good morning welcome to johnson space
center and to the sts
48 post flight crew press conference i
would like to
introduce the commander on the mission
captain j.o creighton j.o
thank you we're extremely
pleased to be here this morning to have
the opportunity to talk to you
about the very successful sts-48 mission
uh often called the uar's mission which
stood for the upper atmospheric research
satellite
uh everything went extremely well on the
flight
including the deployment as of a couple
of days ago that was
the latest information i have why the ur
satellite was up and operating very well
test and checkout was going extremely
smooth
one of the instruments had been brought
online is taking data and the rest of
the instruments will be brought online
and begin taking data here within the
next one to two weeks
i'd like it this time to introduce the
rest of my crew to my immediate left
is a ken rightler the pilot on the
flight
this was ken's first flight he was uh
really busy on this flight not only did
he have to learn to back me up on all
the orbiter systems and learn how to
land the
orbiter he also had to become a
an arm operator an rms operator
to help mark with the deployment of the
satellite
he was the iv crewman which is the
person inside the cabin that helps in
case we have to send people outside to
do a spacewalk
and he was he had a full plate and it
was uh
very fortunate for us that we had
somebody with ken's talents to be able
to
pull that all off leading up to the
flight itself
next to ken is sam gamar
a mission specialist a designated ms-1
on the flight
sam was our prime ur's uh person
the payload expert this was sam's second
flight
he was also one of the two crewmen that
would have gone outside had a
contingency eva or a mission success eva
been required
next to sam is jim buckley
jim was ms2 on the flight he was the
real veteran on the flight this was his
fourth flight jim as ms2 was uh
the flight engineer on the flight deck
sitting between ken and i and
keeping us in line and making sure that
everything went smoothly for the asset
and entry portions of the flight
jim was also one of the crew members to
go outside on an eva if it had been
necessary
and he was also one of the two people to
operate the
mid deck experiment called mode that
we'll talk about a little more
in detail as we get on into the
presentation
and last but not least uh mark
brown was ms-3 on the flight this was
mark's second flight
mark was a prime arm operator to lift
the ur
satellite out of the payload bay mark
was also
the prime individual responsible for the
electronic still camera on the flight
which generated
a lot of interest particularly within
the media during the course of the
flight
and we had the opportunity to ship a
number of uh
pictures down from space and i think
some of those were released to the media
during the course of the flight
and mark also was the other person
intimately involved with the
the mode experiment secondary experiment
on the mid-deck
what we would like to do this morning is
share with you some of the things that
we had an opportunity to see and
experience
as you're no doubt aware we flew on the
space shuttle discovery
this was the 13th flight of discovery
unlike a lot of previous flights uh we
had gentleman's hours
we got up about two in the afternoon had
a quick breakfast and then we went into
the suiting room where we put on our
pressure suits
this is a final opportunity to check the
suits out
make sure that everything was working
the communications the
cooling systems and also the pressure
system
you'll see here i'm being pumped up
inside the suit just to make sure that
it holds pressure and then
we're satisfied that everything's
working we depart from crew quarters
board the crew van which will take us
the
five miles or so it is out to the launch
pad
we launched right at sunset
it's pretty quiet laying on your back
there for about three hours but
eventually somebody says 109876 and it
in about six and a half seconds they
light the main engines the whole vehicle
starts to rumble and shake
count continues on down to zero and at
that point they
blow the hold down bolts ignite the
solid rocket boosters
and you're on your way if you look
closely you can see the shock waves in
the
exhaust of the main engines right here
but they're sort of overpowered by the
the plume from the solid rocket boosters
we do a roll right after we lift off
from the tower
to establish our launch inclination
which is just a fancy word for what
direction we're going to head and in our
case it was
a 57 degree inclination which put us
right up the east coast of the united
states you can see the
shock waves as we go through mach 1
forming on the leading edges of the
solid rocket boosters
that flash uh that you saw right there
was just a reflection off of a cloud
that we passed through
the solid rocket boosters burned for
about two minutes and 11 seconds
during that period of time it's a fairly
uh violent ride is probably too strong a
word but there's a lot of shake rattle
and roll going on
the end of two minutes and 11 seconds
their work is done
they burned about 2.6 million pounds
worth of propellant
and so at that point the boosters are
jettisoned
and are recovered via parachute
approximately 100 miles downrange
and here you can see the solid booster
separating from the main stack meanwhile
the
the orbiter attached to the external
tank continues to burn for another six
minutes or so
and then at about eight minutes and 35
seconds the main engine shut down
and we were in space
you don't really have much time to enjoy
the ride you're sort of hanging on for
assets so when you get on orbit it's the
first opportunity you really have to
look out the window and the first words
out of my mouth were amazement of just
