thank you all for coming and we're going
to present you with the film that takes
about 15 minutes and it recaps the
highlights of the mission and then we'll
go through about 20 of the slides that
summarize some of our earth observations
and some of our living in space
experiences and then as mentioned will
open up for questions so without any
further ado let's go ahead and roll the
movie
it starts off with our crew patch I
helped with some charge of design nip
the whole crew put in their efforts and
you have the the earth and the space
shuttle and we've got the little
triangle there that represents the
teachers satellite the shuttle and the
MCC here on the ground and it has a red
white and blue of our flag and also for
people from Ohio you look around the
edge of it it's in the shape of a no
because this was the old Buckeye crew I
think most you aware we were delayed
from our first launch do this pesky
rascal down at the Cape however our hats
were off to the technicians there at the
Cape who repaired the ET and
successfully rolled back out for an
on-time launch jun 22nd here we are
suiting up in the room that's Kevin
kriegel the pilot dr. don thomas mission
specialist one army major nancy curry
mission specialist number two and dr.
Mary Ellen Webber mission specialist
number three of course it was a glorious
morning as most mornings are to Kennedy
Space Center as you know we wake up
about six hours before launch have our
breakfast put the suits on and then go
out for a final chance to wave goodbye
to all the folks who supported us up to
this point as we walk out to the astro
van and that was the buckeye that fool
along with us that i showed to the press
at that point and we would like to thank
all the support around the country and
especially that from ohio which was
outstanding getting ready to get to
launch on the pad this is also the first
flight of the block one engine the block
one engine takes a number of wells are
the oxidizer turbo pump from a little
over 200 to about a dozen so it really
helps with the reliability from inside
the cockpit and our engine parameters it
was absolutely no difference and it
worked flawlessly we're getting ready
for the fire suppression and the water
suppression to light and off we go they
always have the rookie say well it was
like for your first launch and of course
once those solids light it's really
is a kick in the pants and you know that
you're going to go someplace and it's
it's shaking a bunch but it really
wasn't too bad and thanks to all the
people around here is except for the
g-forces it felt like I was back in the
simulator and I was back in the
simulator looking at all the switches
except I you could feel the g-forces and
as most of you know it goes up to around
3 g's for the last two minutes of launch
and that's really the the only
difference you'll see as we go through
the supersonic today on the day of
launch we had the right atmospheric
conditions to show the shock wave coming
over the orbiter and it really made it
for a spectacular launch just come right
over the SRBs and across the shuttle and
of course after about eight and a half
minutes everything worked just fine
beautiful day and we're getting ready to
do it we're sent up there and that's to
launch the teachers satellite
it's a busy first day for us on orbit as
soon as we get up to orbit after eight
and a half minutes we start getting out
of our suits taking our seats down and
getting ready for the satellite deploy
about two hours into the mission is
actually when we start checking out the
teedra satellite here this is the sixth
and final tracking and data relay
satellite that'll be launched from the
shuttle the very first one was on sts 6
and this is quite a tradition it shows
all the crew members here at the eff
panel we're looking up towards the back
of the payload bay and watching the tea
dresses it raises up and here we're
about ready to punch it out it moves out
very slowly here just a few feet a
minute and it went so smoothly and
nominally on orbit it was unlike any of
our simulations where our training team
throws all the malfunctions at us and it
just went so perfectly like clockwork
this is six hours into the mission as
it's moving out the top half of the
satellite that you see is the tracking
and data relay satellite itself when the
bottom half is the inertial upper stage
which is a two-stage solid rocket motor
that will take the satellite from 160
miles he route to geosynchronous orbit
about 22,000 miles out and as you can
imagine our noses we're pressed up
against the windows pretty much looking
at this except for Nancy trying to get a
good picture with the camera here
and that was just a great feeling to
have it go out right on time nice and
smooth it shows the satellite there in
distances it's moving off and we started
to back away from from it with the
orbiter and it's currently out of
geosynchronous orbit they're continuing
the check out of satellite and
everything's going great with it so far
this is a dedication of the plaque for
the new mission control center as you
all probably know here that we were the
first flight that was controlled that is
a new CCC or combined control center
which will be used for combined shuttle
to mirror and shuttle station missions
and from the cruise perspective it was
totally transparent which which was just
exceptional this is the morning a flight
day two we start picking up with the
meat of our flight plan after the
successful deployment of tea dress for
all the principal investigators you can
see that we diligently reviewed our
messages in the morning coming off the
tips and this kind of shows a little bit
about our daily routine this is Donna
taking his equivalent of a shower in the
morning you can't ever escape the
watchful eye of other crew members or
