well thank you all for coming out this
morning it is a great pleasure to share
the experience of space flight with
those folks that make it happen if it
wasn't for all the efforts of people
around the NASA centers and here at JSC
that support our missions none of this
could occur and we're going to show you
a film today followed by some slides but
before we do that like to introduce the
crew members one more time and one crew
member is not here today that's Pedro
Dookie he was selected to become an
astronaut candidate in the next NASA
class later this summer and he is back
in Spain preparing to move here
permanently down here in the front row
we have our other all dat payload
specialist dr. Luka rabbani from Italy
Luca we trained as a crew of nine and
for those not familiar with ultimate
payload specialist roles they are
prepared to step in and fill the shoes
of one of the payload specialists up
until the last minute so they went
through all the training on all the
medical baseline data collection and
then once the mission lifted off took up
role similar to a Capcom at the payload
Operations Center in Marshall I'd like
to begin introducing the crew at the far
end of the table here is the pilot Kevin
Kregel was on his second mission next to
Kevin is dr. Chuck Brady a former navy
flight surgeon on his first flight next
to me on my left is dr. Bob thirst from
the Canadian Space Agency flying his
payload specialist number two on my
right is Lieutenant Colonel Susan Helms
she was mission specialist number two
which is our flight engineer and also
our payload commander a very challenging
role next to Susan is our PhD in
microgravity jean-jacques 5ea from
canasta Canadian I'm sorry the french
space agency and this was john jocks
first flight his family has been living
at Huntsville so he was very for me
with Marshall Space Flight centers role
in not only this mission but other
microgravity science missions and at the
end of the table is our first NASA
Doctor of Veterinary Medicine to fly in
space and that's Ric Linehan also on his
first flight without any further ado
we'd like to go ahead and begin the
video if we could bring the lights down
and roll the video and parts of the
video we will narrate other portions
include some of the intercom that was
recorded during ass'n here we are
suiting up at the Kennedy Space Center
for our launch on jun 20th again Kevin
Kregel the pilot waving to his family
jean-jacques 5ea from France very eager
to get into space Susan Helms all
pressure checked and ready to begin her
third space flight and the alien here is
a dr. Rick lenihan our veterinarian and
dr. Chuck Brady also eager to get into
space for his first time and from Canada
dr. Bob Thirsk the launch morning
schedule is quite quick paced no sooner
had we suited up when it was time to
head out to launch pad and levant would
take us out there during this walk out
we were thrilled to see some of our
friends and colleagues who had gotten up
early that morning to wish us all well
as we were heading off on her mission
and waiting for us at the launch pad was
our beloved Columbia and at this point
it seemed like it was a living creature
as it's hissed and fumed and groaned and
it seemed as eager as we were to get
ready for the launch the crew was
greeted at the launch pad done on the
gantry by the closeout crew who helped
us put on our harnesses and our
parachutes and check out our equipment
before we got inside Columbia the
strapping in procedure is a quite a busy
and highly choreographed affair and it's
also a bit of an emotional affairs as
well and for first-time flyer such as
myself I found that my thoughts went to
friends and family to the emergency
procedures that I was going to have to
perform in the event of an emergency and
I bought this wonderful adventure I was
heading off on it was really nice me to
strap in the mid day at the same time
that
Hendrix a three-time flower was
strapping in the flight deck if Tom
thought this was a safe thing to do than
i thought it was as well and these
wonderful views you have the strapping
in procedure a courtesy of a mini
view
ok so I went down bit higher xq
DC assamese agaric good riddance 313 hey
girl horn bets are coming down or nascar
on horn
and you can raise your visors
at Mach 25 engines hitting the clock
welcome to space ladies and gentlemen
it was just absolutely fantastic to see
the BN space and see this great piece of
American technology involved the
external tank it was really difficult
for Rick and I to focus on getting
pictures of this because here we saw the
earth and landmasses and oceans floating
beneath us but the external tank just
did a super job and would perform
greatly this is a mission that had dual
objectives it was a microgravity mission
and a life science mission combined
together but the the focus of the very
first day right after we got into space
