you
and goodmorning discovery now for those
of us down here with gravity not looking
down there's probably good advice but I
guess you folks don't have to worry
about it I got my pill since this thing
is action-packed there's not much time
to do much else besides fulfill all all
of this mission can you can you give us
a brief synopsis of the duties you have
over the next few days bet in that I'd
actually like to start out with a five
day one and you're right this is an
extremely packed mission I'll be more so
than most just with all the scientific
experiments we have on board so we had a
very aggressive flight day one in which
we have a satellite called crystals fast
but essentially it's a telescope that we
deployed on Friday one which takes a
certain amount of maneuvering of
preparations to go ahead and deploy it
we use a robotic arm to hook up to it
Florida powder payload Bay release it
and then we fire some jets to maneuver
the orbiter away from it the event just
started everything off we've got plenty
of other experiments I this morning
recently fired up a combustion
experiment we do combustion experiments
in space because up here Mike on earth
we don't have convection lighter gases
don't rise so on earth and a lot of gas
Rises it pulls oxygen into the plane
sees the fire and helps it travel and
burn you don't have that up here so
flames burn differently they tend to
burn themselves out more rapidly but
they also tend to burn harder is that
oxygen is not there to cool the flame or
take the heat away from the surface
there are also many experiments you're
doing and exercises studying the Earth's
atmosphere in the ozone layer how will
that data be used or what what kind of
data are you looking for a first yeah
the telescope Christmas files that we
deployed on Friday one is primarily
doing that and the it's looking back at
the Earth's medium atmosphere where
those gases are such as ozone and it's
looking at the dynamics
you know sometime at any time on earth
we can look up at those gases and see
what the ozone layer is or where the
holes tend to be in the ozone layer so
we don't really know with almost
certainly why that moves around or the
dynamics of such the apsara satellite is
covering most of the earth it's looking
from 70 degrees north 47 degrees south
approximately to try to look at these
dynamics on the nine days it's out there
flying so we can better predict how the
gas dynamics affects the earth and when
where these holes are going to move and
when they're going to fall so how are
you doing up there this is your third
flight yeah you're the pilot of this
flight is there any time to do anything
else but all these experiments hey I'm
doing very Richard I've gotta admit
though this is only find a three and
I've been busy enough I've had very
little time to look out the window and
take photos and that's kind of a
secondary mission of ours we photograph
as much as the earth as we can which
goes to meteorologist and earth
scientists and just NASA in general and
haven't really had enough time to get
into that yet because we've been busy
but from the time the main engines cut
off up here I felt at home since it
hasn't been all along since I've been
back here and I'm having a great time
tell me about the work day if it is
indeed the day I assume it's more than
an eight-hour day up there how does it
go what's a schedule look like yeah we
have 16 hour days and we're scheduled
for nine hours of sleep will soon as we
get up we have a couple hours to what we
call post ly but we get ready we get up
we bathed we wash our hair we eat
breakfast and we started and organized
the they send up message traffic that
changes the timeline the original one
it's kind of flexible it changes
somewhat so we start looking the message
traffic and getting organized for the
day then after a couple hours we started
the events that we're scheduled the ones
you've been talking about which actually
includes teal that's probably one of
these every other day as the average is
my guess on this mission and then
towards the end of the day a couple
hours before we go to sleep for 14 hours
into our day now we have pre sleep
tivities and now we start configuring
the space shuttle for us all to go to
bed and it's the left with just the
ground watching after it and again
during that time we'll eat our dinner
meal get our little sleeping bunks out
and they get ready to go to sleep how
about your personal division of labor as
the the pilot on duty is there much good
to do when it comes to monitoring the
craft itself as opposed to all these
experiments during the nine days on this
flight along with the experiments such
as a Christa satellite we deployed there
is some a fair amount of Paula Deen
duties to do a couple times a day we are
burning the big cats the reaction
control system jets on board to make
sure we were phasing anywhere from 25 to
45 miles we want to maintain that
distance from spas we also there's a
fair amount of pointing maneuvers the
instruments that I mentioned earlier
that may look at Jupiter or the Sun or
when we point to the earth for a
different laser ops on board that sets
the polity the pirate or a commander's
job to go ahead and put in those
attitudes to moon but it was the shuttle
to point it in the right direction and
they also wanted you to make aware of a
son word jet or spike on the comment and
that will cause the shape to be a little
bit asymmetric okay that matches what's
my plan to call down each obstinate
number I'll be looking for that in the
comet I was able to see the comet a
couple of hours ago visually as a very
very faint targeted by I and was not
able to get the binoculars on it in time
but at least we did cite the comet the
setup has gone very smoothly and we'll
be putting the telescope on the window
in just a couple of minutes here there's
a lot of first sign that's even though
the shadowing seems to be effective and
does Jan has done a really good job
putting the shadow right over the window
there's a tremendous amount of hers
and we'll just have to see how that
works
discovery Houston for the vpr playback