Oh
Thank You mr. Abby and thank you ladies
and gentlemen for this opportunity to
talk a little bit about SCS 83 as mr.
Abby has just alluded to it turned out
to be a much different spaceflight from
from what we'd anticipated but no less
important in the sense that it gave a
chance for all of us in this room and in
fact all the NASA centers the people who
are listening to me around the country
to do what NASA does best and that is
when a problem crops up people spent
that whole weekend of April 5th inside
Mission Control working that fuel cell
problem coming up with options coming up
with ideas trying to solve the problem
presenting options to the mission
management team who then decided hey the
right thing to do is to come home and
let's let's think about it more when we
get the crew and the vehicle safely down
on earth and then we'll fly them again
so kudos to everybody on this side
answered throughout the country who made
that safe return of the vehicle and the
crew a possibility what I'd like to do
now is introduce a crew perhaps in a
little bit more depth for you to my
right as our pilot Lieutenant Commander
Susan still from the United States Navy
she she filled those very important
front right seat duties magnificently it
was her first flight and we were lucky
to have her on board this mission to her
right dr. Janice Voss Janice has her
background her academic degrees for
advanced degrees from MIT in both Aero
and Astro she was able to bring that
academic background together with two
prior space flights and experience made
her the right person to be a payload
commander in this crew to her right is
mission specialist number two dr. Mike
Bernhardt Mike's a unique individual in
the sense that he has a background
academically in bio bio engineering from
the University of Pennsylvania but it
combines that with a lot of hands-on
operational experience as a professional
deep-sea diver in the petroleum industry
for a number of years so I made him the
right person to apply those skills as on
the blue shift the shift where Susan and
I were sleeping he was in charge of the
orbiter and keeping the orbiter safe and
running as a space lab while we were
asleep and he ran the blue ship for us
and did a great job there the other
experienced very experienced space flyer
that we have on board is dr. Don Thomas
Don has a background in materials
science specializing the semiconductor
industry to
from Case Western and Cornell and then a
standin Billy Bell AT&T Labs prior to
coming to us at NASA Donna and I had the
very unique experience of flying
together on our first flight on STS 65
back in 1994 on a mission which was very
similar almost identical to this one
dual shift long-duration laboratory
mission so we were able to bring and
Donna in particular was able to bring
that expertise to bear on STS 83 and it
was it was magnificent having him and
his experience on this mission the last
two individuals that I want to introduce
to you are important in the sense that
they were brought from outside the
astronaut crew office because of their
particular expertise we have dr. Roger
Crouch degrees from Tennessee Tech and
Virginia Tech and he's his background is
he was in charge of the NASA material
science program for about a hundred
years is that right yeah he was up at
NASA headquarters really managing the
material science of the microgravity
science program for all of NASA for a
number of years so this was his
opportunity to come back and apply not
only his top level skills but also his
hands-on researcher skills in the
laboratory environment we were lucky to
have him on board finally but certainly
not least we have dr. Greg Lynn Terrace
Greg has degrees from Stanford and from
Princeton his specialty is fire
combustion which was important for the
this flight because that was one of two
particular areas that we were trying to
target all of our experiments onboard
Columbia and onboard the microgravity
science laboratory so Greg was the right
person to have onboard that mission and
he too on his first flight did a great
job for us so that's the crew and what
we'd like to do at this time is roll the
film for you we have an 11 minute
videotape to kind of show you what what
we plan and what actually happened when
STS 83 here's the patch is designed to
show in an artistic fashion combustion
science and the material science that we
were on board to do around the crew one
more time Susan still the pilot from
Augusta Georgia there's Mike ms2 the
flight engineer from Mansfield Ohio
Janice Voss pelo commander from
Rockville Rockford Illinois that's right
Cleveland Ohio's representative Don
Thomas Roger Crouch from Tennessee
Gregg Glenn Terrace from numerous
numerous New Jersey so finally the big
day we've been training so hard for has
come and what a beautiful day to go into
space aboard Columbia as we're all
getting strapped in I find that I'm not
nervous at all I'm mentally reviewing
procedures and waiting with excitement
for when I get to start moving switches
in preparation for launch six seconds
prior to t0 the three main engines
ignite and throttle up when the
computers see good engines the solid
rocket boosters ignite and there's no
stopping us now the vibrations I felt
during launch were less than I had
anticipated which was nice the
acceleration off the launch pad was less
than I've experienced catapulting off of
aircraft carriers but soon things got
pretty exciting when I started feeling
the g-forces build-up pressing down on
