 The countdown for the launch of Columbia on Space Shuttle Mission STS-62 is continuing on schedule this morning. We're currently in the standard two hour built-in hold at the T-minus three hour mark. Launch of Columbia on Mission STS-62 remains on time to occur again at 8.53 a.m. Eastern time from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B. And we have live video of the crew at breakfast, seated in the center as Commander John Casper. On the end, we have our mission specialist, Pierre Thuit, and seated next to him is our pilot today, Andy Allen. Again, Commander John Casper. Mission specialist, Sam Gaymar. And rounding out the five member crew is the lone female on board today, mission specialist, Marcia Ivins. All five members of the flight crew were awakened at about four o'clock this morning. Following breakfast, they will be given a briefing of today's launch time weather and start putting their flight equipment together. This is shuttle launch control at T-minus three hours and holding. The ICE team continues to make their assessments of any abnormal build-ups of ICE or frost on the external tank and other shuttle components. Currently, they are standing on the mobile launcher platform upon which rests the external tank, the solar rocket boosters, and, of course, the orbiter itself. We have about 20 minutes remaining in our hold this morning, and we're standing by for a live video of the crew donning their flight suits. And we do, in fact, have video of the crew and their crew quarters, which is located in the Operations and Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center's industrial area. Commander John Casper preparing to make his third trip into space today, putting on his communications cap. Casper is from Greenville, South Carolina, and he'll be flanked by our pilot today, Andrew Allen, who was born in Philadelphia. Andy Allen is making his second trip into space today and writing a hello to Jessica and Meredith. Taking a more relaxing pose, of course, is another member of the flight crew. Marcia Ivins sees herself in the mirror and sees herself on NASA Select TV, and she looks ready to go. They've all been in town since this past Monday afternoon. Marcia is making her third trip into space today. Mission Specialist Sam Gamar has just picked up what might be the sixth crew member. This is Theodore Tracy, and he is given to the crew by the students of the Gulf Gate Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Of course, we're checking on the status of his health stabilization. Mission Specialist Sam Gamar, again one of five crew members that will be flying today. Sam's prepared to make his third trip into space. Back to our commander, John Casper. This is Shuttle Launch Control, and we are at T minus three hours and counting. And the crew are exiting the crew quarters at this time. Commander Casper, pilot Andy Allen, Mission Specialist Marcia Ivins, Pierre Thuit, and Sam Gamar. The crew have arrived in the white room, and Commander John Casper is presently being suited. He will be the first to enter the vehicle. Making our flight today will be Andrew Allen. He is being assisted right now in making final preparations to be placed into the orbiter. He was selected as an astronaut in 1988 and is making his second flight into space today. Mission Specialist Pierre Thuit is making his third space flight today. He'll be the next to enter the orbiter. Mission Specialist number three, Marcia Ivins, is making last minute checks before she prepares to enter the vehicle. Sam Gamar is Mission Specialist number two, and he will be the last to enter the vehicle this morning. The other is already in their seats at this time. Okay John, well it looks great down here. Hope to give you guys and Marcia a great ride here in a few minutes. I thank you Bob and all the folks on the world's greatest launch team for all your hard work that you've put in to get us ready to go. And we're looking for a safe and successful mission on Columbia. Well thank you sir, it's always a privilege and a pleasure, and the NPD of go to proceed. I copy, thank you. And the Captain and Colonel will pick up in two minutes. The orbiter access arm is now being retracted away from the vehicle. This is the walkway used by the crew to gain entry into and out of the vehicle. And it can be returned to position within seconds if need be. T minus seven minutes and counting. A final gimbal of the main engine bells is now underway. This is a final check of the main engines prior to launch. T-L-T-O-T-C, clear cross warning memory, verify no unexpected errors. Roger and word. Just two minutes, 20 seconds and counting. All is ready to fly today on NASA's four and a half million pound space shuttle vehicle. Caution warning is complete. Thank you. Orbiter test conductor has requested that Andy Allen clear the caution and warning memory system and that has been reported complete. Flight crew, close the lock divisor, initiate O2 flow and have a... T-minus two minutes and counting. Roger, that's done work and thank you. Everything continues to look good for launch this morning. In about 90 seconds, the space shuttle Columbia will begin its 14th day extended duration orbiter flight. One of the longest in space shuttle history. T-minus one minute and counting. T-minus 50 seconds and we're transferring to orbital internal power at this time. Columbia is now running off its three onboard fuel cells. And we have a go for auto sequence start. Columbia's onboard computers have primary control with all the vehicle's critical functions. T-minus 20. 15. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. We have a go for main engine start. 4. 3. 2. 1. And liftoff. Liftoff of the space shuttle Columbia as NASA continues on the cutting edge of microgravity research. Houston's now controlling. Roger. Mission control sees a good roll maneuver placing Columbia on the proper heading. Three good engines at 104%. Three engines are throttling back now easing the buildup of aerodynamic loads as Columbia continues to accelerate rapidly through the dense lower altitudes. Three engines now at 67%. Columbia is traveling over 500 miles an hour at 52 seconds. All systems are performing well. Columbia, go at throttle up. Roger, go at throttle up. All three engines are now running at full throttle. All systems are performing well. Altitude is now 59,000 feet down range distance seven nautical miles. Columbia is traveling over 1,000 miles per hour at one minute 29 seconds. Columbia continues to climb at a relatively steep angle at this point relying heavily on the solid rocket boosters to triple its rate of speed over the next 60 seconds. Delivering a combined six and a half million pounds of thrust the boosters will burn out and separate at two minutes six seconds time now one minute 48 seconds. All systems are performing well. Altitude 116,000 feet down range distance 18 nautical miles. Mission control sees a good booster separation. Columbia is now flying free powered by its own main engines. Second stage guidance is now in control. Altitude 184,000 feet. Columbia, performance nominal. That's an indication that the boosters have done their job is designed in the main engines as well. Altitude is now 198,000 feet down range distance 44 nautical miles. Columbia is now traveling over 3,000 miles per hour. This is Mission Control Houston. We're taking live television through the Goldstone Tracking and Television Station in California as Columbia completes its first orbit of the Earth on this 14th day. Currently the crew is in the process of opening the latches of the payload bay door along the center line. Once the center line latches are all confirmed open the bulkhead latches both the forward and aft will be opened. Once they've been unlatched the motor drives will be commanded to begin driving the doors open. As at this point the starboard payload bay door is in motion. Photo DTO. We have good downlink and that's some tremendous camcorder footage. External fuel tank later re-enters the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and burns up before reaching the surface. Tell you what Pierre, your EP photo downlink has had everybody just captivated down here. It is just absolutely awesome. That call from the crew indicates they're now starting to power up Columbia's mechanical arm seen here in a live television from the spacecraft. It's Mission Control Houston that television view from Columbia's lower deck showed Mission Specialist Sam Garmar working with the Advanced Protein Crystal Growth Experiment or APCG and activating the thermal enclosure system for that experiment or test. The control team down here has three circles and basically two zones that are horizontally vertical. What we try to do is maintain the crosshair on our monitor on the red reflector in the middle which is actually the image of the camera in the mirror. Then we try to keep the crosshair centered between the two reflectors on the left and right as well as the one on the top and bottom. While keeping the crosshair on the image of the camera, if we do that during this test then we've accomplished the objective. What we're trying to do is see how the reflectors can do that. We use the zones on the overlay to determine the tolerance that we can fly the arm to. And Pierre, we're real happy with the view. The EISG folks are going to send some commands shortly and we should see some motion in the mirror. We saw that. You were saying you were saying a lot of times the same stuff we were saying from those two displays. We started finding the crosshairs because with the mirror and the sun the display was really washed out. It took us quite a while to find the crosshairs. We found the camera reflection right away. It just had a sense why it had a hard time finding the crosshairs. Neither of us could see it for quite a while. It will be rotated to allow the flat panel portion to be inserted into the slot at the top of the carrier. And the insertion of that flat panel portion will be aligned using a camera that's on the side of the magnetic end effector at the end of the mechanical arm. This is Mission Control Houston. This live television from Columbia's payload bay shows the task bar for the dexterous end effector. And currently in work an insertion of it into the slot at the top of the carrier for the end