good afternoon and welcome to the STS 32
post flight crew press conference I'm
going to introduce mission commander Dan
brandenstein here and let him introduce
the rest of the members of his crew will
talk a little bit about the activities
of the flight will share some home
movies and some slides and take some
questions from here and the other NASA
centers following that Dan thank you
Jeff well welcome to the post alight
press conference believe it or not we're
on time and we we launched a day late a
month late we landed a rev late a day
late and finally we got it together and
are doing something on time I'm sure you
all remember the crew on my right is Jim
Weatherby next to him is dr. Bonnie
Dunbar next to her is smart Ivan's next
to her is G David Lough today we'd like
to share some of the things that we saw
and did with you the most difficult part
about
we figured we were well on our way here
what launched morning getting suited up
we're in the the suit-up room we run
through a thorough check of the suits
before we head out to the pad and it
that way we preclude any problems with
pressurization or anything when we get
out in the vehicle as all crews we leave
the same door and go to the same vehicle
with the same folks with us and it's
something that we really look forward to
it's about six seconds prior to liftoff
the main engines ignite you see all the
steam from the water suppression system
on the Left you'll see after the SRBs
ignite the shock wave coming off to the
left there it is liftoff I was
pleasantly surprised that I really
wasn't thinking of anything other than
the systems and making sure the engines
were working and all the systems were
working properly written a whole lot of
vibration I was again happy to see that
and I was able to see all the screens I
felt very well prepared by the training
teams it kind of felt like the simulator
with the exception of course the
acceleration we had a you can see some
of the condensation coming off of the
vehicle as we fly uphill with a negative
angle of attack right there
we had a camera under the belly of the
vehicle looking towards the external
tank and you can see from that very wide
angle camera the solid rocket boosters
leave from the stack after about two and
a half minutes they have separation
motors that looked to me like they were
pointed right at my window so i looked
back inside and looked at the rest of
the screens on the way uphill I didn't
want to see Rockets that big you see
some of the ice floating around as the
external tank comes off after the fuel
is expended this is on orbit after eight
and a half minutes again from that same
camera in the belly of the vehicle kind
of a unique view of the external tank
going down this is the one part of the
the whole system that is not recovered
it breaks up in the atmosphere and lands
in the Pacific Ocean in our case and
it's the kind of view you have from the
orbit that we finally got to about a
hundred ninety miles above the earth I'm
traveling about 18,000 miles an hour in
fact that's pretty much the way we
sought for most the time we're up there
there was a lot of clouds for the entire
11 days that we were up there first
major event that we had was the sin calm
deployed occurred about 25 hours into
the mission that required some people in
aft end and some people in the front end
working that you can see simcom coming
out it's translating away at about a
foot and a half per second it's rotating
at about 1.7 revolutions per minute it's
14 feet in diameter about 15,000 pounds
about 80 seconds after deploy there's an
omni antenna that will come out on that
and then about six minutes 35 seconds
later the spacecraft will spin up to
about 33 revolutions per minute you can
see the omni antenna is out in this at
this time it's not a solid rocket motor
on it that 45 minutes after deploy will
initiate its journey on up to a
geosynchronous orbit it actually took
several burns to get it all the way up
there and as I said earlier CENTCOM is
up on orbit right now it's being checked
out and so far everything is looking
looking good l-dub satellite of course
had been at this time flying for five
and a half years all alone gathering
data we came along and disturbs its
peace we tried not to disturb it too
much we had been trained for the
rendezvous for about
year and I just didn't believe it was
really going to be there and suddenly it
appeared and it was in the correct
position through the first part of the
rendezvous from the forward part of the
cockpit then we'll float back to the aft
part to perform the final part of the
rendezvous visually looking at the
overhead windows what we're using in the
ass station we have controls much like
the forward station for the rendezvous
essentially all we use as a translation
hand controller which you may not be
able to see in this view but it's under
the left hand and it gives you
translation in three axes and for for
siding on it we have a co ads or a
reticle that is placed in the overhead
window and it's right above my head
there and you'll see me peeking through
it tree otic lee but that gives you the
ability to fine-tune your alignment here
we're past the velocity vector and
coming up but towards the r bar or the
radius vector on top of the dl def we
didn't really get any shots as we
approached it during the night but here
we're down reading pretty close during
the daylight portion and trying to bring
the arm and the end effector camera up
in the position where we can see the
grapple fixture and target I'm at the
apt station on the right there
controlling the remote manipulator
