good morning and welcome to the johnson
space center thank you for joining us
here this morning for the
joint post flight press conference for
the sts-71 and mere 18 crew members
now to start the conference and to
introduce the rest of the crew members
is the commander of sts-71
navy captain robert hoot gibson hoot
thank you eileen and welcome to the post
flight press conference for mere 18 and
sts-71 it was a bit of a complex mission
and so i'm sure the debriefing will be
done in a little bit of a complex way
but first let me start off and introduce
the the two crews that we have here in
houston today
seated immediately to my right our
mission pilot for sds 71 charlie precord
next to charlie our payload commander
and mission specialist number one
dr ellen baker next to ellen
our flight engineer mission specialist
number two
dr greg harbaugh seated next to greg
our mission specialist number three and
the
mirror 18 backup crew member dr bonnie
dunbar
and then we have the crew of mere 18
starting with the board engineer mr
gennady strikov
the commander of mir 18 vladimir
desjarov
and our very own cosmonaut researcher
aboard mere 18 dr norm
thagard so at this point i would like to
have the
the mere 18 crew perhaps starting off
with
dr thaigard discuss mere 18.
normie thanks sue
we actually as the mere 18 crew began uh
training in february late february of
the 94
and in the course of about a year
bonnie and i went through a program that
was a combination it was a combination
of the sorts of things we would normally
do
as a candidate for a whole year just
that alone and then
at the same time we had to train
specifically for the mir 18
flight so that made it a little bit
intensive but not overly so
and we found i think by the time that we
were ready to fly we had
we had managed to acquire enough
expertise enough knowledge of the
systems of mirror and soyuz to feel
fairly comfortable with a mission
i won't talk a lot about the mission now
i'm sure there'll be questions but i
will say that velocity told me about
a week before the shuttle got there that
i had seen
more than almost any cosmonaut ever
seized because we had gone up on a soyuz
we had seen the arrival of a progress
resupply ship
we had done several transfers of modules
from node to node at the
at the attachment node and in addition
of course we had seen the spectre module
come up there and finally the shuttle
at with that i think what i'd like to do
is go ahead and start in with our slide
in our videos we'll start with the
slides first and we'll
uh we'll try and give you some
commentary first of all no
nothing we do ever starts out without
the emblem or the patch that was the
mere 18 patch
we all had a hand in the design of that
patch and so we als
we all feel some ownership for it it
represents of course a launch
our launch mere 18 from baikonur in
central asia
docking with the mir station the
three-month stay and then finally the
arrival of the shuttle and our return to
earth at the kennedy space center in
florida
the the first concern i guess i had
because it was long duration space
flight and we didn't have
any recent experience with it is what do
you need to do by a
way of exercise to make sure that you're
in good shape when you come home
there is an excellent program of
physical conditioning on board the
mirror station
we had two treadmills and a bicycle
shown here is the
bicycle and when the spectrum module
arrived of course we received yet
another bicycle
so the space station mirror can
adequately provide for
physical exercise and it's my personal
feeling although we are certainly
studying it to see if that's true that
the exercise is a benefit
for those people when they on upon
return to earth
i have already had experience on the
station
the adaptation didn't take much time
that was a very
atmosphere that we were used to working
on the station
and this slide in particular
shows you how we are studying atmosphere
parameters
contaminations in the atmosphere and
quality of the air
i would like to say that station
atmosphere
practically has not changed for the five
years that i have not been on the board
of the station
and myself were measuring these
parameters many times
many times in different points of the
station in different modules
and air quality was always good
we have conducted a grand amount of work
and a very hard work on board of the
mirror station
especially it was a very hard work after
specter module ducking to the mere
station
it was necessary for us to activate the
module
in order to do that we had completely
replaced
and routed necessary number of
cables also we prepared the
power supply system of the whole complex
we also prepared the station for the
documented atlantis
it took a large amount of time
but
to fulfill this completely and
all of us gennady norm and myself were
working on the same tasks
at the same time
how we were working with the power
supply system
of the whole station
we have replaced many accumulators
on the station
replaced batteries we were
preparing for docking and
we were maintaining the space station
we're making sure that the work with the
shuttle will be
sufficient
and this is a very brief minute of rest
yes during the day we were getting very
tired
we and when i saw a guitar
that has been onboard of the station for
many years
i was trying to play some music
and norm thagart took a picture of me
with a guitar
what is this
where norm thagar was sleeping
in particular this is repulsion mirror
station
propulsion system control panel system
control atmosphere
sometimes we had to disturb norm
because we had to work with the systems
he was very understandable and he was
never upset at us
because this picture was taken prior to
chibik's experiment
and we had to put on the altar
24 hours in advance and you can see that
altar is on at this time
how to resolve on time this was actually
taken
obviously during the sts-7 joint mission
i'm not mistaken there
but this was this was a pretty standard
view to be seen on station that is right
in front of the
dining table we had and that wound up
being pretty much the center of activity
if you needed to write anything down or
do planning and a lot of the experiments
i conducted were conducted right from
that
place and also when we held our video
conferences during the course of the
mission we were usually
