board but
you can define your own kitchen table
upside down or or not and we do have to
keep things clean we Rommel here is
vacuuming one of the filters that
collects a little bit of dust on it we
just vacuumed the desk top of it one of
several filters and the payload in the
end crew compartment you're on a flight
deck we have all of our TV recording
studio set up for separate recorders to
record SD acid data that Tammy talked
about earlier and all of this data was
shipped back to the ground after landing
we had a number of orbit adjust burns to
keep us in the proper position with
these two satellites some of them were
fairly long as you can see that from the
exhaust over the nose there and we we
use the computers to tell us what to
burn but then we make the bearings
manually and you can see how the firing
of these little rockets shake the
vehicle you can see the computer on the
glare shield sliding around a little bit
what we're looking through there is the
little gun sight we got the reticle
turned down fairly dim so that we can
see outside well and wake shield was
showing up in the gun sight and we're
flying up closer to it again we manually
are flying and you can see Tammy in the
window next to me taking sightings with
the police laser when we get it down
over the payload Bay it's time for Tom
to go to work and grapple it it's
remarkable how smoothly our pilots
brought this spacecraft into the payload
bay envelope I'd never seen another
spacecraft in orbit before and this one
was remarkable in its stability taco
practice right underneath it and then we
rotate the RMS end effector
get it into the right orientation for
grapple and then it's just a matter of
going and closing the grapple pin and
not bumping the satellite out of the way
in the process so here we are closing
over the grapple pin with the end
effector we trigger the snares and then
bring the wake shield back aboard after
it's three days of material science one
scrapple to the arm we can bring it back
down into the payload bay and we even
use it the next day for some space
vision system experiments a flight deck
teamwork is very important as we bring
it down into the payload Bay we even had
space vision system here providing us
birthing cues in addition to the usual
TV camera and RMS digital's that we use
for standard payloads wake shield was
really a joy to operate on the arm
Tammy's here with one of our long lens
telephotos hasselblad camera and we'll
show you a few views of the earth in the
movie here to notice IG IG is important
in space also so destroyer was getting a
little bit shaggy so he's getting a
little bit of a trim and a polisher
also I think you can define our crews
works well together when we had an
oyster you spill everybody chipped in to
help clean that spill up as many no
story was making his sixth flight on the
US Space Shuttle and and while we were
on orbit he passed over a thousand hours
of time in this space shuttle so we came
up with this patch that says master of
space and presented it to him in a
little ceremony on board here we are in
the mid dec the day before the flight
day 10 schedule dva applying anna fog to
our helmets and also getting our tools
in the proper configuration and
anticipation on the EV for the EV a of
the next day Tom here has the shuttle
power tool and I'm holding the news
station power tool that has some
enhanced a capability but as you can see
is quite a bit larger than the shuttle
power tool we spent several hours
getting our tools in the proper
configuration and everything laid out to
make EV a day go much more smoothly and
efficiently tom is donning his lower
torso assembly and it's always a bit of
a squeeze getting into those pants and
shortly you'll see my head pop out of
the the upper torso and story of course
was instrumental in getting a suited up
and prepared to go out the door the crew
got into the airlock we depressed the
airlock the RMS got in position to view
crew egress we went to open the hatch
the handle rotated about 35 degrees and
came to a hard stopped this happened
over and over again more times than I
can count and unfortunately we were
never able to open the outer airlock
hatch and the EVS were cancelled for the
flight
well we wanted to I get off on time so
that we could get you all home for
Thanksgiving but you can probably blame
me on that because this is my third
thanksgiving in space but here we are
eating a traditional turkey i had flown
during thanksgiving with john blaha back
in 89 I wanted to fly in space again and
I did get to fly with him but on
different vehicles you're nice enough to
our patch us in with him the moon from
out there in space is very similar to
the moon down here on earth it goes
through the same phases and we watch
this moon grow to a totally full moon
this is a shot of flight day 15 and this
is a day we rendezvous in with Orpheus
to bring it back the taco was kind
enough we swapped roles during this
rendezvous so I was at the app station
and taco was in the Ford station until
and now you notice tacos in there in the
picture until we got within 100 feet and
then he took it for their prox ops in
the ground from Ramallah and taco did an
outstanding job with the rendezvous they
put this face craft very very steady
into the in defector camera all that was
left to do was a quick maneuver and a
grapple of the Orpheus Paz a post
grapple we did do a number of maneuvers
in support of some space station
experiments testing our SVS system and
making sure that we could get very good
position in attitude information out of
the space vision system in order to
facilitate some of the space station
construction activities and this is our
final birthing of the spa's
let's take you back outside we're going
to give you some camera views of the
earth always in the background is we
maneuvered the spacecraft during our
long flight looking down we can see some
very delicate linear dunes in western
Algeria in the great western sansi of
the Sahara this is a very early morning
view you can see the delicate sculpting
of the dunes by the wind a little bit
farther to the east is a big outcropping
of black volcanic rock it's dark grey
because of iron and manganese and the
rocks and the Tiffany dunes that are
there on the right side the thumb-shaped
dune field is red because of the iron in
the sand grains reflecting light in a
different way and it's a very beautiful
dune field bumping up against the Hard
Rock of the mountains there over Central
Africa we saw a lot of burning going on
you can see several smoke plumes
emanating from the rain forest area in
central Africa combined with the
grasslands there and this is one of the
hot topics we were looking for from
space we saw a lot of burning not only
here but also in Australia because it's
the dry season they're beautiful
real-time sunset from Earth orbit and
now it's time for entry we've got a
small camera handheld in the cockpit
that allows us to pan around and show
you the orange pink aerodynamic heating
outside the front cockpit windows as we
go through Mach 15 out the back windows
he could see the plasma tail trailing us
behind as the hot plasma streams around
the orbiter and goes back over the tail
it's a spectacular light show during
that time where you saw the plasma trail
behind us we were tilted up at an angle
attack of about 40 degrees here we are
looking out through a camera over the
nose of the vehicle and and now the
angle of attack is much lower and we're
flying more like an airplane it is dark
overhead so the only way to see us was
with an infrared camera and that's what
you see in the upper right inset in this
view we continue to have the camera
that's looking over the nose operate all
the way to landing
and you see some lights on the ground
and you can see clearly why I called it
a night landing and just up towards the
upper right and moving to Center you can
see a dim outline of a long thin light
area which is the runway we are diving
towards a set of lights about a mile and
a half short of the runway which are lit
up by strobe lights and at about 2,000
feet we start to pull out to shallow our
steep dive angle which is 18 degrees up
to that point to more of an airliner
type glide slope so we can land at about
300 feet Ron will put the landing gear
down and this is our view as we were
finishing that that pre flare on the
left is a string of lights with a little
ball next to it which we're trying to
line up and keep in the center so is to
cross the runway at the right height at
the threshold and with the xenon lights
providing the the bright glow on each
side of us here's the touchdown viewed
from the run the camera at the far end
of the runway you can see the vapor
trails being turned up in the humid
Florida air at about 200 knots on the
ground rommel deployed the drag chute
and at 185 knots we started the nose
down to make a to get all three wheels
on the runway and we'll start steering
down trying to stay on the center line
of the runway because it's nothing more
embarrassing that have the final photos
of the vehicle not on the center line
it's also helpful to stay out of the mud
in the weeds and at about 60 knots we
release the drag chute so that it still
has a good aerodynamic force on it pose
it cleanly away from the vehicle so that
it doesn't damage the engine bells this
is after all a reusable spacecraft it
was a twenty first flight of Columbia
the 80th flight of the space shuttle
program and that is the end of our
presentation thank you