system I have both the translational
hand controller and a rotational hand
controller and actually fly the arm very
much like an airplane there's a camera
on the end of the end effector and it
displays its view to the monitor and I
think some of you probably saw that on
the down link again dan did an excellent
job of getting me right there in the
vicinity so all I had to do is rotate
the end effector by 180 degrees so
aligned to the target and using a
vernier rate come in and make the
grapple got over the pin pull the
trigger trigger everything worked
correctly with all the right indications
that we had a good grapple and as soon
as I we made contact their close the
stairs and we put the brakes on
you see it's a that's the target that we
line through the camera and we've made a
close contact that's the stairs closing
it will eventually rigid eyes the
payload against the end effector and
then we have the brakes on from this
point on then we went into the
photographic survey first ayah started
positioning the LDF over the center of
the bay to protect it Jim went ahead and
started his maneuver and Marcia started
taking pictures of those individual
trays the data that they wanted was our
our perceptions of how this thing looked
and also photographs of each one of the
trays of the 57 experiments on there and
so in about a three or four-hour period
i figure i should probably shot seven
hundred frames of 70 millimeter film
documenting each one of these trays
under different light levels is as
bonnie rotated it on the arm around it's
different positions and here you see the
birthing sequence we took everything
very slow very carefully the payload is
14 feet diameter in the payload Bay's 15
feet now we lined it with a payload bay
rotated around and put it down in the
latches and as the Sun sets we have it
securely placed in the payload bay and
we have recreated the arm it was the end
of that day the one experiment that we
did on everybody every day is this
American flight echocardiographic
spearmint and this looked at in an
ultrasonic image of the heart the David
and Bonnie and I were operators and so
we did our own echoes and then we would
operate on Dan and wax here's David
doing himself here we sort of all had
learned in training where the particular
spot was where your heart ought to be
and the heart shifts around a little bit
in space so we had to go looking for it
this is the image you get on the screen
and then we bring this data back
recorded for the investigator and he
makes measurements of this to determine
how the heart changes
this is a me actually inside the lower
body negative pressure device and again
this is an expert medical experiment
that took three people to to work on I
was just the subject Bonnie did all the
work with the pressure regulation and
marches here's taking images of my heart
this is a candidate protocol for
orthostatic intolerance this is Dan
doing something called delayed type
hypersensitivity that's a something that
is essentially like a TB test that you
put on only there are 72 little needles
in there I mean Stu determine if the
human immune system has a different
response in the weightless environment
we tried to time this perfectly so that
we would do this 48 hours prior to
landing and then the principal
investigator would read or actually
analyze the results once we got back
however we had a wave off of one day and
so Dan had to be the investigator and
analyze it the night before we actually
did come home it really look much worse
than it really is
this is a inter ocular pressure
measurement DSO we're measuring the
intercooler pressure of Bonnie's eyeball
right here this is again to test the
fluid shift to see how the fluid shift
affects the pressure in the inside of
your eyeball this is a gym whether be
doing the salivary pharmacokinetics of
scopolamine and dextroamphetamine which
is uh just trying to understand a little
bit better how drugs are absorbed
distributed and eliminated from the body
he took some scope decks and then over a
period of time over every 30 minutes or
hour so he had to swab a cotton ball in
his in his mouth and collect the saliva
and put that in there and that's going
back to the investigators
we did have a little bit of in-flight
maintenance to do we found some water
down in the bilges one day we're using
here we're using the free water disposal
system to slurp up some of the water we
put a fix on it then we'll show you this
little bit better than a still
photograph to keep the water from
getting away in in future times and
periodically throughout the mission we
had to go down and do that this is the
protein crystal growth experiment on day
one we activated it and then looked at
each of the droplets and this is this is
how the crystals grow in each one of
those droplets there there's nobody home
there on day last when we deactivated it
we go back to reef photograph what is
growing in the crystals this is not the
normal way one would take pictures of
things but in space it worked fairly
well and now you can see that there is
some crystal growth in these droplets we
don't know yet the results of their
experiments the FAA experiment grew a
different sort of crystal it's a fairly
large one and again we looked at it for
disturbances this is an indium crystal
this whole tube here and that
disturbances during an RCS burn during
the rendezvous so we brought back a lot
of good data about the disturbances in
microg and this is an experiment we ran
every day or most of the days
this is the bread mold there were some
that he was looking at the effect of
both gravity and light or lack of