was to capture the life science data for
documenting the adoption process so
without any further ado as soon as we D
suited people were working on
experiments which is probably a first in
the shuttle program as quickly as we did
here you see Bob on one of our life
science facilities it's a dynamometer
and what it's meant to do is help
measure both the static and dynamic
performance of the musculoskeletal
system we had several p I investigative
teams that were part of this major
experiment and here you see some of the
activities taking place yeah that's me
strapping in the TVD now being
electrically stimulated involuntarily by
a device which measures muscle
contraction here's Chuck on the arm
lever and we're measuring torque output
and muscle strength and degradation over
the 17 days of the flight on the torque
velocity dynamometer and Chuck here is
going through the different protocols
you can see the IBM thinkpad up there on
his right hand and he's following those
and that interfaces with software in the
TVD jean-jacques is holding a handgrip
dynamometer and he is performing various
protocols that t is reading on the
thinkpad screen up there in front of him
and they are anywhere from following
curves to producing various contractions
anywhere from ten to a hundred percent
on the hand grip and all this will be
compared to ground base theater when we
get back when we are back now actually
and look at changes in muscle physiology
that's me again and I am on Alfie be a
astronaut lung function experiment and
I'm about to I get on there and start
blowing into this tube and it's
measuring gaseous exchange in the lungs
and we're comparing pulmonary physiology
on orbit
based studies and right there I'm
interfacing with the keyboard unit and
reading the LEDs and following the flow
the flow parameters up there on the
screen and also we used Alfie with
exercise we did a resting pfts here's a
picture of jean-jacques with as many
watches on and the magic masking has
just gotten off your gamma tur and he's
going on to Alfie right now to determine
if there are any changes pre and post
exercise here's Chuck with the Olympic
torch and Chuck is hooked up to Alfie
and the odometer right now
simultaneously performing the exercises
and it's measuring his pulmonary output
and here's the rest of the crew offering
to cheer Chuck on and share in the
Olympic moment with the torch now that
torch was later taken down by the
orbiter crew and walked around the
orbiter after we landed we had another
study it was not relative to the lung
function or the musculoskeletal studies
that we have already talked about but we
also were looking at the vestibular
system the neuro vestibular system
specifically on this experiment the the
goal here is to try to capture what
happens to I and head movements and
posture movements when the inner ear
becomes confused about what's up and
what's down without the effect of
gravity your inner ear doesn't really
understand which way it's heading
relative to the earth and so when you
remove that effect the question is how
does the inner ear then translate to the
eyes and head how to move and so we had
a number of experiments you can see some
of them in progress here where we were
doing very disciplined head and eye
movements and likewise we did I've
movements with and without knowledge of
what was going on in the immediate
environment and by comparing this
relative to what was captured pre and
post flight we hope to better understand
how that whole inner ear I postural
integrated system works together and of
course an application for this is among
other things the study of space motion
sickness because we know that that's got
an influence on how people react in
space to that effect the award for the
oddest-looking lms experiment goes to
the torso rotation experiment this
investigation also measure
how the vestibular apparatus or inner
ear adapts to the weightless environment
we also hope to come up with a cause for
this space motion sickness problem which
afflicts about half of all astronauts
during the first two or three days of
spaceflight here in the mid-deck
jean-jacques and I have just dawned the
equipment which includes accelerometer
packages on the top of our head and also
on our back and we're performing a
strange-looking dance which is actually
important to calibrate the equipment
since it's the only experiment on our
flight that comes from Canada I thought
it appropriate on one of the data
collection days to where my team canada
hockey jersey we hope also that the
results of this experiment will help
improve treatment programs for people
that suffer from motion sickness and
settings on the ground well this is the
lace and sleepwear here you're seeing
four of us come out of our bunks in the
morning this is a study looking at the
circadian rhythms and sleep patterns and