the camera and this is floating over to
the galley you know all of us like to do
stupid astronaut tricks and and so forth
on orbit and you'll see our equivalent
of that here shortly we really didn't
play too much Kevin's trying his hardest
to form a ball of juice here but he
found out very quickly he better have a
towel handy when he's trying this and
this displays come my unique eating
habits this is a creamed spinach which I
eat for breakfast every morning so they
felt like they needed to get that on
film this is dawn in their gamma you can
see kind of hamming it up a little bit
here although he was working pretty hard
I can assure you and we all had the time
to exercise we were all in really good
shape at the end of the flight this is
the bioreactor experiment it's one of
the I think most exciting experiments on
our flight what they're trying to do is
actually grow three-dimensional body
like tissues outside the human body it's
some
it's very difficult to do here on the
ground under the influence of gravity
the experiment worked extremely well
they got very large size tissues you can
see inside the chamber right there and
this was the first flight of this
configuration and the hope here is that
one day we might be growing replacement
organs and really understand how tissues
actually grow this is an experiment
connected with the national institutes
of health nih are we flow flew 10
pregnant rodents and we were looking at
muscular skeletal development changes in
microgravity this is an amateur radio
experiment called Surak that we flew on
board we talked to a total of eight
schools mostly in the United States but
we did talk to one in Argentina and that
was a great thrill for these eight
minute passes to be able to talk and
share the excitement of spaceflight with
the many students around the world this
is an experiment called the space tissue
loss experiment looking at the
development of medaka fish embryos again
we're looking at embryonic development
and microgravity this is an interior
views near the end of the flight you can
actually see the blood flow through the
embryo and actually they saw quite a
significant difference between our
downlink video of those developed in
microgravity versus the ground
controlled studies let's say one of the
cameras that we flew it's a
multispectral imaging camera it's a
looking at thruster plumes and also
water dumps this is an example looking
out the side hatch but water dump with
the windex camera and next you'll see a
thruster firing that was filmed out the
app window we did a series of primary
jet thruster firings and they're looking
at the chemistry and physics of the
emissions from the shuttle on not only
the shuttle but also other orbiting
structures another experiment we flew
was again using a multispectral camera
this is called Hercules it's a pretty
big beast it weighs around 70 80 pounds
and here on earth we had actually rig up
a tripod to practice using it at all we
actually had two of us using it to aim
because it's like looking through a soda
straw and we
and have targets on the ground and the
the big bump on the top of the camera is
an inertial measurement unit and the
hope is that we can accurately look at
places on the ground and also be able to
look at the latitude and longitude there
you see a picture of autonomy Bay Cuba
you can see pretty good resolution it's
jumping around there so real time it's a
little bit tough but it's going 30
frames a second so post flight people on
the ground can really look at it pretty
well miss a picture of a city at night
it's totally dark out for us in
Australia so the Hercules has a lot of
potential and had a lot of a couple of
problems in the beginning but through
the hard work people here on the ground
we got it to work and this is an
experiment called the visual function
tester as you know when you take away
gravity some pretty dramatic changes
happen in the human body and one of
those changes is that the eyeball shape
actually changes and the vision has
affected this is a picture of Hurricane
chantalle which is forming in the
Atlantic luckily it didn't hit land and
turn north but we got a good view of
this on flight date two and three passed
almost directly over top of it this is
passing over Egypt you can see the Nile
River that there in the lower left and
coming up on the Red Sea this is a
beautiful pass always because you have
the very light brown soil and the blue
blue water there and one morning shortly
after a wakeup music somebody peeked out
and said hey we're going right over
Egypt and the Nile River and you should
see us all scrambling getting up as as
fast as possible and getting our noses
up to the window there but it's a
spectacular pass and this is one of our
great entertainment mechanisms up on
orbit is just to look out the window and
watch the world go around we were prior
to this shot it was actually three
planets in this view and of course you
can see something similar this right
before sunrise on earth this is Venus
and Mars coming up just before sunrise
the advantage we had being in the
orbiter was that we could set the
cameras up on one rev and an hour and a
half later actually take the scene
happened very quickly but again we
thought it was a spectacular shot and
took the time to to capture it on
16-millimeter film
you never get tired of looking out the
window it's don's emphasize you can see
the orbiter tail and omens pods in the
upper right-hand corner this is again
looking out the window even at night is
spectacular this is over Asia in a
Pacific and you can see the earth glow
which I've never really noticed some
pictures before and it's real evident on
how tenuous our atmosphere is and
looking at the lightning storms
literally for hundreds and a thousand
