STS-51: Postflight Press Conference

good afternoon welcome to Johnson Space Center and this afternoon we have with us the STS 51 crew to narrate film from their recent Mission and next to me is the commander Navy Captain Frank Culbertson I'll turn it over to you Frank and let you go ahead and introduce your crew thank you very much Barbara and good afternoon to everybody it's a pleasure to be back here at JSC have the opportunity to talk to everybody about what we did and show you some nice pictures and we hope an interesting video uh I was the commander of the mission very fortunate to fly with the people to my right here immediately to my right is uh Bill REI bill was the um Mission specialist and orbital pilot on ss42 and for this Mission he was uh certainly our orbital pilot and did a lot of flying on the Orbiter uh he was also our main stay in systems management and uh provided us with a lot of continuity on a day-to-day basis and making sure that the Orbiter operated properly and and was well cared for bill is a graduate of the Naval Academy a Navy test pilot and attack pilot and a terrific guy to fly with uh to his right is um Dr Jim Newman Jim is a graduate of Dartmouth and Rice University with a advanced degrees in physics Jim was mission specialist number one uh primarily responsible for the orus Spa's payload as well as being one of the participants in our Eva Jim was on his first flight and is a member of the the 1990 group of astronauts to his right is um Commander Dan bur Dan is a Navy bombarder Navigator by background trained at Naval test pilot school also uh his on his his first flight AS U Mission specialist number two on this particular flight responsible for uh acting as a flight engineer during Asin and entry during Rendevous operations and uh also was back up to uh the ax toss payload and was our primary operator for the remote manipulator system which was of course a key ingredient to this flight and uh Dan again a member of the 90 group and on his first flight to his right is Lieutenant Colonel Carl walls Carl is um also a member of the 90 group Carl is an Air Force engineer with a background in uh Nuclear Physics uh he's a graduate of Kent State University and John Caroll University and uh was primarily responsible for the ax toss payload on flight day one as well as our being a a member of our Eva team that went out into the payload Bay to evaluate tools and procedures for the Hubble Space Telescope repair you could see a little sliver of a moon the morning before we launched and that all went away you can see that uh try number four we're uh pretty well practiced at the suit room routine and uh we're anxious and raring to go here they make you wave a lot we also got in Step you can see the fourth time we managed to get everybody in Step everybody in the in the proper uh in the proper alignment there for the the walk out to the Astan just just after Sunrise uh we got down to T-minus 3 seconds and the main engines were still running and uh the vehicle was rocking back and forth and you can see the SRB is lighting up and uh that's when I told Frank I was starting to be excited and it was uh sure an exciting liftoff uh Shake Rattle and Roll and uh clearing the tower and everything was just uh incredible ride the roll program and everything uh I I don't think you've probably heard a more excited roll program call in the history of the shuttle program just a spectacular day to go fly uh just like the other three opportunities had been you can see uh we're just going straight on up there there aren't even any uh uh perturbances to um to the plume there I mean it's just a a spectacular day this is uh what I told everybody was going to be the train wreck where the the solids come off and there's a huge structural ring through the vehicle and everything else but I guess uh with all the rocking and rolling Discovery did on the pad everything uh came off very smoothly including the external tank and this some great footage that Jim Newman got of the tank now we're in the post insertion door are coming open and we're about ready to get to work well the first uh item on our agenda was the ax toss here is the the ax toss being tilted up we had already rotated uh the ASC open and this is uh um the f-flight deck here and uh a is all tilted up Dan was watching the currents while we were uh tilting up watching the motors and uh he had had his fingers crossed this would be the time to deploy I hit the fire uh switch and uh away she went you could see this through camcorder uh video is just uh amazing visuals uh as as it came up and over uh the flight deck and uh out across the uh the ocean there and the uh and the clouds this spacecraft is is on station right now uh doing great during its checkout period you can also see some of the debris that came out too uh we had both the superzip U uh explosive cords fire so we uh and that followed us around during the mission a little bit now uh the ax toss was on a timer and 45 minutes after the deploy uh Dan maneuvered the arm um around the space shuttle and and around the uh on one of the Wings to get this picture of the uh the toss motor burning and sending it up to Earth orbit at the end of the robotic arm are these wire snares and that's the first half of a good grapple and what we do is