this is the first time that astronauts
were actually had their brainwaves
measured at night during six nights on
four subjects you see us coming out of
there we're really a fashion statement
here as you'll see in just a moment but
Tom's giving us all up and we're going
to line up here in just a second with
all our sleep but equipment on we think
we're going to get really great data
from this we're looking at long-duration
spaceflight and hopefully we'll be able
to help people rest better and be more
efficient both in space and here on the
ground of course it's also important to
try and quantify the changes in
performance and on this flight we flew a
small laptop computer which we would
practice with a few times before flight
during flight and then post flight and
we could see the changes in our memory
capabilities and in our hand eye
coordination this mission was a life
science mission but also a microgravity
science mission and we had several field
of investigations including a fluid
physics and we see the fluid physics
experiment called the bdp you for a
bubble drop and particle unit h p i had
the special container to be a head to
load in this optical bench and we had to
make some critical optimization before
getting the end to
to the ground and to the p.i these
experiments work very well except one
day we had a little problem that Kevin
and myself and Susan are trying to fix a
shortcut in the in the connector but
when we get that fixed we were able to
get very nice views of boiling in this
particular experiment or convection
driven by capillary forces like for this
bubble in another experiment and we try
to get the best quiet conditions for
these critical phases another important
experiment was the material science
project a furnace in which we elaborated
different kind of specimens alloyed
aluminum alloy for instance as well as
semiconductors so we try to get the best
environment thermal environment to work
study the kind of structure we can
expect to get in space and as you can
see here sometimes it's easier to work
upside down to get accurate positioning
of the cartridge inside a furnace and
systems looks very comfortable doing
that you see that the Space Lab is very
busy with activities and lot of
experiments we also were doing some
experiments on the flight deck this is
the voice command system it's a voice
activated system for the payload Bay
cameras and Tom and myself were working
on this experiment and just seeing how
well it performed on orbit we also got
great views of outside the earth we had
a full moon and it was a setting and as
it sets and goes through the atmosphere
it actually turned blue so we had a blue
moon in on orbit we had a real blue moon
which is second full moon in a month we
thought we'd be fairly clever and we
videoed this down to Mission Control
Center but they were on top of us and
they had the song to play when we were
video
down one of our best passes was early in
the morning we had a nice pass above the
medicon see Europe and Spain here we
were able to see our hometowns this one
was Spain and Madrid a hometown of pedo
duka our alternate then we had some of
these beautiful islands south of the
coast of France that we also sometimes
and it was not so cloudy and we
continued above Italy and Greece and it
was a very nice award in the morning to
wake up early just to see that
we also had some marvelous passes over
the United States you may recall that
during the end of June it was absolutely
clear over most of North America and
this is one seen here of us saying
goodbye to California currently over
Nevada New Mexico there's Lake Mead near
Las Vegas nearly in the center of the
picture and one of the current events
that happened while we were on orbit
were the wildfires in the Grand Canyon
area and you can actually see those in
the bottom left of the picture at this
time coming into the field of you just
before we head over into Mexico on this
particular pass as you can see it was
quite impressive from space just
absolutely fantastic to travel from 39
degrees north to 39 degrees south and
this is a view of the Appalachian to
Great Smoky Mountains from Tennessee to
North Carolina now we're getting ready
to come on I think anyone's wanted to
come home but this is a view in size
we're preparing for entry and as a
rookie I can't begin to tell you just
what a spectacular light show it was I
was really glad there were three
veterans on the flight deck with me
because I felt like the whole front end
the orbiter was coming on fire as you
can see looking out the back that's just
awesome a light show that's going on and
when just a second we'll see the lights
reflecting off of Tom and Kevin in front
and illuminating fully in a darkened
cabin Susan's face you're just an
absolutely spectacular show as we reach
the entry it's all videos on the launch
we also had that small camera for videos