effector equipment. The task bar is being held by a magnetic end effector at the end of Columbia's mechanical arm. Once it's inserted into the slot simulating a task that might be used in the future for space station construction with a radiator, the panel will be rotated to about a 30 degree angle both forward and aft. Just above the little American flag, one of our furnaces, semiconductor furnaces called a CISTO, and there's another cylinder over on the right. Those two furnaces are doing semiconductor crystal growth experiments. And the benefit there is better, higher quality, faster semiconductors, and that's used in making computer chips that go in all of our computers and telephones, wristwatches, and a lot of things that we use today. Now in the back behind the Mephisto furnace is another rare large cylindrical looking experiment. And that one's doing a solidification of metals. And here we're looking at how metals solidify with the potential benefit there being of making stronger, lighter weight metals to aid the automotive construction and chip building industries. This is Mission Control Houston, the lid. It's now opening for the limited duration candidate materials exposure experiment in the cargo bay. The LDCE experiment holds a total of about 250 samples of various materials that are under study for use in spacecraft in building future spacecraft. And we'll study the wear experienced by them and how well they hold up in the low earth orbit environment. And John, we got the picture, John, and we see the door open. This is Mission Control Houston. Once again, we're receiving some videotape replays provided by the crew of Columbia orbiting 140 nautical miles above the earth. Now looking at the opening of the instrument door for the space shuttle backscatter ultraviolet experiment. This is a picture of our, we're looking out the app window. And through this little module, you can see the reflection of the earth that we're looking at inside here. The cool is down and the temperature we are looking at will change. It flies a couple of minutes and I'll pass it forward through a little bit of it, but that's our final product. You can kind of see the middle there, but it's got its own translucency back. This is Mission Control Houston. Right now we're taking some live downlink television pictures from camera D in the payload bay. That's one of the low light cameras in the arsenal of cameras on board. The flashes that you see in the glow are thruster firings as Columbia maneuvers into a new attitude with its belly facing in the direction of travel. In the foreground, there's a diagonal plate running at about a 45 degree angle. That is the plate from the experimental investigation of spacecraft glow, which is looking at the interaction of spacecraft surfaces and atomic oxygen in orbit. Columbia is now approaching the Midwest and we'll cross off the northern east coast of the United States. Also moving into sunrise. At the very bottom of the ground, I'm recording the temperature right now. What we're doing is every day we take video of each of the, trying to characterize how they grow and how they grow. This particular day was the day where we did all three trays and we also did 35 millimeter photography of all three trays. What I can add about CPCG is it's really a two person job. Marsha very carefully aligns the light and pulls the trays out. I have to get the camera all set up, focus and align the polarizing filter to get it all set up to take the picture. It really takes two of us to accomplish this task. A bunch of these, some of them are very dramatic like this one. Some are not so dramatic, but I wanted the investigators to have an idea what they all look like on the cross section of the ones we did. The round containers are called the gaps and those little things there, what they call the FPAs just so that you can correlate your checklist acronyms with what the real pieces of hardware look like. And Sam's pulling in close near now to see some of these. We're growing really fine filaments with the set that we terminated yesterday by mistake. So I just thought I would record all of them. Okay, we have a great picture. It's going to look like really fine ribbons tied off at the top and the bottom. Now here's a sprout. This sprout's grown to the end of the tube now since the first time we looked at it a couple days ago. This one has some sort of fuzz growing on it. It's the only one I've seen like that. Copy. This was from the CGPA photo set three and I'll show you this because that's the only swimming behavior you see a little guy was swimming around in circles. There's another couple guys swimming around in this one too. And we've got a good image of that, Marsha. Tell me, Houston, we see you looking at spec 22 just for your info. The IMUs are in such good shape that no line is required today. Mission control, Houston. We're now receiving downlink from the Space Shuttle Columbia where the STS-62 crew is getting started on its work day. Sam Gamer is getting prepared for his ramp test in the lower body negative pressure unit. That's a 45-minute test within the lower body negative pressure unit. And the same