pictured just as you see there in front
of the the dining table with the camera
looking in that direction
and uh veloja and gennady here
uh are preparing for their eva and i saw
a lot of this
there is an actual model of the mir
station
and they would on the eve of the evas of
their
spacewalks get out the model and discuss
among themselves and
how they were going to do it what
handrails they would use what paths they
would choose to get there
they had trained it for that of course
before flight but by the time the evas
occurred it had already been a couple of
months and
it was necessary to do these sorts of
reviews and apparently it worked out
very well because the evas of course
were successful
and perhaps beloji'd like to comment a
little about eva preparations
yes i completely agree with norman
prior to an eva we had to model
everything
and simulated a few times because
with time after a certain period of time
a certain part certain details
you forget and in order to
remember them again we had to simulate
every stage of an eva on the model
also during the whole period of time we
were able
to perform five evas
the most difficult were the first three
evs where we had to
retract the solar rays and relocate it
with this boom cargo boom to another
module
and the following deployment of the
solar array
is as shown on this slide
so it would be able to operate normally
within the whole complex but on a
different module
gennady might want to comment on this
one i found this fascinating uh
gennady basically is using a metal can
lid for one of the schematics for work
that he has to do
we were proposed to perform a job
after we relocated the solar arrays to
quant one module
routing electrical cables for power
transfer
from this battery model to other modules
unusual parts
and as you can see on the slides we were
not even able to
install it and activate it
this yellow part is a mirror
equipment which is going to be installed
by a mere 19
crew by anatoly silvia nikolai budaran
when they perform an eva yeah i'm guilty
of putting this slide in there the
the sts-70 crew 71 crew actually never
saw this view
this is the base block the core module
and it's
basically taken from that dining table
that you saw before looking toward the
central post which is the post from
which the entire complex is controlled
and we went through and did a bit of
housekeeping just before the shuttle
arrived
but uh in the course of many months
mission
you do things for convenience and that
is if you use an object you place it
back in a place that's convenient for
you
however uh because we wanted to be good
good host and uh present a nice clean
station the 71 crew never saw this
because the day before they arrived we
went through
especially velocia in the core module
and cleaned everything up
and that's the slides i think we have a
bit of a video
perhaps about 15 minutes so maybe we can
go right into the video and
that is the mere 18 crew of course
you could see the world and in the
course of three months we got to see a
lot of the world however we thought we'd
show one that's familiar to a lot of our
viewers that is houston
we had many passes over houston this was
one of the better passes it was almost
directly over the city and as you can
see it's virtually a cloudless
day
and as a floridian i couldn't resist
sticking this one in there
we also had a lot of nice passes over
russia
we didn't get so many good pictures over
russia simply because in those passes we
were usually on communications with
mission control center in moscow
there is a i always wondered how do the
cosmonauts come back looking like
they're in reasonably
good condition and their hair is all
neat and everything and i found out
and gennady's prices were reasonable too
i didn't
i had to pay him with beer with a
haircut
you have seen this picture already
gennady claims he doesn't play but
actually he did a very nice job
we did a lot of science during the
flight this was early on i think the
first metabolic session we tried to
document as much
of the of the science as we could with
video
gennady we had to give him a certificate
he's basically a qualified doctor now he
did all of my blood draws
and he did a nice job
there was never a time when we didn't
get the blood that we were supposed to
get so i guess that's testimony to his
proficiency
we had i don't know if i would have
fully comment on that or not
that was another one of our science
experiments which involved a collection
of
biological samples and that bag was a
biological samples floating about in
mid-air
these were some of the air sampling
slides no i guess actually these
these are the air sampling slides here
the others were surface sampling
but you can see the mirror station while
clean
still you can grow a few organisms
spongy and the light but that would be
true
almost any place you picked here on
earth
in any event i can say that no one
suffered from any infectious disease
during the whole course of the flight
again a little slight that bicycle i
showed you before that i was sitting on
could also
be used for upper body exercises just by
turning it around just as the load is
doing here
especially prior to nva we had to work
with our hands a lot
so we should we would maintain our
bullets
and save our strength for an eva
very often using their garmenter with
the hands
exercises also twice a day
we were exercising on the treadmill and
once
on a ergometer
of course we were using the expanders
muscular strength
we had to exercise a lot
you can exercise in two places on board
of the mirror station and also in the
crystal module
there are two treadmills
i mentioned before the progress resupply
vehicle that came up there this is the
progress
and i apologize uh it probably would
have been a lot more spectacular in the
daytime however the system of docking is
fully automated
and it works very well in fact it works
well enough that you can do it in the
light or the dark depending on which is
more convenient in this case it was more
convenient to do it at dark
so the entire docking sequence the final
approach and docking were conducted in
the dark
i it it did seem to me however that we
got some pretty good photos when it got
close in even though it was dark
now this is the mere station as seen
from that progress vehicle there is a
television camera mounted on the