out the front we're over the panhandle
of Florida if you look in the middle of
the picture it's kind of cloudy but you
can actually see the coast of the fall
Walton Beach Pensacola area as we come
to land at the Kennedy Space Center it
was an overcast day we had a clouds at
about 20,000 feet we're at the heading
alignment cone Tom's in a right hand
turn trying to line up on Kennedy Space
Center runway 33 we go through the
clouds and this is looking out my window
this is what I saw on the entry day we
can see the rivers of the Kennedy Space
Center as we make the turn coming around
that the Henning line macomb we're doing
about 300 miles per hour and we roll out
about six miles from the runway at
12,000 feet pointing 20 degrees nose low
fairly steep approach Tom's lined up
right on the
numbers for our landing there on that
morning several weeks ago of course the
entry flight control team had gotten us
to this point with a great effort by
some of the folks here in the room with
us today here we are at 2,000 feet
beginning the gentle pull out from that
steep dive to approach the runway using
the lights to the left of the runway to
achieve a one and a half degree approach
Kevin puts the wheels down about ten
seconds before touchdown and the
airspeed is bleeding from about 300
knots done to target of 205 a touchdown
and we're intending to touchdown about
here on the black marks as you can see
that's about where we touch down so the
numbers worked out well the pre-planned
numbers at 195 Kevin pushes two buttons
which deploys the drag chute I lower the
nose to the runway and then we can use a
nose wheel steering system on the
orbiter much like an airliner to track
the center line to see here it also has
brakes like an airliner so we're slowing
it with the brakes at about 60 knots
Kevin punches another button which
releases a drag chute so it doesn't
drape down over the engines after we
stop and we continue breaking until we
come to a complete stop and that's the
end of the flight portion of the mission
but some of the most crucial data still
had to be collected as these four
payload crewmembers readapted to gravity
so we very efficiently with the help of
the folks here in Mission Control egress
the vehicle they began their data takes
and I think you can see from this that
we were very pleased with the 17-day
flight and we'll transition now to the
slides the STS 78 mission links past
with present through a crew patch
influenced by Pacific Northwest Native
American art central to the design is
the space shuttle Columbia who shape
evokes the image of the eagle an icon of
power and prestige in the national
symbol of the United States the eagles
feathers representing both peace and
friendship symbolize the spirit of
international unity on STS 78 in orbit
surrounding the mission number recalls a
traditional NASA emblem the life
sciences in microgravity space lab or
LMS is housed in Colombia's payload Bay
and is depicted in a manner
I'm innocent of totem art the pulsating
Sun a symbol of life displays three
crystals representing STS seventy-eights
3 microgravity materials processing
facilities the constellation delphinus
recalls the dolphin friend of sea
explorers each star representing one
member of STS seventy-eights
international crew including our
alternate payload specialist Pedro Duque
and Luca Urbani the Olympic colored
thrust rings at the base of Columbia
signify the five continents of Earth
United in global cooperation the
advanced advancement of all humankind
and this is a photo of the et after
separation about a third of the way
through the sequence and it's about to
re-enter and it has started its tumble
already and if you'll look up near the
top of the et you can see kind of a
bull's-eye like Mars grey and black and
that is the characteristic burn scar of
the SRBs this was taken with a nikon f 4
and a 300 millimeter lens with the
doubler on it kind of looked like a
small bazooka actually when you get it
out there so you can imagine a Chuck
Chuck and I were both up there getting
the cameras out with Susan's help and
maneuvering ourselves into the back
winner to take this picture and I think
we got some good ones this is the
shuttle amateur radio experiment what a
delight this was each crew member got a
chance to talk with school kids all
around the world and many school kids
had worked for six months or up to a
year even preparing working in science
and math studying the orbital
trajectories of the shuttle getting
ready with antennas and so forth to get
a chance to talk with us on board the
real credit goes to our X team here on
site those guys and ladies that worked
so hard on this program we got a chance
to talk to many people around the world
and just the feel of someone being
whether it's an internet question or
kacar our shuttle amateur radio
experiment gets a chance for people to