maneuver it using this this Crosshair Target and from that Target I can tell if I'm off axis and I just get close enough there's a pin on the grapple fixture with those the wire snares will wrap around that's the first half and then they retract inside the end of the end affector and then give us a good grapple there's Frank wiping a little sweat off my brow no pressure there here's the uh orus Spa's unbirth um again went went very well much uh tribute that much to the the great training that we went through here a flight Teck was very crowded there and uh that was Carl maneuvering the IMAX camera we tested the door of uh Spas prior to release it was actually command sent by the ground but that's actually in the release position over the payload Bay right now again there's Mr Bill in uh in Frank seat unfortunately he didn't get to to look out the window quite as much as as we did but you'll see later here he gets kind of surprised by one of the their surveys and um again this is prior to release and at the moment of release I press a button and uh or trigger switch it opens the the snares and uh and I pull away with the robotic arm next thing we're going to do is if you Rec call the IMAX camera and the uh the Emu TV on there we started getting receiving that back so this is the spa actually taking a look at the Orbiter and we were able to set up and do all the maneuver uh as you can see here uh and then this is us looking back at the Spas as it takes pictures of us and so what we're really looking forward to is when the IMAX film comes out and I believe that there may be a general uh screening of that sometime in the uh in the future for JSC folk it will be uh looking like this except for with IMAX quality at night of course we we were shining a flashlight at it in order to try to see if it could could see us one of the things we also did was a a maneuver the ri roll Ted rle designed this one it's a sped up a little bit here it's blooming a little bit because of the uh the Emu TV camera doesn't have the range of of uh in order to be able to handle all that but the IMAX is supposed to have been set right and should handle this and so you can get a number of different views of the Orbiter as it does its uh rotation before we then ended up doing our final separation away from the uh away from the spas in order to go into our weekl long sort of uh of uh St station keeping so here we are these are the payload Bay lights on the Orbiter and there's that little flashlight that we were shining once the uh orus Spas uh was deployed um we had our ldce experiment that we uh activated it's a getaway special gas can has a material for uh um to be tested uh for future space applications called it Oscar and Albert on the uh dsos again we saw this one earlier there's the the goggs going opaque there's the targets you can see in the little laser this is uh the advanced lower body restraint test uh affectionally known as Albert and it uh it really benefited especially myself being a little bit shorter and the a flight deck and uh being able to to uh see out the window and and reach all the controls of the RMS it worked beautifully and it and it uh Here I Am Changing contacts I was the only one who flew with contacts on the flight it took a while to get used to to a a technique that would work and what was kind of interesting is that the solution that I used I actually preferred a thinner solution in space just because of the surface tension which it kind of caught me by surprise fortunately I brought both kinds with me it worked well there's the hrsgs the high resolution shuttle glow spectrometer just a demonstration of how easy it is to Lo to move large objects around in zero gravity here we are with uh Dan doing his uh cycle ergometer workout and Bill decided to take a little jog with him I think they covered about 12,000 miles uh during a part of that that was the low impact treadmill the uh the opportunity to have a bite to eat after a long day that squeeze steak I've got there is why I'm smiling uh really quite good to uh have a chance just to relax a little little bit and uh have a bite to eat down on the on the mid deck these are little teddy grams and uh there's a shark sequence with one of these where one of them disappears uh I think that got cut out of this we also in in uh with deference to our many medical experiments we had a guinea pig on board that's how we sort of felt and this is the guinea pig shots as we fondly called it these are some scenes of uh the Eva preparation uh like everything else we do we've got checklists and make sure we go in uh in very great detail into the test and checkout uh particularly of critical components like the space suits this is the power ratchet tool that we're demonstrating uh there's the tool itself and the controller and also uh the torque limiter so that we um wouldn't over torque any of the bolts here we are in the airlock uh uh we're do doing our pre-breathe here we did 40 minutes prior to depressing the airlock and there's not much you can do except to hang around and smile and wave and that's what we did and uh this is the egress from the airlock it uh as I was going out uh it it just really struck me how familiar uh this was and and just have to hand it to all the training that we had in the uh in the wetf