how high we were
shortly after getting on to orbit we
opened up the payload bay doors
had our first opportunity to glimpse our
primary payload the ur's upper
atmospheric research satellite
and here we're putting out the ku band
antenna which is one of the primary
means that we use to
communicate with the orbiter through the
tdrs are tracking and data relay
satellites that nasa uses to both track
and communicate with the
the space shuttles on day two we did a
raising burn
we initially inserted into a circular
292 degree
uh mile burn and then we raised it up to
308
these pulses that you see flashing up
here are the forward rcs jets that are
pulsing to maintain attitude
the glow right here are the sustained
firing
of the jets that are actually doing the
raising burn itself
or pushing us up to a higher altitude
we spent months training and it was a
sort of a giant pain always climbing up
and down the ladder getting from the mid
deck to the flight deck but it gets a
whole lot easier we get it into space
you just sort of float out of your seat
and then just sort of float down the
axis way down into the mid deck
getting around is in zero gravity is a
real treat
this is a short clip of the electronic
still camera which we used extensively
on orbit
it's quite simply a nikon f4 modified
not to use regular commercial film but
instead record the images
as digital ones and zeros as a normal
flash attachment on the top
and can use any regular nikon off the
shelf lens
and we took about 240 pictures on orbit
down linked about 200
and i understand about 25 were released
to the press
and we're quite well we took a wide
variety of other types of photographic
equipment with us as well
you've seen some of the examples of uh
the products of those
what we're working with now is the dual
mount
twin 70 millimeter hasselblad cameras
one with color ir film and one with eye
visual film we also use the same mount
for
putting polarization filters on to
to take advantage of the difference
between polarized light that's reflected
off the surface of the ocean
we spent a lot of time taking pictures
from space but occasionally all the
cameras were taken and
we had the opportunity just to look out
the window here i'm using the
stabilized binoculars gyro stabilized
binoculars to
watch australia go by here we're just
taking a a quick trip across the
northwest corner of australia
this gives you appreciation for how fast
the world is going by
even from that that altitude uh this is
uh pretty much just the
camera being fixed pointed out the
window taking whatever is
floating by in the in the world below
and you can see not only the the rate at
which the earth goes by but also the
detail that you can see
another thing which always struck me
going across australia was the
diversity of the color of the ground you
can see the uh
the very very deep blue of the ocean the
the
vivid reds and the bronzes in the soil
and in some cases an occasional lake
goes by with a
lighter color blue we're finally
crossing the continent and
coming out the other side into the
pacific ocean
and it was mentioned earlier australia
was one of the clearest places
that we saw on earth
these next few scenes were taken on
deployment day
i was respond primarily responsible for
operating the arm
and ken was my backup sam was in charge
of our interface with the spacecraft
jim kept an eye on the space shuttle in
jail with his rubber hose kept an eye on
all of us
the unbirthing and extraction of the urs
payload was actually quite
straightforward a series of commands
were given the urs to transfer it to its
own battery power source
and then we flew the arm down and
grappled with the fixture on the ur
spacecraft itself
that was a structural strong point right
there
the arm flew quite smoothly there's no
problem at all
this is the rou which is the big
electrical plug between the orbiter and
the ur spacecraft
over this electrical plug go all the
data and information on the spacecraft
as well as
back up electrical power until yours is
on its own
this scene shows you ours being gently
lifted out of the payload bay
from our perspective it went quite
smoothly and was no problem
we moved the spacecraft from its birth
position to its
release position directly above the
orbiter windows in about 9-10 minutes
as you can see you are's is very
colorful with all the gold
foil and white capped on protective
coverings it is not a sleek spacecraft
by any means but is extremely functional
that spacecraft took up approximately
half the payload bay in length and
weighed about uh uh 15 000 pounds
it's interesting that the arm is capable
of lifting that 15 000 pounds in space
and yet it's unable to lift its own
weight in one g
this is a scene in the flight deck with
mark on the right side
actually controlling the arm me in the
middle watching over him and
and checking all the other indications
and john on the left side ready to
conduct the maneuvers away from the
spacecraft once we're ready to maneuver
away
once the arm was in position right over
our heads first thing we
did was to deploy the solar array and
you can see it's starting to extend now
after the solar array is fully deployed
as you see in this scene
we then commanded the uh the ground
commanded the high gain antenna which is
seen right at the very bottom looks like
a dish
into a series of commands which checked
it out made sure that it was going to be
functional
this scene shows the actual release of
uars
with the mechanical arm the arm is being
backed away from the spacecraft once
we're
well clear we simply put the brakes on
and
turn turn it over to john whose job it
was to back us away
once we got well clear of the spacecraft
with the arm we put in about a two foot
per second separation burn
it was a forward jet burn so that caused