feel like they're inside the shuttle and
this is what this business is all about
it was another experiment that we had on
our flight that wasn't seen in the film
and that's the plant growth facility
another number of people here interested
in how plants grow in space we continue
to do research in that area and
jean-jacques and I were the two people
that were designated to
to monitor and harvest these plants
after they had been growing in space for
about a week and a half to two weeks
what you see here is documentation of
the chambers we had five chambers four
of which were exposed to the cabin air
and one of which was totally
self-contained in the next slide you can
see one of the chambers that was exposed
to the cabin air and the Neal's are
quite sparse to the plants are bent over
on purpose to see if they can grow
reactive tissue at the bend while
they're in microgravity versus the ones
that aren't bent at the middle but when
we took out the one that had not been
exposed to the cabin air it was like a
lush tropical forest in there and when
you thought about the fact that this is
what it looks like when it's exposed to
cabin air really made all of us pause
for a minute wonder what was in our air
I'm sure we're interested in hearing the
scientific results of this experiment
and this is a picture of well we're
taking blood from each other and believe
it or not throughout the 17 day mission
the payload crew all donated about 120
cc's of blood per person Chuck is there
with a tourniquet on his arm and that's
me about to a place butterfly catheter
into his vein to get a morning fasting
blood sample and in many in many
instances we were actually taking blood
samples pre and post TVD exercises you
saw that earlier in the slides here and
we were measuring hormone levels and
other physiologic functions with the
blood and to my knowledge between the
SLS series of flights this is one of the
big successes here is that we managed to
get every blood sample and so far from
what we've heard from the pis they've
all been very good and though they're
getting the data they need so we
recognize folks with a call the KCA
equipment and really all it is is a
video teleconferencing system we use the
KO antenna on the orbiters capability to
uplink video files and we had to a
transmissions the age dick tracy is here
with a little camera on the laptop
computer we can see the people in
Mission Control Center they
see that it turned out to really help us
out and we did when the in-flight
maintenance works on the bubble
experiment having the opportunity to see
from the from space his hometown is for
each of us a very good sex satisfaction
here you have the south part of France
with on the left bottom part the
beginning of the French Riviera
Marseille and going to the Italian
border you can see also the Alps as it's
a very nice mountains on the middle or
right is some snow on top of the
glaciers and just in the middle of the
Grenoble Valley Kenobi's my home
tone-tone and is also the capital of the
goat cheese
another good shot of an important city
for for us this is Madrid in Spain just
in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula
it's not very easy to see the city
because of the colors which match
actually the landscape around it but we
are sure that matter is is just in the
middle of this picture here and this was
an important shot for a pedo Duque our
alternate everyone recognizes the this
is the boot of Italy and in particular
along the spine of Italy near the east
coast or the apennine mountains on the
west coast about halfway down the boot
is the city of Rome a little bit further
down from that is the famous Bay of
Naples to the left is the island of
Sicily which in this very rare occasion
during our mission was cloud-covered
Italy is very important country a
contributor to the international space
program I got up every morning to look
at this view thinking about Italy being
the cradle of Western civilization
centuries ago and about today its
high-tech space program and also Italy
is the home of Luca or Bonnie our
alternate payload specialist who is a
member of our crew we considered Luca
and Pedro as members of our crew because
not only their training but also of the
payload development of procedures
development ly contributed to our flight
and it's very likely that Luca will have
his own shuttle flight in the coming
years moving on to the United States and
the rest of North America this is a
picture of the Cascade Range with the
Diamonds of the mountains rarely seen
from space without cloud cover just to
orient you up to the very top of the
picture you're basically looking at the
South tip of British Columbia including
Vancouver Island which is where Bob is
from is from Victoria the mountain at
the very top there is Mount Rainier and
Chuck is from the Seattle area just
nearby that area