my chest I knew I was accelerating
faster than ever before
zero to 17,000 miles 17,500 miles per
hour in only eight and a half minutes
now that's pretty exciting now we're
over a hundred and sixty nautical miles
from the Earth's surface one of the
first things we need to do when you get
up into orbit to get into orbit
configuration is open the payload bay
doors
the shiny surface on the inside is a
radiator and we use that to get rid of
the waste heat I'm sure most of you know
how all that works but we have to get
them up in just a few hours or we have
to come back because of all the waste
heat that we generate on board the next
major activity for me and the payload
team was getting the space live
activated you see Roger coming in on the
left there I'm right
this is our first trip into the Space
Lab module after getting up into orbit
you can tell it's early in the flight
because the module is still nice and
clean everything is still packed away
that'll change pretty quick as we get
things set up for flight we have to get
all the systems activated the subsystem
computer and the experiment computer get
that up and running so we can get
heavily into science see Don Tom is here
working on the worldmap computer and the
you can also see the space to have
computer next to him what was happening
on the ground it first unknown to us but
briefly made shortly made known to us
was that we had a fuel cell to problem
fuel co2 had high substantive volts
which is a technical term for saying
that there's the possibility that fuel
cell 2 could have a fire so at the upper
right-hand part of this screen you see
the the flight control team meeting
together trying to go over our options
figure out what the right thing to do
the mission management team met and the
right thing to do was to come on home
here you see Chris Hadfield our Capcom
telling us come on home on day 4 one of
the big results of the power-down that
we did was to shut off all non-critical
equipment on board and when the first
things to go back into space that module
was the lights you can see here I'm
working with a flashlight in my mouth
that was standard operating procedure
for us back there to look at procedures
and see what we were doing and it made
for a most interesting work experience
back then before things got quite this
interesting the 32 science teams working
in the payload Operations Control Center
at Marshall Space Flight Center had
started replanting the scientific
experiments and the red team went to
work doing the new pcap or the new plan
for how the science was going to be
carried out the orbiter crew chipped in
here you see Susan helping on a Japanese
furnished large isothermal furnace for
some of the material science experiments
Gregg's are doing some combustion here
oh that Don doing material science still
on the Lord isothermal furnace apologize
for that he's changing the samples here
going with some of the samples that had
shorter run times than what we'd
previously anticipated doing and you can
see that he's working from a new pcap
that had just been
that day this is great sorry combustion
was one of the important areas of
research on our our mission and what I'm
doing here is a suit formation
experiment said of course is an
important airborne pollutant this is the
igniter in the combustion chamber you'll
see the flame and ethylene air diffusion
flame lighting it's actually upside down
here it's forming soot our job at this
point was to adjust the flow rate of the
fuel in order to eliminate the soot
formation and bring it just below the
set point so the flow rate is being
adjusted down the next image is a laser
extinction image of the same flame and
this is what the scientists on the
ground used to quantify the soot
formation rate in this particular flame
another area of research was droplet
combustion droplets of course in
ubiquitous in many combustion using
devices I'm setting up the experiment
here in the next image you'll see an
actual droplet burn the droplet is
formed in between the center needles and
it's stretched released and then ignited
and then it burns from the burning rate
of the droplet the scientists can
understand the chemical kinetics and the
physics of the burning process the next
image is an ultraviolet image
intensified and you can see that the
droplet burns all the way to extinction
which is exactly what the investigators
wanted to try and see I spent a lot of
time during our four days working on the
glovebox experiments here and this is
one of the material science one from
Northwestern University we wouldn't have
been able to do the great job we did up
there without outstanding support here
in the ground both at the Johnson Space
Center in Huntsville Alabama at the
payload operations Control Center and a
number one man they're working with us
was Paul Ronnie or alternate payload
specialist who did an outstanding job
helping us get all the experiments done
in time we had a couple of experiments
onboard that we're looking at hardware
we might be using for the space station
this is an example of how we could
upgrade an experiment as the station of
vowels as you learn more about the
science or improve the hardware to allow
you to change experiments over the
course of Space Station's life this is
the combustion module where at the
beginning of flight inserting the
experiment mounting structure for the
suit flame that Greg was talking about
earlier halfway through the flight will