the payload to actually
come right over the cockpit in fairly
quick manner and because we had released
it at night we were really afraid that
we were going to immediately lose sight
of the spacecraft and in fact i
did however we had a one camcorder that
was mounted in the overhead window that
managed to keep side of the payload for
a little while
as it gradually receded away and just
disappeared into the
inky black of night
the life of the urs uh one of the
instruments on board is a cryogenically
cooled and it's limited to approximately
18 months to two years of lifetime the
rest of the instruments
uh can continue on to collect data for a
number of years in the future in fact
they estimate that the fuel on board
will allow the
most of the instruments on on urs to
continue to collect data about the upper
atmosphere
for eight to ten years again as
many of you probably know the primary
mission of the ur spacecraft is to study
the upper atmosphere
and primarily to study the ozone layer
and to see if we can't understand
exactly what's happening to the ozone
layer and it's done by 10 different
instruments that are mounted on that
spacecraft
that take a look at three areas the
chemistry of the atmosphere
the dynamics of the atmosphere the
intermixing of the winds between the
lower and the upper atmosphere and
finally the total energy input to the
atmosphere
after we were safely away from the urs
we started to
to work some other experiments we had on
board this one happens to be
the modular dynamic experiment called
mode
it was built and constructed by mit with
its own computer on board
the idea of mode is to
do testing on fluids on orbit to see how
fluids respond inside a container
to different frequency and amplitude
responses
this particular little vessel had
silicon oil in it mark is trying to line
the oil bubble at the bottom
of the container so that when we excited
it
we could look at the dynamics and
interaction between the container walls
and the surface tension
you had to be a little careful in
maneuvering it around to keep that
meniscus aligned but on orbit it was
much easier to do than it was
here on the ground we also had a very
large structure
that we were interested in this is a
particular this structure
is instrumented hooked into the computer
it replicates the scale model of what we
think
the space station will look like and
we're interested in looking at the
dynamics and the harmonics
associated with a large structure and
weightlessness
when it was completed the structure was
about seven feet
in length we lightly tethered it on the
mid deck so that it wouldn't
float away and and contaminate the data
then we ran a series of frequency sweeps
across the structure to see what
different harmonics would be excited
by the actuator which is on the bottom
of the structure
yeah as on orbit as uh down here the day
gradually comes to an end and it's time
to go to bed
here you can see uh sam uh comfortably
tucked away in his sleeping bag
jim hasn't uh quite gotten to bed yet
sometimes we were tethered out in the
middle and sometimes people slept
against the walls uh here you see me
putting on a series of electrodes this
was a
24-hour heart halter i took ekg data 24
hours continuous and
monitored blood pressure took blood
pressure measurements every 20 minutes
and most of this research is being done
for the extended duration orbiter
morning started with the normal ritual
of getting getting up and getting
cleaned up
we used primarily electric razors to
take care of the stubble problem that
all worked quite well
after that we generally would get ready
to have our morning meal
we fixed a lot of the same kinds of food
we have here on earth with
scrambled eggs and sausage available and
the only other problem was trying to
control some of this food as you can see
sam has
got a runaway shrimp right there trying
to control that
uh that beauty and eventually gets it
where it's supposed to go
we were busy throughout the flight
didn't often have an opportunity to eat
all together but some of the evening
meals uh particularly towards the end of
the mission we did have an opportunity
as a crew to all sit down and eat at one
time
generally breakfast and or lunch were
sort of
grabbed as the time was available and we
tended to eat individually or perhaps
just snack rather than sit down to a
full meal
periodically i think the ground was
curious as to what was going on and
would try and spy on us but taking
control of some of the
aft cameras and shining them towards the
cockpit
we mentioned early on that most of the
northern hemisphere was uh
in darkness when we were up there here
was one of the uh because of that we had
the opportunity to see the
northern lights or the auroras up there
very spectacular
generally tended to be centered around
the northeastern canada around the
hudson bay area
although this is a black and white
camera to take advantage of its
low-light capabilities
the aurora itself as you saw or may know
as a bluish-green color occasionally you
get some other colors blues and reds in
there
here's another view of the uh the ice
pack with
some of the islands are peeking out at
the top
the the opportunity to see a lot of that
ice was really spectacular
first because it was in such a clear
part of the world
did not look like a good place to
vacation by the way
however the air was clear
i i thought that uh the opportunity to
take
pictures and use all those uh cameras
was one of the greatest
thrills of of being in space flight and
uh as john mentioned
a lot of times we were actually able to
see lights at night
and the detail that is the nile delta
that's the city of cairo right there at
the top and then you just follow the
nile river on down here and there
literally is a river of light at night