just to the south of Mount Rainier to
the little bit to the right is Mount
Adams and then a little bit further down
there is a little white blotch with some
brownish grey just to the north that's
Mount Saint Helens and it looks like
it's been had its cap blown off and of
course that's exactly what happened in
nineteen eighty and then the residue
from the volcanic eruption you can still
see from space here if you look at the
gray area just to the north of that the
next mountain down is near my hometown
of Portland Oregon so we've crossed over
the Columbia River into the state of
Oregon and that's Mount Hood and then
further down near the bottom of the
picture is Mount Jefferson and at the
very bottom are the three sisters which
is in Central Oregon we also had some
outstanding opportunities to take
pictures of Denver and Colorado Springs
if you look at this picture the the
green is the rampart range south of
Denver and the brown that's to the left
of the picture near the bottom is Pikes
Peak and of course I know you can see
very clearly in the center of the
picture the Air Force Academy which is
the alma mater of myself Tom and Kevin
like a second home so we were we were
surprised how clearly we could see
details of the Academy's got several
unique landmarks and while we were up
there we had the opportunity to to give
a welcome to the incoming class of basic
cadets that happened to be planned for
graduation in the year 2000 so it was
quite a landmark as Jean Jacques
mentioned we all got to view our homes
from space this is where my roots are
it's Lake Erie is at the top right hand
corner that's the western end of the
lake and at that very corner of the lake
is Toledo Ohio named after Toledo Spain
I grew up in a small town called
woodville just outside there so this was
the first out of four flights that I'd
been far enough North to see Ohio what
you see in the center part of the screen
which Michigan up in the upper half we
also have Detroit in the field of view
near the upper right-hand corner and
then the landmass just across the river
is Windsor Ontario
could you tell from my exit this is my
hometown this is the longest island in
the United States the second one is
would be island where Chuck is from very
cleverly we named it long island this is
where I grew up in the south side just
north of the beaches in the middle of
the picture is my hometown of a medieval
Long Island and a medieval Long Island
has about seven million of this
country's people living there
this is a picture of the Washington DC
area our nation's capital you can see
the coastline on the right side of the
view you can see the Potomac River is
coming in on the left side the central
part of the view and then winds down
through Washington DC in the very center
of the frame and then exits near the
bottom left hand corner we had the
opportunity of celebrating the
independence of three nations of our
crew members during or shortly after the
flight we celebrated canada day on the
first of july we obviously celebrated
independence day on the fourth of july
for the US and then just last weekend we
had the pleasure of celebrating the
french national holiday on the
fourteenth of july this is an infrared
picture of the same area not directly
from the same location this is looking
straight down on Washington DC with
infrared film the vegetation shows up
green I'm sorry shows up bread as you
can see the river shows up more blue or
green as it winds through Washington DC
in the city itself shows up very gray or
white colored and some of the other
white blotches you see are the tops of
clouds and on the very left hand side of
the slide you can see a Dulles Airport
very distinctly so infrared photography
can make man-made structures very
distinct Atlanta Georgia home of the
1996 summer olympics and just as the
athletes are gathering this week from
all around the world in a spirit of
international goodwill and cooperation
and our crew and our mission we're
particularly blessed and having
representatives from five nations and
from four separate space agencies and we
feel like that's a great forerunner of
the International Space Station in a
cooperation and goodwill that that four
boats as you can tell from this scene we
enjoyed our 17 days in space immensely
we did not look forward to returning we
were happy to stay on orbit a few more
days gathering the data for the folks
here on the ground
but again as I mentioned at the
introduction none of this would be
possible without the tremendous efforts
that people here at the Johnson Space
Center the Kennedy Space Center and in
our case the dedicated folks at the
Marshall Space Flight Center that
directed the science and data gathering
during this mission so on behalf of the
crew we would like to thank each of you
for your individual efforts in making
STS 78 the success that it was thank