 I have a 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? We didn'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? One 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, refurbish it and fly again. I mean, after all, the sun will be there and we don't want to risk losing the satellite altogether. 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 until we have all the facts on the ground. It didn't do its normal programming and then we gave it a little flight bump when we were retrieving it and that put it into a spin. But we'll wait until we get all the facts and talk to all the folks on the ground and put the story together. I imagine astronaut Shabla is a little bit disappointed as well that it didn't go the way she had hoped. Can you see the 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? No, 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, Tako 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. I think it will, but I would not jump at the chance to go outside and if they decide to do it, the car and I are ready to go. We accomplished, I think, most of the EDFT or the EDA objective. There are a few things that we could do if we went back out and we keep our fingers crossed they'll give us some of the opportunity. Tell me about this small basketball sized camera that you would have taken out there and taken a look at. Give me a quick thumbnail about the camera itself. It's called an air cam spread. It's a little bigger than a basketball, about thousand of a medicine ball I guess. It has two cameras inside. It also has a controlling system. It's flown much like you fly a radio controlled airplane. I would have released the spread 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 with a certain procedure, a certain data point he would have taken. Obviously this camera would 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 what have you. Not to forget our guest, Leonor Kdenyuk 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 cosmonauts of former U.S.S.S.A. I had trained as commander of Buran, but right now I am cosmonauts of Ukraine. Probably I will be the first Ukrainian astronaut in the country of Ukraine, independent country of Ukraine. But the first Ukrainian who was in space, it was Pavel Popoich in 1972. Commander Kregel, 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 role. Do you think it's going to become easy enough to do, standard in the future for shuttle missions? The heads up that you're referring to happens about six minutes into the assent. Of course the assent 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 shuttle missions. 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 studying, 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. It affects 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 processing the particle engulfment and pushing experiment. And also we have some enclosed laminar flame experiments going on this afternoon. We did wetting characteristics of admissibles on yesterday and the day before yesterday. And the principal investigators on the ground are quite happy with what they're seeing. I can tell you. Commander Kevin Craigle, Mission Specialist Winston Scott, payload Specialist Lena Kadenyuk. We thank you very much for joining us this morning on Up to the Minute. Thank you, it's been our pleasure. While working with the Brassica-Rapha plan, do you look at it as the partner in the experiment? Do you talk with it as if it was a person? Really, I'm working with the Brassica-Rapha plan every day. And I'm spending most of my time close to this plan. I even sleep close to it. And you know, here on the orbiter you can sleep wherever you want, even on the ceiling. Or on the wall. How long will the experiment with the Brassica-Rapha last? This experiment starts before the flight. And the plan grows for 14 days altogether. And as you know, Brassica-Rapha, the cycle is rather short. That's why it leaves 14 days on the ground prior to the flight. And then we send it up to the space. And this experiment will last even after the flight as well. We will compare the results of the growing process in space as opposed to what's going to happen on the ground afterwards. And it will last for another month on the ground. What other experiments are you conducting presently? On top of the Brassica-Rapha experiment, we run some other experiments, primarily with soybeans and some other plants. I've run a couple of more experiments that are over by now. At least my part of those experiments are over. We are growing some plants on the orbiter. And we are trying to assess the growing process. What are the future applications of the results of this experiment? From the technical point of view, the experiment was prepared in the most excellent manner. The flowers are being grown in a special box. And the experiment goes on very successfully. The entire environment in the box 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 of the plant. There is also a freezer involved where we freeze the samples.