okay
good morning andy
good morning
and how are you just buying marine corps
a day
i'm always great on the marine corps day
as you can see we got the second copy of
the flight plan thanks
okay
okay dave go ahead
okay as you know uh just as the
satellite departed we
uh
disabled auto reconfiguration and
therefore we should understand fully the
configuration of the satellite and in
our few passes we've made we've gotten
two-way calm with esto through estell
and we've found some unusual unexpected
configurations on the satellite
first of all as you know there are three
modes we can command to the satellite
two of those modes do not require the
onboard satellite computer and we are
successful in commanding with those
modes only
mode three which requires the computer
we were unable to command
and we are not able to reset the onboard
computer from the ground
we were able to turn rope on
sla on the pvlas flashing and the
ammeter on
we cannot command the drbs we've turned
on the earth sensors
and we've gotten good response to all
this based on bus currents to our
commanding
but our data does indicate we've had a
global ram
a problem with data in the global ram
maybe the ram itself or uh interactions
inter
interactions with the ram
the the computer that doesn't appear to
be running is required for amc amcs
processing
and um
so we feel that that's not working
correctly
the xy gyros are running although the z
gyro and the skew gyro we found powered
off
in terms of the nitrogen system and this
was unexpected
in terms of the nitrogen system the tank
pressure reads near zero the take
temperatures are very cold
both consistent with a depletion of
onboard nitrogen
and our data indicated that both inline
thrusters one and two and both main isil
valves are open
and depleted gas
this is interesting because the onboard
computer itself
did not have the capability as you know
to command
both
sets of inlines and isos open and our
data indicates they are open
we have another estel pass coming up in
a little while we're going to make
contact again
we're going to command the isil valves
closed along with the inline thruster
valves
and we're going to monitor response and
try to be more certain that we're
actually interacting with the satellite
and not just seeing aberrant data
the bus voltage is so good all above 30
volts
well the main bus is at 29.6 but the
battery volts are above 30.
we should have enough battery life to
keep communicating with the satellite
for one or two more days
so we'll keep you status there's has
been an event on the satellite that we
do not understand yet
okay i copy all that and appreciate the
call on that and also i guess the
one in it that comes up you'll give us a
call sometime about fighting i guess
here in a few days
absolutely we'll keep you informed and
still predicting seven days ten hours
right i asked a group of sixth graders
from wright denney elementary school in
west virginia to come up with some
questions for you today and many of
these students want to know if you were
ever scared during the mission let me
direct that one to uh to jeff hoffman
and to scott horowitz jeff you seemed
pretty agitated when you reported the
broken tether to mission control last
saturday
well um
it was a huge surprise i mean i i think
what what you heard in my voice was
definitely an urgency that uh
that we may well have to do something
and of course uh we've always known that
if the tether breaks and it breaks
uh at a long distance away from the the
shuttle you know the tether is stretched
a little bit when it's in space so it's
like a it's like a huge rubber band that
you've pulled out
and if it breaks
uh away from the shuttle then we've got
that huge coiled rubber band coming down
at us and we've got to do something
about it uh that that's why
andy allen is as soon as i called tether
break rushed over to the window threw
the camera out of the way i threw my
camera away
and uh you know we were ready to
uh look at the tether coming back at us
and
andy was gonna fly the orbiter to stay
clear of it
you hardly have time to get scared in a
situation like that because you really
have to act and if you're
if you're really scared then you can't
do anything but we were certainly uh
surprised
uh very quickly we realized that uh the
tether had broke right at the shuttle so
instead of coming back towards it was
moving away from us and we and the
shuttle were in no danger and uh and at
that point
it was uh of course it was a big shock
and uh our responsibility then is to
collect data and to try to photograph
what's going on so that we can uh figure
out after the mission what happened let
me let me talk to umberto and mauricio a
little bit about the tethered satellite
what did you learn during the five hours
that it operated before it broke away
from the shuttle
well i would say that we learn a lot
about the electrode dynamic tether
in fact we were able to generate power
up to
uh one kilowatt i would say so
the experiment was running uh
nominally and they were gathering a lot
of data
and i think that in fact even though the
the debtor broke and we never got on
station
we had quite a good data to analyze uh
for for a while and we we can surely
uh
assess much better the behavior of the
of together at this eyeball that was
never done before
and i want to to
to point at the fact that this kind of
experiment is impossible to to do on
earth so this is really the only the
only place where you can do an
experiment like that
is still working i think it's
extraordinary despite all that it's been
through it's still operating we have
ground contact with it and i want to
point out
uh it's something which obviously we we
would have preferred people not get a
chance to see this but we have a
satellite up there now with 20
kilometers of tether on it
and it will be visible from the ground
uh it should be an absolutely awesome
sight because the 20 kilometers of
tether
assuming that it's all strung out will
be
uh
will be definitely visible to the naked
eye and it will be the only time in most
for most people that they'll ever be
able to see something in earth orbit
that's other than a point of light
they'll actually see a line moving
through the sky
people in the southern united states so
i hope newspapers and
tv
programs like yours will uh
contact the the people who make the
orbital predictions let people know
all over the world when they're able to
see the tethered satellite going over
because it it will be an absolutely
awesome sight
in fact this is the largest man-made
object that's ever been in space i guess
up in 20 kilometers long
all right i am um i've got a question uh
from me for jeff what is the best thing
that has happened to you on this mission
to this point
i know there's been a lot of
disappointments but i'm sure there's
good news in this too
well
we had taken the challenge of of getting
this satellite deployed and i think all
of us uh
had this
wonder about what was it gonna look like
to see 20 kilometers of tether you know
sometimes when i i'm driving uh home to
work and i see a skyline of houston and
it's about 13 miles away
and uh and i think gosh that's a long
way and we're actually gonna have a
tether strung out
shuttle and the satellite that's that's
13 miles long
it's it's just extraordinary and we've
now actually seen that with with our
eyes and and we've uh we've actually
shown
that all of our systems work to get it
out there and i think i think we're very
very
happy that we were able to get that far
obviously um we only
succeeded in part of the journey we
would have preferred to get to the end
but
we've accomplished a lot
you