progress and here it is at this point it
probably was no more than i would guess
25 or 30 feet away
when it actually doc i took these
pictures but when it actually docked i
was uh within i was probably about where
gennady is located there from the
docking node this is the docking node to
which the progress is attached and we're
opening the inner hatch
i was going to say there was no
vibration nothing sensed or heard
during the docking so it was very gentle
and now you're looking at the docking
cone
of the progress vehicle itself and what
we just opened there was again a hatch
located on the station itself
which is the receiving cone for that
docking cone
and it's pretty surprising how easy it
is to open all of that and get access
you do have to verify of course the
pressure seals before you can start
opening hatches all of that went
normally
and you have a little tool that you use
to unlatch the latch so that you can
then
open the hatch to the progress vehicle
itself
and i think after the hatch opens uh you
can probably see a little bit of the
wears that were stored inside we each
for our benefit and to our joy received
i think about five kilograms a piece of
candies and foods and photographs and
letters things from home
so the resupply vehicles everyone looks
forward to their arrival
many of the systems on board the mir
station are regenerable but there will
never be a station i suspect completely
regenerable so it's still necessary to
send up some supplies
to the station using the progress
vehicles
those things amount to of course
replenishment of the food supplies
fuel because the station requires fuel
to maintain attitude from time to
time and water and again we're back into
the eva so we'll turn this over to
velojo to
take you through the eva sequences
we had to spend a lot of time to prepare
the spacesuits for an eva
to check all systems
of the space suit before an eva and of
course norm
has helped us a lot as a third remember
especially before an eva when you have
to put on the spacesuit
it is very hard to work in it especially
when you
have to close the hedge
that kind of works always we would put
on
a spacesuit norm would help us
he would close all hatches and then
we would start communicate and work
where the solar rays were retracted
usually when we go eva we take with us a
little
more of toast than we plan on the ground
just in case for some unexpected events
here you can see certain elements of dva
when we had to fix the cargo boom
and move along the cargo boom
we're going to retract the solar array
norman
is initiating a command to retract
an electrical drive and we're just
helping
to hold the solar rays accurately
books so they would fit into a certain
box
and fit nicely in that box
it was not a difficult job to retract
the solar rays
we were just helping the electrical
drive
hard work was after we
undocked the solar array from the module
and started relocating it
as you see on the end of the cargo boom
you see the battery
its mass is approximately 800 kilograms
plus a cosmonaut is on the same cargo
boom
cosmonauts weighed together with a space
suit is approximately 150 kilograms
all together the mass is usually one ton
at the end of the cargo bomb
it was hard to control it because there
were
large moments of inertia and when you
stop to control the cargo bomb
it still continues to move
very strong oscillation momentums and
it was hard to control them
well of course the public probably
actually
received more attention or got more
attention from the
the docking and the the approach
however i think as you have seen from
the video that proceeded before a lot
went on before the shuttle could come up
there those five evas had to take place
and had to be successful and they were
we had to move the modules from node to
node because the
crystal module needed to be located on
what we call the minus x axis because
that is the axis to which the shuttle
will dock
that all went beautifully thanks
to good help from the soup and to a lot
of hard work by beloja and gennady
it's amazing i could not believe that
you could sustain that much
of a workload for that longer period of
time but they did and they did
beautifully
however i think at the last we were all
glad to see the shuttle come up there
and not the least of the reason was just
the sure the sheer beauty
of seeing the shuttle because it is a
beautiful vehicle no question about it
and to look out through a window someone
asked me well did you watch the docking
on
on the monitor and i said no i looked at
it through the window and
that is a thrill i'll never forget so we
managed to get a lot of good video as
the shuttle came up there
at times actually uh the behavior of the
shuttle was too good because what
happens is
the movements are so precise and so
controlled that it looks as though there
is no motion
and that you're looking at a model and
not a real shuttle
i mentioned before when the progress
came up and docked
i heard her felt nothing when the
specter module came up we heard nothing
but we could feel just a very slight
vibration
however in the shuttle we're looking at
a 100 ton vehicle and when it docked
with the station there was definite
motion of the station
and perhaps at the end you can actually
see a little bit of camera motion at the
moment of docking
again so well control that the only way
you could tell that there was a relative
motion between the station and the
shuttle
was uh the vertical tail has a
tile separation lines and you could
gradually see those
tile separation lines disappear under
the docking node on the
crystal module but it was as though we
had it on a fishing line and we're just
slowly
reeling it in very controlled very
precise
i had thought beforehand that we'd all
be a bit nervous looking out and seeing
two large objects
so close in space but when you saw how
well controlled it was all of that went
away i don't think any of us were
nervous
except hoot might want to comment about
sweaty palms or something while he was
operating the controls
but from our side though we never had a
moment's concern at all
in a smiling face of charlie
even was calming us down even more
and i think yes that was actually
the moment because it did move us a
little bit and i was trying to brace
myself there in the window to stay
steady with the photography
you