change these out and put in a flame ball
experiment that would be the second half
of that combustion experiment
very first full day on orbit one of our
first jobs was to activate some protein
crystal growth experiments and that's
what Don and I are doing here protein
crystals of course helped the scientists
on the ground understand the structure
of the proteins for which they can then
then design drugs our job was to
photograph with 35 millimeter
photography the activation process one
of the major challenges facing a
separate person clearly we'd like we had
is to convert the ascent rocket into an
orbiting laboratory and basically you're
trying to stow away about 10 pounds of
potatoes and 5 pound sack and then
deploy all the various experiments this
is Janice taking an air sample in the
lab one of the tasks we do when we first
activate the lab and then here you see
me working on the computer and I'm
completely upside down on the ceiling
and that's one of the things that we did
a lot of is to try to spread the people
out seven people in the mid that don't
fit very well on the floor of course we
have to get exercise and there's Jim
doing the ergometer our exercise prayers
were compressed because of the short
flight but normally this is a very
important part of our day the window was
pretty impressive this is the Baja
Peninsula which is oriented kind of
upside down the United States is towards
the bottom of the screen we have Mexico
up in the upper left hand corner this is
part of the Middle East with the Nile
River in the top portion of the screen
the Red Sea in the middle and Saudi
Arabia towards the bottom it's one of
the prettiest parts of the world
I think the Sinai Peninsula in the same
area with the Gulf's of Suez and acaba
consider Suez Canal up in the upper left
these pivot point irrigation circles are
all over the deserts especially in the
Middle East they go down thousands of
feet to bring up water for irrigation
well the most spectacular sights we've
got to see from a short mission was
comet hale-bopp and what you're looking
at is a sequence of pictures here
watching the combat actually set through
the atmosphere and we were actually able
to see it set beyond the limit
here you could see also the orange
lights there that are down on the earth
those are fires burning over Central
Africa as we passed over there the
sunsets are spectacular although they're
very short and they occur over like ten
seconds or so we get to see about 60
November every day which makes up for
the shortness well after a lot of
unexpected quick work we had the vehicle
and ship ready to come home here we are
on Dior birthday everybody suited up
Susan left
flight engineer Mike they're in the in
the middle and me on the right we did
the deorbit burn made a safe and
successful to fuel sale entry back into
the Earth's atmosphere and at about this
point about about Mach point nine is
where I had the opportunity to fly the
Space Shuttle for the first time I had
about 1,000 practice shuttle training
aircraft approaches but I had never as
pilot had the opportunity to actually
fly the shuttle and when I first took
control of the vehicle manually I did a
little pitch pulse to see how it flew no
roll pulse and I told Susan hey it's
just like the STA and I think that's a
tribute to our training people and
system that a first-time flyer can feel
that comfortable here we are rolling out
on final approach down got a good view
of the runway out there over over
Susan's shoulder at 2,000 feet I did the
pre-flare and at 300 feet Susan dropped
the gear down right here we had a little
bit of crosswind from my right to left
as I was looking out the commander's
window that was causing some concern by
the people on the ground and you see
that I did have to make a little
correction back to the centreline to the
left here and then stop the rate by
dipping the right wing down to have a
zero across the runway rate as we touch
down the vehicle touched down the whole
landing task was was well well practice
in the shuttle training aircraft I felt
comfortable with it as I lowered the
nose Susan put the but the chute out and
the chute causes a lot of drag or at
least it seems that way after several
days of zero gravity the jerk that you
get seems like a lot and you just have
no desire to really put on the brakes
you let the vehicle roll out with almost
no braking Susan drops issued at sixty
knots and I do use the brakes here for
about the first time to bring it to a
full and complete stop
I found the brakes they weren't draggy I
did find the nosewheel steering to be a
fairly stiff in the sense that if iraq
reacted very quickly to any inputs that
me after that after about an hour of
medical testing we were able to get out
and wave to the photographers who were
gathered and here's the final work
thanks to the hard work that's going on
right now at the Kennedy Space Center
that to be continued that slogan is
going to be truth on July 1st they're
gonna have the vehicle and the payload
and us back out there and ready to go
again and it's it's happening only
because of the hard work that the
engineers and the technicians down to
the Cape are putting in on this
unprecedented and record-setting a turn
of the vehicle in the payload what we
have next are a series of slides of some
of the more interesting earth
observation sites that we that we were
privileged to have the opportunity to
look down on from about 160 nautical
miles this is Long Island the northern