uh really prepared us well uh for uh the U experience of going out into the payload Bay and uh we went right to work uh I'm out there on the the port side uh getting Jim's uh tether he had a new tether that we were uh uh checking out there we are setting up the uh our one of our work sites and and I'm putting a bridge clamp there in order to be able to later on set up up the uh Hubble Space Telescope portable foot restraint Carl is uh doing his translation uh technique there on the left you can see as I'm setting up one of the bolt probes there and uh this one uh works a lot better than than other methods uh once you're up in space it's painful in the in the water tank because your head's down like hanging from a from a a high bar but we're then able to set up our our work site uh in this area here and uh I'm at my work side forward with the power ratchet tool and uh then we uh we are able to test out you can see one foot's out and uh we're doing is testing the the pitch and with one foot out and the other one firly in there we're able to position it and Pitch quite easily it's more interesting and you alls uh have to be fairly careful in order to avoid having the one remaining foot come out uh of the uh the pfr and it also shows I think in the next one show a closeup of how the foot is is actually doing the the the the pedal movement so with this you can really you don't have to get out of the pfr in order to reorient it which is much more effective there you can see the boot pushing on the pedal and then the other foot is doing this little torque routine in order to move it around the uh pfr2 step we called it and here I am working with the power ratchet tool and uh it it worked quite well uh you had to keep your body rates under control uh we didn't have foot rest uh a foot restraint for that task the Hubble folks will and I think that will uh help them a lot what we found is uh uh we could we could do these Torx up to 38 foot-pounds uh but it made it easier uh it would definitely make it easier to do it uh uh with uh foot restraint to be able to help keep that body under control and that was the flight deck scene we had great help from uh bill Dan and Frank they're keeping us on the timeline um and doing a great job on the photography well there were some incredible Earth views as the Eva was in progress and uh this is the skeleton coast of Namibia and Africa some of the views uh almost made it look like uh the planet Mars underneath Earth was so red uh the only snag we really had during the Eva was uh when the PSA door jammed and you can see here some footage of uh after getting some help from the ground here and selecting the proper tools for the job uh unjamming it and here's our sign and the group shot the guys are in the window well next thing was our next big event was the Rendevous and here's Bill performing some of the uh Burns in preparation for the uh the final intercept Jim set up with all his computers and uh in a moment you'll see one of the trajectories that was generated this was the uh projected TI burn The Intercept burn and uh here's a commander with not much to do while everybody else is doing all that work then um Spas was visible there probably at about 12 miles uh Dan was using the handheld laser which he uh was able to use very expertly he got a a mark out to 8,700 Ft which is the best we've ever been able to do with the handhel uh there's the spa through the coass at about 400 feet and Dan was calling marks feeding him to Bill who was feeding that and radar data into the uh pgsc and giving me good calls on what uh he thought we needed for braking or or correct directions this is the spa at about 200 ft slightly afed as we were approaching at about 0.1 ft per second .1 foot per second Dan in the a AF window watching for this to happen this is the view from the infector as the uh as brought it down into the payLo Bay and tried to get the gra grapple fixture as close to the in infector as I could so Dan didn't complain too much but uh at about this point uh Dan was saying well I'm getting ready to take the brakes off and I said okay you got it free drift it's yours and he said wait a minute but he did a great job and and grapple very expeditiously and uh you can see how cleanly and and uh On Target he came into the grapple fixture this is sped up just a little bit for the RMS folks that might be getting nervous out there but the the object is to keep that little white dot inside that little white Center Circle and uh he did did a terrific job and there's the grapple and of course we had a lot of activity to do after that in including getting set up for the Rick's camera operation as uh as well as some manual flying on Bill's part Bill if you want to explain well this is a I think a pretty unique and spectacular view of the forward part of the Orbiter Dan was flying the arm uh with the with the orus on it which had that IMAX camera as well as the Bight camera which was giv us these views uh you can see the three forward firing Jets the three upfiring Jets of our reaction control system and the keyhole there kind of in front of uh the windows is a star trackers flying the uh flying the orus around the Orbiter we did a pretty thorough SE survey and this is sped up a little bit also you can see uh going along the the port