procedure will be repeated a little bit later today by pilot Andy Allen. Thank you. Just so y'all see what we're doing up here with, hey, this is our configuration. We've got the Nikon F4, a image-intensive IR, then a 50-millimeter lens, then a grating, another 50-millimeter lens, a slit, and then another lens, and all that looking out through the payload bay when it gets dark to try to catch the glow. We were setting up, I think for the last pass, we've got this huge camera in there. Marsha's my assistant. You see she's got a red light, or a little light attached to her forehead because when we do these things, we turn on all the lights. So this is why we were preparing for the actual pass. I've got my light, I'm holding it in my mouth. But we get this device all hooked up with a big rack in the overhead window and we have a black bag that's attached to the very front of the camera that we put around the window to keep any light from inside the cabin from getting out from the lens. And then once it gets real dark, we close all the lights off in the cabin and turn our little red lights on and then turn the image-intensifier on. And this particular pass, we were shooting an orbiter glow, the glow phenomenon that we see when the atomic oxygen impacts the orbiter and using the image-intensifier to... It's because your head's got some... your neck's got some stuff in it there. That's mine. All right. You have that every day, John, twice a day? That's good. That's all that is? Yeah. You have to, you know... It's probably recording the max of the glow for the lens now. It's hard to see in the viewfinder of this. Too close, too focused? Yeah, on the necromancer. This is Mission Control Houston Commander John Casper in the middle of his exercise session with the bicycle ergometer. You can see in this picture how much the ergometer sways and moves as a crew member... as a crew member exercises. If this exercise device were hard-mounted on the shuttle floor, these vibrations would be sent into the orbiter structure to very possibly disturb the microgravity environment in which the protein crystals and the other experiments need to conduct their science. You get a picture? Yes, we do. But your governor folks... Andy, and we got a good view of that. It's like you're making maximum effective use of all the space you have there. And we have a good view of the flight deck and a pilot who's ready for bed. Nancy, one of the things that should come to mind to the controllers particularly as they see us get ready and configured for sleep up here you notice that all five crew members are sleeping at the same time. While this vehicle is hurling through space at 17,500 miles an hour we're basically traveling five miles every second across the surface of the earth and it just goes to show you what trust and confidence this team up here has on the team on the ground because we know that you guys are doing your job down there and doing it well watching over every aspect of our safety and performance of this orbiter and it makes me proud to be a part of this team and I worked at the control center for 12 flights myself and I was very proud of the controllers then and again when you come up here on orbit and you put that kind of trust and faith in those people they all make you proud, very proud. Andy, I know we were a bit redundant because we played the service medley a few days ago but I think you'll appreciate the song for this morning. I think when you get your mail you'll find out why. We got news this morning and our morning mail, this is a momentous occasion and we're going to have a little ceremony here. I'm going to turn it over to our administrative officer here. There's mission lapse times five days, 19 hours, 25 minutes. Avoid the Space Shuttle Columbia in North Orbit. In recognition of 17 years of distinguished service to the United States as a Marine officer and demonstrated potential for future leadership and responsibility the United States Marine Corps has selected Andrew M. Allen for promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. By the authority vested in me as commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia I hereby promote Major Allen, affected immediately to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel for the duration of this space flight. I'm John H. Casper, Commander STS-62. Where's that kid now? Hey, then we have the Mark I, and then you hear on board the Shuttle boat. Mod zero, I can get it out of here. Frank Furtner. Ah, there we go. Now, this is a double Frank Furtner sandwich. We will see if I can... Yeah, too high. That's what you make, man. Hey, hot dog in space. That's hot dog. What's the moment? Hold the seat. What's the deal with the... What's the deal with the land right now? It's a stable island. Now we can keep close to the temperature. DLS. Columbia, Houston. Good morning. We like the tans. South Philly looks pretty red in sunrise. The sun hit the ice crystals just at the right angle. You're out of the commander's window, window one. It's a little hard to judge distances up here, but I'd say it's probably a couple hundred miles across. And you'll get a lot better shot of it.