good morning endeavor
morning houston
i think you stumped the crew we give up
on that one
darth vader
the flight director says it has a good
beat it's easy to dance to he gives it
about a 40.
well we liked it we just uh we just
couldn't identify it
deborah houston
we see everyone on the flight deck there
you're looking great
time to get those combs and razors out
for homecoming
yeah we clean up real good
you're so ready to pick up fcs checkout
endeavor we're watching
copy
roger never here's my colleague
good morning brian
hey everybody how you doing
fine thanks you look like you're having
a great time up there and you're doing a
wonderful job
well thanks we're ready to come home too
it's always hard to leave but uh you
know how it is you look forward to
coming back
yes all good things must come to an end
and i'm here to brief you a little bit
about that
uh what we've got is we've got some
great weather for you both saturday and
sunday
at both landing sites
we will be bringing up ksc only on
saturday
with two opportunities there
be setting up for a right-hand turn to
runway 3-3 i'll go ahead and give you
the weather at ksc for saturday
looking at 3 000 scattered 7 plus miles
visibility
winds
3-4-0-10 peak 18
and we've got prevailing northerly winds
for the entire south of the united
states
and it will be a little bit chilly when
you climb out of the vehicle
roger brian we're trying to uh deplete
o2 tank four we'd like you to configure
a single heater in o2 tank three so on
r1 cryo o2
tank three heater alpha auto
houston are you ready for the event
we're ready for the event
kscpao this is houston please call
endeavour for a voice check
endeavor this is ksc pao how do you hear
me
kscpao we're in your line
all right thank you and do you have an
opening statement you'd like to make for
us
well first of all i'd like to say that
the mission's been extremely successful
to this point and the six crew members
you're looking at right now couldn't be
more happy
to have been part of the team that
pulled off this mission sts-72
we believe that the
the mission itself is a testament to the
the teamwork uh
all across nasa and also the
international cooperation between the uh
national aeronautics and space
administration and the japanese space
agency
so we're we're very happy to be part of
that team things are going very well
it's all uh has gone this well because
of the great planning and the
flexibility that's been demonstrated by
everyone throughout so
we're happy to accomplish the mission to
this point and we're looking forward to
coming home
all right thank you endeavor and we'll
proceed now with questions
this is the philippine earth news for
anybody who wants to take it uh what has
the earth look like on this mission how
much detail can you see what's the
smallest thing you can see out the
windows either from inside or outside
the cabin
one of the new guys in particular dan
barry i think has been pretty awestruck
by the view of the earth i'll let him
answer that one
i really have been uh thunderstruck by
the
beauty of the earth both from inside the
cabin and outside during an eva
i was trying to find words to describe
it the only thing
i can compare it to is the the color of
gemstone i mentioned in an earlier
conference that while i was outside the
blues range from midnight blue to
turquoise the forest for emerald green
the clouds were so bright they were hard
to look at it has just been
an amazing
experience to be able to see the earth
to see
the stars that you can see when the
flight deck is
darkened and the sunrises and sunsets
are particularly spectacular
bill harwood with cbs news for winston
scott i think or leroy ciao
based on your assessment of the the
performance of the suits the thermal
characteristics the tools and all the
stuff you guys tested during your two
evas
how ready is nasa to go build station
how much is left to do can you give us
kind of a midterm report based on how
everything went
well uh from the suit standpoint i can
tell uh tell you i'm very very pleased
with the performance of the suit as i
was standing on that olympus for uh 60
minutes 30 or so were in the darkness i
again felt very very comfortable
obviously you can tell some thermal
gradients my finger tips were a little
warmer than the palms but that's to be
expected and just as an example but
overall i felt very good in the suit i
could have continued to work in the suit
regardless of the temperatures
so i would say with we certainly have a
good baseline for which we can
uh going and do our work obviously you
always want to look for improvements but
i think we're to the point where we can
take that suit airborne and begin to
construct the station with it
both both evas were cva development
flight tests were extremely successful
not only did we get three more people in
our astronaut office experience in
spacewalking we also proved on uh on eba
one that the macro size hardware is
going to work very well and on eba 2
that more of the detail tools are also
going to work very well we were
surprised by a few small things that
didn't work quite like we had expected
we were also pleasantly surprised by
some things that worked much better than
we expected so it was a very successful
flight test we learned a lot it's going
to feed right back into the space
station and the space station program
and we're ready to go build it
peter galtery with the west kentucky
news uh for any of the spacewalkers uh
how
valuable would it be if you guys could
control the movement of the arm right
when you're hanging at the end of it
there instead of having someone
directing you
well i'll i'll answer one part of that
then i'll hand off to brent jett who was
the prime arm operator during our evas
to answer the rest but uh from my
perspective uh everything i asked brent
to do he did perfectly in fact i think
the three of us agree that pretty much
uh he and koichi who was also operating
the arm at times could read our minds
and know exactly where we need to be and
they had a good perspective out the
window and with cameras as well
you know position us exactly where we
needed to be so i don't think it was
that important i don't think it's
important that we be able to control the
arm ourselves but uh you know the
coordination worked great
from the arm operator's perspective i
would say it would be very difficult to
have an eba person controlling the arm
with their limited field of view they're
not able to see all the joints of the
arm so
the arm operator is responsible for
maintaining clearance from any other
orbiter structure we were working in
some
fairly tight areas up in the forward
payload bay so i think the way we have
it right now that
is works really well the training we get
excellent and i think we're able to
accomplish the mission uh very
efficiently
this is phil chan again for leroy uh
you've been usually a fairly laid-back
person but i heard you go oh wow during
one of the spacewalks and then about 15
seconds later say okay back to work and