miles you can see the lightning going
off and you can see how it propagates
all across the continent all across the
ocean it's really a real pretty view and
unfortunately the day before supposed to
come back they tell us it's time quit
having fun and so we do all the the
checkouts were checking out the reaction
control jets were checking out the
auxiliary power unit getting ready to
come back home and this flight was
really was flawless they say flawless
for all the missions but our biggest
problem we had was a cut in a vacuum
cleaner cord it was really a very clean
orbiter and all the experiments were in
really smooth we're closing the the
payload bay getting ready to come back
home it was kind of nice actually that
we got to close the payload Bay twice
because it meant we had a couple more
hours on orbit when we got waived off
the first day here we are an entry again
as Kevin mentioned we waved off the
first day's attempt and here we are on
July morning in july twenty second at
the entry interface there we're going
approximately Mach 25 and you saw the
plasma jet at the overhead window we
came across the southern Texas coast and
some folks have mentioned hearing us and
seeing us go by that morning here we are
making the heading alignment cone turn
and rolling out on final again I think
most of you where we're diving at 220
degrees 300 knots we had light winds
that day lots of moisture in the air so
you see the condensation coming off the
wingtip vortices there Kevin put the
gear down at 300 feet again very
responsive machine the shell training
aircraft was an excellent train
we followed our guidance and all our
training procedures and ended up with
some excellent touchdown numbers on this
flight kevin deploys the drag chute just
after main gear touchdown we d rotate
using what we call the beep trim method
now and then the drag chute blossom is
about nose gear touchdown we apply the
brakes very smooth and positive breaking
and come to a stop about 11,000 feet
down the runway at the Kennedy Space
Center and the story wasn't over at this
point we mentioned that we thought we
were exercising right we're eating right
we also slept very well so we had an
excellent crew status and we'll stop we
step through our post flight activities
very quickly in the orbiter and set a
record 30 some minutes for getting out
of the vehicle and everyone was so
healthy that they were willing to walk
around the vehicle and we all felt great
after the flight and that's a compliment
to all the folks here that have worked
so hard on all the countermeasures for
reup tation to 1g that completes the
film let's go ahead and go right into
the slides of course everyone has to put
up their fantastic launch picture and
again everyone is spectacular we thought
this one was exceptional because of the
condensation in the air which made the
transition to the Mach spectacular as
you saw in the movie and I launched on
the mid-deck in one of my first duties
once we have main engine cutoff was to
come up to the flight deck and take
photos of the external tank as it fell
back to earth and that will always be
burned in my mind as the most
spectacular view that I saw when I first
looked out the windows and saw the earth
against the blackness of space as we
finally saw the external tank we began
taking pictures and an interesting thing
about this hopefully you can see it
there are some light colored specs on
the external tank and that those are the
places that the woodpecker's made their
try to make their nests and those are
the repairs
and I want to add that all the repairs
held up perfectly and that was an
excellent job by KSC I mentioned that we
had a healthy crew on entry this is just
after a main engine cutoff we've
completed the homes to burn and we're
waiting for the go to open the payload
bay doors so on the flight deck we
remain in the launch and entry erases
suit whatever we choose to war but we
included this slot because we want this
slide because we wanted to emphasize the
improvements that have been made in
these systems the launch and entry suits
are comfortable the cooling garments are
allowing us to stay comfortable both
during the asset in the entry phase and
that's extremely important when you're
at readapting to 1g to have a strong
cardiovascular system and again our hats
are off to all the folks that work crew
systems and crew equipment this shows
our teacher satellite raised up to 58
degrees right prior to deployment and as
you saw in the movie it popped out nice
and smooth right on time and was just a
beautiful sight watching a goal with the
earth in the background this is a few
seconds later we saw a little rim we
weren't sure what it was it look like at
first like a piece of metal but there
was a little circular rim coming off and
as we were watching it we saw it break
up so we realized this is a little piece
of ice there that you can see that was
attached to the solid rocket motor
somewhere on the EIU S&T dress and it
broke off and broken a few pieces and we
watch it float away and it was kind of
sad we had spent so much of our life in
the last year with our training team
getting ready to deploy the satellite
and moved off so quickly and soon it was
just a little speck of light out there
and this is me with the bioreactor again
as I said before it was one of the one
of the very exciting experiments that we
had on board and I just wanted to say a
little bit more about what they were
doing here we were growing some human
colon cancer cells and the objective
here was to find out how complex the
tissues became and if they actually
started releasing some chemicals that
people scientists are theorizing are the
main ingredient for having cancer moved
throughout the body so not only will we
be able to grow replacement tissues or