half of Long Island in the Bahamas and
we didn't have a whole lot of time to
look out the window but when I met when
I could I would look down particularly
the Bahamas which to me is the prettiest
place in the world here you see the
tongue of the ocean on the right hand
side with a where the the Shelf drops
off from about 60 feet down to 6,000
feet and the picture doesn't really do
it justice I remember when I was in
space looking at the window and just
really awestruck at the beauty there in
thinking that the only the second place
in the world I'd want to be is there the
Bahamas the first place was was on the
spaceship at the time and fortunately
for us we we landed we debriefed for a
few days and got two weeks off so I went
straight down there and actually did
some dive in it at this location and it
was really special to to go underwater
and see that environment and have in
your mind the same image of that place
from space is very very awesome this is
the Nile River in Egypt and as you pass
over Egypt and you see the brown deserts
below you the two things that stand out
one of them is the bend in the Nile
River here at Luxor and what you're
looking at is the Nile River and either
side of the river itself you can see the
green agricultural areas where the
growing crops all along the Nile and
this is where the Valley of the Kings is
where they found the King Tutankhamun
and there's still you know discovering
new tombs there today next
another spectacular area on the Nile
River is little further down is the
Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser here the dam
is just near the top center of the
picture you can see it barely there a
little great structure crossing the Nile
the water levels were at near record
level here when we flew over the denial
in Lake Nasser that was due to heavy
rains that they've been having in Kenya
over near the headwaters of the Nile
since December of last year this is the
Indus River and Pakistan and well what
the scientists on the ground like to see
from photos like this is the level of
water in the rivers and the agricultural
the amount of area the agriculture
extends from the river boundaries and
the build-up of the cities surrounding
the river this is the Mayan volcano in
the Philippines it's the most active
volcano in the Philippines you can see
the smoke still coming out the top it's
erupted 47 times since the early 1600s
the most impressive part about this
picture is that we were able to take it
because typically there's cloud coverage
over this area
they're reminding me that this is this
is the great gray whale breeding ground
located on the west coast of Baja now
I'm not going to tell you that we can
count whales from space at least these
40 year old guys can't but what we can
do is is get the big picture that is
what are the plankton blooms like what
are the the other large-scale current
changes that might be affecting the gray
whales as they migrate down from the
Bering Sea down the coast of North
America to this area where they feed and
breed to begin the cycle for a new year
one thing that I always find fascinating
is how you look at something from space
and remind you of some small thing but
you're seeing it on a much more
tremendous scale I see a picture like
this and I think of a pebble in a stream
this is what it looks like to me but
what you're seeing is the peak of
Guadalupe Island interacting with the
atmosphere to create this wake on the
leeward side of the island I think it's
fascinating just to watch the how these
things develop and how summer they
looked as something as small as a pebble
in water but the scientists can actually
tell a lot about the environment around
this island from an analysing picture
like this for example because the wake
downstream of the island is a solid
cloud bank they can tell that the winds
at this time were less than 5 m/s had
the winds been higher you would see
turbulent wakes like you see behind an
airplane when the air is kind of humid
and you'll see you can actually see the
wakes forming off the wings and you'll
see that air the cloud patterns disturb
behind there with von Karman vortices
forming since there are no vortices here
they can tell it this time of year and
these are other conditions the wind
speeds are fairly low we were fortunate
enough especially myself who was the
first time flier to have Jim Hall sail
constantly telling us when things were
happening that we had to be sure not to
mesh yes and Roger and I and the other
crew members were spending a lot of time
back in the laboratory but Jim finally
said to me Greg come on up to the flight
lab to the flight deck because you have
to see at least one of these before we
can go home and so I came up and and
this is what I saw it was a sunset and
the difference to me was that you see
this very very deep and gorgeous red at
the same time as a very very bright
a neon blue during the sunset and for me
it was very very spectacular and
beautiful the slide is good but it was
even brighter and more gorgeous in space
sometimes you go in and add a sunset
you're able to see a little bit of
three-dimensional structure and here you
see the class Janice says the cloud
formations and the changing cloud
formations are always very dynamic and
interesting here you see a cloud cover
coming out of that cloud cover is a huge
thunder sail that's just bulging up and
in the sunset the glinting off of that
just gives it sort of a surreal kind of
a quality