this is over africa during daytime not
towards the terminator and just
wondering what you saw and what was so
oh well about it
i believe the moment you're talking
about i was looking at an excellent view
of australia it was an oblique shot of
uh australia is very clear and sharks
bay was very very clearly in view i
think that's the moment when i when i
said that
bill harwood for commander duffy i think
obviously 10 years aft 10 years of
progress here after 51l and looking
ahead to the future we stand ready to
transition over to a single prime
contract i know there's some concern
that as that transition takes place a
lot of the safety issues that were put
in after 51l may be eroded to some
extent because of budget cuts or
whatever what are your thoughts about
that are you concerned
as that transition approaches on how
safety gets maintained and how you
manage the program
now bill we know that the process of
change which is ongoing um you know it
will occur
uh we have every confidence however that
we're not going to forget the lessons
that we have learned we will bring
forward with us
all of the procedures and the process
changes that we made after 51l to ensure
that they continue to fly safely so we
don't think we're going to lose anything
in the process you know we do have to
live within the budget constraints that
we're faced with we think we can do it
safely we think we can get the job done
and we're looking forward to the
challenge of doing it
pete altery with the west kentucky news
uh this is for anyone who saw that delta
launch
when you guys passed over were you able
to actually see the uh the rocket itself
or was it just the the contrail and the
cloud that you saw and can you explain a
little bit more about that cloud how
high was it that it appeared to you i
know i saw some of the video but if you
can explain it i'd appreciate it thanks
i can i can tell you what we saw we were
looking out the uh the commander's
window sort of to the left of the flight
deck and saw
an oblong ball of light sitting up above
the atmosphere
it was
too large to be a star it almost looked
like the moon rising and as we watched
it it became brighter
and then started to stretch out into a
line and since houston had alerted us
that
delta rocket was going to be launched
and we knew the location we were looking
was right toward florida
we surmised that it was in fact the
death of launch continued to watch it it
stretched out into a long linear uh
white line which then faded into red and
then finally
speckled red and then as the sun rose
faded away
this is mike drago of the associated
press for commander duffy
what are your thoughts on the night
landing and could you tell us some of
the the piloting the different piloting
challenges that you face on a night or
day landing
well i'm looking forward to the night
landing it's something that we've
trained for
brent and i have been training now for
the you know the better part of a year
to do that
we've flown hundreds of approaches at
night don't think that it'll be all that
different from uh from a day landing to
tell you the truth that some people that
have
made night landings before tell me that
it's actually a little bit easier just
because you don't have all the other
things in your visual
current range uh to distract you at all
and all you have is the lit runway in
the center line and the light sliding up
the touchdown zone so very excited about
doing it i've been training for it for a
long time
and i don't think it's going to be
particularly difficult
and this is a question to commander
duffy from michael doden of nhk
um sds 72 has an international mission
with koichi on board as mission
specialist how would you evaluate his
asset as mission specialist and the
difference in nationality culture and
ideology mater thor if any
yeah
actually koichi is uh is one of the crew
and he's fit in very well uh here and we
haven't noticed that there are any
cultural uh differences uh when there
are some things that we can talk about
where americans do things different than
the japanese people we enjoy actually
having the opportunity to compare
the two outlooks and the two ways that
people would would view the same thing
throughout the training however and
certainly not in the flight has that
caused any problem whatsoever
and i don't think i i think as long as
we have people that are that like to get
along with each other and have a common
goal and work together
that cultural differences won't be a
significant problem
okay brian on r2u uh could you
characterize any uh
hydrazine you see coming out of the
thruster we'd like to get an idea if
it's visible at all we can't see
anything on the down length
okay
yeah before the we started the crew
conference
dan took a look at it and he said that
the leak was substantially less than
that
which we had seen earlier and right now
under the lighting conditions that we
have out right now which is you know
bright sunlight we can't see anything
coming out of it
roger brian our temperature trends
indicate that it's been decreasing it's
probably minute uh in quantity now so
very little oxidizer
should be escaping we had a concern that
some smart ice particle
ice particles might be in the way of the
sla
experiment and
be a concern for the cockpit but we
don't think that's a problem now so as
soon as the water problem is cleared up
downstairs we're going to maneuver and
continue with sla lasing if you concur
yeah i agree with you wholeheartedly
that sounds like a great idea and where
uh right now we've got a couple of
extensions and uh some dry wipes down
there where we're trying to swap it up
we'll let you know very quickly thank
you
deborah houston
orbit one shift is turning it over to
the falcon team with rob and story
we think you'll have smooth sailing into
florida on saturday morning so this will
be our last
shift with you it has been an immense
pleasure for orbit one
and brian says that we've used up about
all the plans we had taken along on this
flight if you have any left over you can
stow those we're on the nominal timeline
for entry great job congratulations and
we'll see you back at ellington from all
the team here
thanks
we'd tom to congratulate brian on uh
what a
terrific first mission he's had as a
lead flight director and
all those plans that he had in his book
we put most of them to use it's a good
thing he thought ahead as much as he had
and he got a lot of help from from you
and from everybody else in the room and
all the all the folks in the back rooms
and
we sure appreciate everything
that you all did for us it's been an
unbelievable mission and i can't wait to
see you guys back home and we can talk a
little more about it
we'll do that over a beer thanks
you got a deal we'll even buy it for you
i wrote that down
endeavor for sla
we'd like an sla disable page 6-4 please
winston
okay and an evening story a good morning
story believe it or not i was waiting on
your call i've got that procedure in my
hand and i'll put it in work
thanks very much winston
you