replacement organs eventually but as I
said we can actually find out some very
detailed information about how tissues
grow including cancer this again is the
nihr rodent experiment this is the
animal enclosure module there were five
rodents in each of the two aemz and they
were also looking at circadian rhythm
they were looking at the mammalian
development and muscular skeletal
changes not only in the dams but also in
the pups post-flight and doing a quite a
lot of testing post-flight on the
animals and so every day we took some
camcorder footage took some still photos
an interesting thing to me was when we
refilled the water in the units the
activity level creased about tenfold so
and it was a very interesting to see the
activity level within the animal
enclosure modules on day one versus a
day five or six and their adaptation to
microgravity also this is Tom again
looking out the window with the Hercules
experiment as I said it was a joint
effort it's a DoD payload Department of
Defense payload and we had several
different problems with it you see we
had a makeshift little site on the
bottom with it some of the things with
computer didn't actually work but
through working on orbit and working
with the people on the ground that's one
of the biggest benefits of having humans
and spaces you can put experiments up
there that if they have a problem you
can work a plan and get together some
good data and through the work of all
folks here we did get some good dad on
this is this rx experiment or amateur
radio and I'm talking to a group of
students in Argentina here and I
actually had their picture and a little
notebook with me there there are a group
of fourth and fifth graders down in
Argentina and they were studying English
as a Second Language and that was a
great thrill for me and I know they had
a fun time to asking questions we get
about 8 minutes as we pass over each
ground site to talk to the students
there and it's amazing how many
questions of fire out at you in an eight
minute span of time we talked to schools
around the United States I mentioned we
talked to one in Cleveland Ohio where
Muriel and her mother teaches in euclid
ohio we also talked to a school in Troy
Ohio where Nancy's from one of the
elementary schools there so we had a lot
of personal interaction with these
schools both before the mission and
afterwards and it is amazing to me how
many people we impact on a single eight
minute pass you know talking to mine
amateur radio because they'll have you
know hundreds of students they're asking
questions and then have a few other
hundred watching the program and there's
a lot of press that's involved they get
the community's really involved in the
program and the whole goal is to get
them interested in science and math and
hopefully we've stimulated interest and
have some future engineers and
astronauts and scientists here they'll
be working with the Johnson Space Center
someday one of the things that we're
taught is again to deal with
contingencies and as I said we had a
vacuum cleaner than had to cut on it and
it causes short and actually pop one of
the circuit breakers Nancy and I are
fixing it as part of our training is to
have in-flight maintenance to to go
ahead and we and fix things that break
and it's been done in the past we did on
this missionary and although we didn't
have to use the vacuum cleaner again it
did test out and we got it to work and
we also do in-flight maintenance on
other folks we didn't have any medical
doctors on crew so Mary Ellen and myself
were trained as the medical doctors just
do very simple type of seizures and I'm
just checking out from arione for
possible dust in there I want to point
out here you have to have a sleep in
shop but i really want to point out with
this is this is the new bags if you're
familiar with the old ones of the
Lou bags and as Tom mentioned we're in
real good health coming down a lot of
that is due to the rest were given this
Bank has straps right here that can keep
you nice and snug a lot of people have
complained in the past when you're
you're floating in the natural body
position in zero gravity can cause some
muscle fatigue there's also a strap
right here that most of the time I would
have in the beginning to sleep put that
over my head to put your head against a
pillow and gives you a little bit of
pressure makes you feeling like 1g and
behind what you can't say are some
spring so that you can stretch it out
and it's so it has a little bit of
firmness and I think that development of
that sleeping bag has really helped out
with our sleep and contribute us he and
so well after landing moving on to earth
observations this is the last car
volcano on the Argentine Chilean border
and we first saw this on my previous
flight in 1993 on st s55 it had erupted
about a week before that launched and
it's been active ever since and I was
very pleased to see last car was still
providing some plume for us to observe
and you can also see the the line of
volcanoes that are formed as the ridges
or a tectonic plate plates are pushed
together and this is a very dramatic
shot showing the geology in that area
this is a shot of Buenos Aires and you
can see the majority of the city is down
near the bottom of the frame the
beautiful bay the Copacabana beach the
Ipanema beach sugarloaf mountain and
this is an infrared shot so the
vegetation that you would see green on a
visual scene shows up red here so you
can see the vast amounts of green
vegetation on north of the city again
the population that is in that field of
view is approaching 12 million people
this is a dust storm that's over the Red
Sea theres a river valley off to the sea
the lower right here and it's bringing a
lot of sand in from the desert area the
winds are picking it up and you can see