uh the port sill there are the VG guides where orus is going to go back and you can see the mpm which is what supports the robot arm over across the bay uh if you look very closely you can see the uh ER pickle are our extended range uh payload uh communication link there's the other part of the arm and this is I guess probably of our favorite views here you can you can almost count threads there on the uh on the tiles and the U and the blankets there for the uh thermal control system where Bill looked outside we said take a look outside and next words out of his mouth were holy mackerel when he saw the payload out there you can see the IMAX there in the window we're trying to get IMAX of them taking IMAX of us a little bit of Cinema ver I guess uh uh Dan goes back and uh and burs the uh the orus spa back in the pale pay that's also sped up we did have a chance to look out the window a little bit uh this is this is part of a photo frenzy in progress we had uh some spectacular views and unfortunately the video doesn't quite uh do justice to some of the views we saw the this is austral Australia and um and there the turquoise and blues of the water and the contrast with some of the really intense red of the the land was just uh spectacular you can see a little bit of sunglint down there in the uh bottom center portion of the picture it really does highlight uh the little streams and and tributaries that you wouldn't ordinarily see this is taken out of uh window six on the on the pilot side and we're going to zoom in here here and what you're seeing is the city of Brisbane Australia and it just turned out uh you know we wound up with a night landing because um with our takeoff time and and a 10-day flight uh the United States kept on getting darker and darker and darker and that meant that Halfway Around The World of course Australia we had some spectacular views that were always sunlight uh this is a view of South America and uh you can see what almost looks kind of like Edwards California and dry lake beds that they call solars up there in the uh in the Andes Mountains once again some really incredible contrast between the uh the really blazing white of uh the dry lakes and and some of the reddish dirt that surrounded it the winds uh in that area the world blow at like about 80 M an hour across atas Lakes this is Madagascar it's been uh photographed quite a bit and and we do that on just about every shuttle flight to document the erosion that we uh are seen and the silting up of uh the harbor there at betsiboka and once again the sunglen is pretty evident this is uh Africa at night and what you're looking at there are thunderstorms and U I think the size of the frame there is probably about 200 miles on a side so you can see just how widespread the thunderstorms are and just uh how incredible the electrical activity is especially when you view it on a large scale like that well eventually it was time to start wrapping everything up and and uh we got ready for the second deorbit day uh got up that morning pretty much ready to come back home oh we had to do was get into our suits and get into our seats and and run through the timeline get everything stowed put all the film in a bag to bring it back to Houston and you can see it's a lot easier to handle in zerog G than that heavy bag was after we landed but that's a a lot of different examples of our film this was actually the first deorbit day when uh uh Jim had not arrived on the uh Carl's big and small rack in the uh in the corner but uh here's a shot of the Terminator you can see that the Orbiter is is traveling from light to dark the Earth underneath is dark the orbit is still sunlit for quite a while about four or five minutes after the uh the Earth experiences sun sunset below us the entry itself um of course requires about four hours of work prior to re-entry there's Jim with the 51 and all his electrodes on everybody suited up at this point uh just about ready to do the deorbit burn uh about a half an hour after the burn We Begin what we call entry interface and this is the light show you see outside I didn't see this on my first flight because we re reentered in daylight and I'm not sure how I'd have felt if I'd have known what was going on out there but uh it was pretty spectacular this shot was taken with an infrared camera probably over Orlando or in that vicinity you can see the how hot the Leading Edge of the Wings and the nose cap are just just prior to us rolling over onto the hack coming across the coast the Atlantic coast of Florida um we rolled out on Final U followed the guidance and I ended up over the runway and there's the touchdown just as we come into the the view of the xenon lights that illuminate the runway for us since the Orbiter does not have a landing light bill deployed the drag shoot just prior to D rotation and uh that worked very well it's a modified shoot that uh we think is an improvement over the ones we had before helps with the deceleration as well as the stability of the Orbiter during roll out you can see the nose wheel touch we rolled out about uh a little less than 9,000 ft and uh and here's the jettison of the drag Sho this is a view from the nose of the Orbiter looking back down the runway and there goes the drag shoot at about 60 knots came to a stop