the sahara on either side there's
nothing and then but where there's water
there's population the lights right up
here are just the edge of the red sea
and this uh river in the nile river just
continues right on down with the
population showing there at night
until you get to the aswan dam and then
it just stops abruptly
these are the galapagos islands you
notice the tips of the cones of
volcanoes sticking up through the clouds
this was the granddaddy of all the
cameras we carried on board this was the
linhof each negative there is about five
inches square
one of the more spectacular things that
we saw uh while we were up there was a
night pass
well we saw it on almost every rev over
the united states that we passed over
here you see uh chicago coming into view
we're looking we're traveling from over
chicago down towards miami and we're
looking out towards the southwest here
we have st louis
kansas city over here dallas
and houston all in view at the same time
and we have memphis
and mark correct me if i'm wrong you're
from the midwest but i believe this is
indianapolis here
that's right followed by louisville and
cincinnati in the lower left corner
it's very surprising to me to be able to
see the detail of cities at night like
that
and to actually if you look closely you
can see the highway system connecting
them occasionally right in the middle of
the screen you'll see a
giant thunderstorm and lightning show
going off
being up at 300 miles is truly
incredible with just the
amount of the earth that you can see
it's very very impressive
again you can see the uh the limb there
and the
atmosphere extending above the surface
here itself and there's a glow here that
will gradually get more pronounced and
that's
the moon set
we're coming up on the east coast of the
united states but up in the
upper part of the of the screen you can
see the coast of the gulf of mexico from
houston
going eastward toward
new orleans and then further down toward
the florida peninsula
i believe this is atlanta coming into
view here
in the lower left-hand corner you can
see some of those major highway systems
strung out
from from some of the larger cities up
north
should begin to see uh the recognizable
peninsula of florida showing up here
begin to appear right up in this area
right here
really what's spectacular to be able to
see at night looking across the whole
front of the uh orbiter from from one
window to the other
sometimes almost coast to coast
here we have the city of charleston
you're starting to see the florida
peninsula now the city of jacksonville
florida
tampa st pete area is starting to come
into view here now and then it will be
connected
to orlando and it's almost
surprising to us but it's almost totally
uh
cut florida in half here with the
population in the light string almost
all the way across the peninsula right
now
this is uh daytona beach the area of
cocoa beach right here and the launchpad
where we left a couple of days before is
located right in here
if you watch closely you'll see what we
think is a meteorite coming in right
over orlando
to me that was one of the most
spectacular scenes and and uh
unexpected was to be able to look down
and see
shooting stars or meteorites coming in
underneath of you
into the atmosphere and you could follow
them from the time they started to glow
all the way till the time they burned up
and finally the tip of florida in the
miami fort lauderdale area right here
and there was a lot of thunderstorm
activity down off the
coast here probably centered pretty well
over cuba
the bright light you see in the upper
right hand corner is in fact the moon
coming down this
these are low light level television
capable to
to see that sort of thing
well unfortunately all good things uh
come to an end
and uh the setting sun sort of
symbolized that it was time to go home
as the opposite of when we get on orbit
one of the first things we do is
open up the payload bay doors one of the
last things we do is
close the payload bay doors in
preparation for coming home
a very empty payload bay
but that's good because that means a
successful mission
here i am doing the final portion of
getting suited up here putting my helmet
on my
pressure suit that we wear for launch
and entry
and now you can begin to see the glow of
the ionized air
over the windows we we started out
did the deorbit burn over
africa came all the way across the
indian ocean across the pacific
and landed at edwards air force base
four of us were up on the flight deck
and for entry
sam was down in the mid deck here you
can start to see the recombining of the
uh
the plasma this that surrounds the
orbiter on re-entry
and it recombines up on top of the
orbiter and although it looks like
it might be the tip of the tail this is
actually just a very hot uh
gas that recombines on top as we plunge
down into the atmosphere
you're starting to see if you look at
this car you can see a little bit of
shaking going on as we went through
mach 14 or 14 times the speed of sound
then you can see a little bit of the the
boundary layer being tripped here by the
windows and this white spidery uh
uh almost looked like a st elmo's fire
dancing on the windows
here were the long range cameras from
vandenberg ir cameras taking pictures of
us as
we came in over southern california and
you can start to see the the delta shape
of the orbiter
again another ir shot taken from the
ground at edwards air force base as we
make our final descent
into the runway and then coming through
the bright lights that uh the xenon
lights that are we used to
illuminate the runway we uh touch down
and roll out about 9000 feet to a
to a safe and conclusion to a very
successful mission
and after five days eight hours and 28
minutes
and 2.2 million miles the trip was over
you