these plumes going off for 70 to 100
miles we saw dust storms like this over
the Red Sea we also saw a pretty large
one not over the west coast of Africa
heading out over the Atlantic Ocean and
it's just amazing how much dust is
picked up and put in the atmosphere and
actually transported over vast distances
some of the dust from the western Africa
actually reaches over to Florida and you
know some of it makes it into my house
in Texas I know this is a picture from
the southern mozambique showing some of
the fires that are burning there it's
wintertime in southern Africa and this
is their dry season so they're doing
some agricultural clearing of the land
here just burning down crops and
clearing the land for next feat next
season's crops but it's such an
impressive sight going around the earth
this is one of the most memorable
impressions for myself is just the fires
that are burning around the planet and
to pass over an area such as this at
night is really spectacular where you'll
see just dots of bright orange lights
you wonder who is shining this bright
orange light up at me and then you
realize all these little dots that
you're looking at or fire is burning
down on the planet this is a shot of the
Tiffany dunes which are in Algeria and
not only is it a very striking visual
but there is also some very interesting
geological information in here this is
in a desert zone in Africa however only
about 5,000 years ago which is really
just a blink of the eye in geological
terms this used to be very wet area and
this rock that you see around here
actually has channels that used to be
rivers flowing into this so this region
here at one time was a lake in these
times it's actually filled with dust and
sand which has blown over these ridges
and filled up this area
and all of the different patterns in
here are made by various wind directions
blowing through there this is the Betsy
Boca River which is in Madagascar this
is on the southern eastern side of
Africa and this is an infrared shot so
again vegetation shows up as red and
you'll see there isn't there isn't a
whole lot of red in this shot they've
had a great deal of clearing in
Madagascar and not only do you not see a
lot of vegetation but also as the river
flows into the ocean it has developed a
great deal of sedimentation at the mouth
of this river and in World War two times
there were actually no islands in this
region here and you can see there are a
number of islands these days which is a
result of the clearing in Madagascar
this is a shot of the Bahamas this is
the ackland islands in the Bahamas and
although it is a great shot of one of
the great scuba diving areas of the
world which will give you a difference
in why the crew member took the picture
and what it's used for when we get back
but also over here you can see just a
little bit of some of the Whiting's
around the Bahamas this one doesn't
really do it justice some of our other
shots show it a little bit better but
the Whiting's are areas of the water it
actually looks like white milky streaks
where the calcium carbonate has gone to
the surface and by looking at the areas
of Whiting's they can tell the amount of
Pico plankton in the water so
oceanographers and biologists can can
both get a lot of data out of those
those types of shots this is a
photograph using high-speed film taken
during one of the windex data takes when
we were firing the primary thrusters on
the orbiter and what you see here is not
only the thruster firing but you can
very very clearly see the phenomenon
known as shuttle glow around the tail of
the orbiter caused by the chemical
makeup of the thruster plume hitting the
orbiter structure that's been a
phenomena that's
continually been investigated and will
continue to do so and hopefully a Windex
will provide us with some more data
right here this is Windows 6 the right
side our PLT side of the window during
the sleep period the starboard wing was
into the velocity vector and we presume
it was sometime during the night period
during our sleeping period that we took
a hit on that window it's only about one
sixteenth of an inch in the depth right
up in the corner of the window we
downlink some of the video we also took
some still pictures to make sure that
that area did not change at all during
the entry profile and I guess it got
quite a bit of press here on earth it
was really not a significant impact to
the flight and many many times during
flights you do have a little bit of
window damage that completes our slides
we were the quote unquote all-ohio crew
and that was just by coincidence that so
many of us were from the great state of
Ohio but Kevin was a good sport about
the fact that the Ohio Governor made him
an honorary Buckeye and we appreciated
him going along with that but each and
every state in the Union is represented
throughout the workforce in NASA and
here at the Johnson Space Center we
appreciate all that help and if we could
bring the lights up one more time
there's one thing that I'd like to
include in this presentation and it's a
bit of a surprise for to the crew
members because we normally do this in
front of the astronaut office but we had
our party so soon after landing that we
didn't have the items that we flew in
space back yet one of the things that we
do after our first year of training is
completed as an astronaut candidate is
award the new astronaut with a silver
pen and that indicates they are
qualified to fly in space however they
are not a real astronaut until they make
that first flight and after that flight
the commander traditionally awards him
or her with a gold astronaut pin and
that's what I'd like to do today Kevin
congratulations and I hope we get to do
this
very own congratulations again and I'll
let you in on thank you very much for
sharing this with