gravity and lack of light on the
circadian rhythm of of his test subject
here and so the ones wrapped in red
didn't didn't see a light pulse than
there were some clear tubes that did see
a light pulse we marked the growth front
basically in each of these tubes and
then we photographed them up close since
they continue to grow as as the days go
by he wanted to see what would happen on
day seven and a nine and a ten and this
is basically what it looks like inside
this is seven days and the life of bread
mold here each one of those thick bands
is is a day which is about 22 hours for
this particular test subject
the IMAX camera is is not your standard
camera weighs 85 pounds when you're on
earth and it's fairly large the film is
three times wider than normal movie film
took a little while to load and you can
see it's fairly unwieldy to to hold but
it takes an incredible picture we shot
both indoor which you see here and then
we shot we shot some outdoor movies this
is an oblique view of the the knobby
desert which was one of the places we
saw frequently not covered by clouds we
carried a number of other cameras and
did a fairly extensive film test
probably carried 16 different kinds of
films that we have not flown before
carried two additional long lenses an
additional camera body looking at
different camera types and shutter
speeds and film speeds in trying to
improve the product we bring back from
space this is a 500 millimeter lens on
the hasselblad that I'm shooting here
and that wasn't as hard to use as it
looks once you get the hang of it and
again here's a native you of the same
desert and you can sort of see what we
looked at we'd get some good view of
dirt and then there be clouds we saw
clouds for 11 days Here I am that's my
film table in the back with about half
of my film vax and canisters and so on
this is the Panama Canal under those
clouds and again we were we felt
fortunate to see that much dirt this is
basically what we looked at this sort of
picture for most of the flight but that
was okay
part of our medical of objectives were
to look at the effects of treadmill
operations are actually exercise on
orbit and we had three people who did
routine exercise on orbit we also wanted
to see how the treadmill affected the
microgravity disturbance experiment and
we didn't have transducers we had whacks
here's free-floating so in order to find
out what forces there where I grabbed
ahold of it and I think we've got the
directions pegged we wear of course the
launch and entry suit for launch and
entry it's a big giant rubber suit one
of the concerns I had being so tall they
tell me that you grow a couple of inches
on orbit or a couple of percent I really
had no difficulty getting into the suit
as you can see I seem to fit pretty well
once I got my hand at Marcia was making
sure I didn't bump into anything while I
still had my eyes inside the suit the
neck damn that we we're kind of squishes
in on your neck and so it's very
difficult to get your head through the
neck damn and then it finally comes and
you have both your ears still attached
we didn't get any footage during actual
reentry but he as we crossed the coast
of California they had some high-powered
cameras on us that apparently got a
couple shots of some RCS Jets firing and
then as we got into the Edwards complex
they had an infrared camera that here is
picked us up on outer glide slope and
it's you're probably all familiar with
infrared but it just it senses the heat
and not the visual spectrum so anything
that's real white is real hot and as you
see the wheels touch down you see the
instant they touch down the heat up and
they'll turn quite white you can see
here that there in fact down the PLT did
his primary job and got the gear down
and through obvious thirdly gear just
touched down then they co-op Aloha
apparently as they roll out and then
they heat up again as you apply the
brakes from this you can see the wing
leading edge the nose and the windows
have probably retained to heat the
longest of reentry the flashes you see
on top are the exhaust from the AP use
and you can kind of pick out the side of
the vehicle the hinges from the payload
bay doors which are metal and that tile
stay hot longer and you can see the
little white spots down the hinge line
and various other materials that retain
or transmit the heat away faster is the
kind of interesting view it was we
double back and I'll show you also the
landing in the visual spectrum only
because you don't see it very long but
Edwards usually is the desert and quite
dry however the night before we'd had
fog this particular night there was the
possibility of fog later in the evening
so there was quite a bit of humidity in
the air and that's obvious as you see
the condensation on the on the wings are
not coming off the wingtip vortices as
you come in to land so it's kind of a
interesting and eerie sight
it's watching apparently watching a
shuttle land at night is not a great
spectator sport because you don't see
anything until the last couple a couple
seconds as you pop out of the other
darkness into the light however the
spectators in the immediate vicinity
report that from about 30,000 feet to
touchdown you can hear it the apparently
the air coming across the the wings it's
rough enough that it causes some
turbulence and verbal that that gives an
audio signature and here we are all
still kind of warm well we elected to
stay in the suits because it was 32
degrees out and we didn't figure we
needed the hassle of trying to get out
of the suits and into something else and
since it was cool it was no problem
you