don't let it go
is
good morning gentlemen welcome to up to
the minute
good morning
thanks for talking with us this morning
commander if i can address the first
question to you we talk about the loss
of the spartan nasa managers have now
concluded there is no second chance for
deployment are you a little bit
disappointed this didn't turn out the
way we wanted
well oh sure we're always a little bit
disappointed if we don't get the full
mission accomplishment
but we did retrieve the satellite after
the little glitch we had on flight day
two and so the important thing is we're
bringing spartan back down to earth and
i'll get to fly another day
specialist scott the spartan satellite
was important for a lot of different
reasons including observations to help
improve the accuracy of another
satellite how big a setback do you think
to come home with no data on board
well i'm sure it's somewhat of a
satellite but
not to be flip or facetious we think
it's more important to get the
spacecraft back get it back safely
refurbishing flag again i mean after all
the sun will be there and we don't want
to risk losing the satellite all
together
it's interesting commander this is the
first time we've had a chance really to
talk with you about what has happened
with it nasa has said they aren't quite
sure why we did lose the satellite that
a signal was not received have you up
there been able to talk amongst
yourselves find out what didn't go right
with spartan
we're really not sure and we'll wait
till we have all the facts on on the
ground
it didn't do its normal programming and
then we gave a little slight uh
bump when we were retrieving it and that
put it into a spin
but we'll wait till we get all the facts
and talk to all the folks on the ground
and put the story together
i imagine astronaut chevrolet is a
little bit
disappointed as well but it didn't go
the way she had hoped
casey is a trooper she's a very good
operator very good mission specialist
and she takes it as part of the job
do you know if the command was sent or
nasa was telling us from houston that
possibly the computer did not send that
command at all
we don't know somehow the command didn't
get sent how that
occurred we're really not sure at this
time
okay for astronaut scott you and your
japanese compatriot taco doi spent eight
hours walking in space actually last
week to retrieve spartan to carry out
some of the other tests we did cancel a
few tests though would you like to go
back out again nasa i know has not yet
made that decision would you like to
take another crack at it
well i'll tell you what i don't think
there's an asteroid in it well that
would not jump at the chance to go
outside and if they should decide to do
it the cow and i are ready to go
we accomplished i think most of the edft
or the eva objective there's a few
things that we could do if we went back
out and we keep our fingers crossed
they'll give us another opportunity
tell me about this small basketball
sized camera that you would have taken
out there and taken a look at give me
give me a quick thumbnail about the
camera itself
sure it's called air cam sprint it's a
little bigger than a basketball size of
a medicine ball i guess it has two
cameras inside it also has a controlling
system it's blown much like you fly a
radio controlled airplane i would have
released the sprint from outside the
shuttle and our pilot steve lindsey
would have piloted it from here on the
flight deck he had a test program
written up a certain uh procedural a
certain point he would have taken
obviously this camera would uh beam back
photos of pictures television pictures
of the outside of the shuttle and of
course it would be useful in inspecting
the outside of a space shuttle or space
station or whatever
not to forget our guest leonardo cadeny
from the russian space program excuse me
sir i know it's your first shuttle
flight you trained for so many years on
the russian shuttle to go up there you
were working with the growth of plants i
know that later this afternoon you're
going to be talking to school children
here in the united states tell me a
little bit about the project you're
working on and what you hope to tell the
kids
during
20 years i was a cosmonaut of former
ussr
as
i had
training as a
commander of bran
but right now i had
i am
a cosmonaut of ukraine
and
i
probably i i will be the first
ukrainian astronaut
the country of ukraine uh
independent country of ukraine but the
first ukrainian
who was in space it was uh
who was in space it was parallel
in 1972
craigel you were the first
you were the first sir to be able to
go through the new role maneuver tell us
how that worked i know it's been a
couple of days since the first roll do
you think it's going to become easy
enough to do standard in the future for
shuttle missions
well the role the heads up that you're
referring to happens about six minutes
into the asset of course the ascent
takes eight and a half minutes
and it's meant so that we have earlier
communications with the satellite and it
will become the standard for all uh
shuttle missions uh it really went very
smoothly i couldn't really tell that the
shuttle was moving it wasn't a violent
maneuver it was very smooth one to two
degrees per second just a little bit of
slight transverse acceleration through
the chest but
the engineers did a lot of hard work a
lot of study and it paid off
from up there i know that you can't see
actually el nino but we talk about it so
much here on earth can you see the
effects these huge fires in australia
right now what does that look like as
you pass over
well they did brief us about the el nino
effects nasa's take different pictures
some places it's wetter some places it's
drier indonesia is a little bit drier
than usual
it passes over australia we haven't
noticed a whole lot of fires yet just
due to our ground track
but the earth observation folks on the
ground keep us informed and we try to
take as many
pictures of the events as possible
and microgravity i know that's another
ongoing
experiment in space what's been the
latest with that
actually the microgravity experiments
are going on very well today we're we're
processing the particle engulfing and
pushing experiment and also we have some
enclosed lamina flame experiments going
on this afternoon we did wedding
characteristics of emissibles on
yesterday and the day before yesterday
and the principal investigators on the
ground are quite happy with what they're
seeing and that i can tell you
commander kevin cragel mission
specialist winston scott payload
specialist lina kadena we thank you very
much for joining us this morning on up
to the minute
thank you it's been our pleasure
uh
how long will the experiment with the
brassica wrapper last
experiment this experiment
starts before the flight
is rather short
uh
in space
are you conducting presently
wrapper experiment
here
we run
we are growing some plants on the
orbiter uh
what are the future applications of the
results of this research
from the technical point of view the
experiment was prepared and the most
excellent
is being monitored by the computers
including temperature and all the
environmental parameters
there are special devices used in order
to monitor the process of growing the
plan
there is also a freezer involved where
we freeze
these samples