 Good morning, Kevin. Good morning, Story. It's good to hear some really good music for a change. Well, certainly is about a grand place. As, oh, thank you, baby, you said it's one heck of a town. I used to discover it with an internet answer. And go ahead. This is a question from Kathleen Blum of Houston, Texas. And she wanted to know whether the deployment of this TDR satellite would make the COE smaller or eliminated altogether. The answer is that it will not change the size of the zone of exclusion. The satellite will be checked out over the next several months and then be positioned as a ready spare. This is the last of a series of TDRS satellites to complete the current network. And some of the original satellites are reaching the end of their expected lifetime. Therefore, this will be put into a spare position and called into service when needed. Thanks, Tom. This is Mission Control Houston, the northern coast of Australia now coming into view of Discovery's payload bay camera. Cameras are being controlled by the instrumentation and communications officer here in the new Mission Control Center. As the crew continues to step through its post-sleep activities getting ready to go to work. On the day night, inside a day portion of Florida, we did pick up the SLF and it appeared to be the only cloudless spot in Florida. We hope that remains the same through Friday morning. And coming across Mexico during the night, we could see cities with naked eye but could not acquire them in the Hercules. The BDS is made up of a device developed here at the Johnson Space Center that uses a rotating cylinder to suspend cells and tissues in a growth medium simulating some of the aspects of microgravity. The system which is already being used extensively in ground-based research also provides for gas and nutrient exchange for the cells. The purpose of this experiment on the flight is to demonstrate the performance of this bioreactor in microgravity. Trying to assess the fluid dynamic characteristics of the bioreactor. The experiment and what we're seeing right now are colon cancer cells that are being grown within the bioreactor chamber. And Discovery Houston, you should have the first three tips pages on board. And for Kevin, we're looking at you down in the mid-deck. Kevin's actually on the flight deck holding the Hercules camera. So this is previously recorded. Getting him ready to hold the Hercules camera. Copy. Discovery's crew downlinking some previously recorded videotape of pilot Kevin Kriegel. Exercising on the bicycle ergometer on the shuttle's mid-deck. To the right of the picture, you can see the airlock entrance. You should now be getting a picture of this is a Tom operating DSO 904. It's a touchscreen evaluation. And you're right, Nancy. That's what we have. And Discovery, we're watching Tom doing the VFT. We're assuming some more videotape from the crew on board Discovery. This is Commander Tom Henrichs operating the visual function tester equipment, just recording his ability to respond to visual stimulus. Discovery Houston. For Mary Ellen, we're happy with the amount of video we've received so far. And just an additional note, the ground investigators are interested in the flow patterns that they're seeing in this phase one part of the experiment. And they're looking forward to phase two. I agree, Mark. And I will go ahead and cue up the tape to yesterday's. And maybe you can let me know if you can initiate that from the ground, we can start downlinking that. We're with you in the middeck, Kevin and Don. We got you loud and clear. Good day, USA. This is Houston. Please call Discovery for a voice check. Discovery, this is Good Day USA. I'm Doug Steffen. Hello. Doug, this is Kevin Craigle. And I have Don Thomas on my left. Welcome aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. That was very exciting for us to be here. And very exciting for the audience to have a chance to have a conversation with you. First of all, let's talk a little to Kevin. Can we do that? Let's find out as much as we can about Kevin because this is his first space flight, correct? That's correct. Tell us about you, Kevin. OK. Myself, I grew up on Long Island, New York. I was an Air Force officer for 12 years. Military pilot, test pilot. I joined NASA in 1990 with an instructor pilot and a research pilot. Came an astronaut in 1992. And I've been training ever since. And this is my first mission. I'm married with four beautiful kids. How long have you been training for this particular flight? And in general, how long have you been training for the career that you have now as an astronaut? Well, for this particular mission, we started training about 10 months ago. As far as being an astronaut, I guess I'm one of the newer folks in the office that dreamed of being an astronaut when they were very little. Of course, the original folks never could dream of being astronauts because they didn't know there was such a thing. But I guess I've been hoping to be an astronaut since I was about eight or nine years old. What is your specific mission, Kevin? That is the things that you're working on as a mission specialist. Okay, well, I'm a pilot, so I'm the backup to the commander. My primary responsibility is to backup the commander during an asset and entry and to take care of all the orbiter systems. I'm also doing some secondary experiments just before we went on the air. I was taking care of an experiment called Hercules, which is a digital video camera taking pictures of the Earth and of land and the sea. Now, the things that you have to do... I'm looking at the background on you. The things that you have to do are... They basically... We have... Okay, I got it. I'm getting some communication from some of the people at the mission control. The things that you are involved in doing are the things that benefit us as far as health are concerned. I know you're working on the environment. Child people, I think some of the people listening to this program are interested in the benefits that they get from these missions that are not well known. Okay, well, our primary objective of this mission was to deploy a tracking and data relay satellite, which we did on the first day. And that satellite is used for a space communication network. And it's the last of a series. And that was a primary mission for flying. But we had a lot of extra room in the mid-deck. And once we went to the expense of getting the shuttle in space, we had these smaller experiments which have a lot of potential benefits for mankind. We have one that's working very well. That's a bioreactor. And it's growing living tissue. And the hope is that we'll be able to grow tissue a little bit better here in space and perhaps one day be able to grow some replacement organs. That's in the future. We'll also have some crystal growth experiments that we're growing. We're able to grow bigger crystals that can be used for drugs to help out cancer research and help out patients that way. We have another experiment that is going to grow a microbe in capsules. And what that's used for is for pills that you can take and then perhaps in a shot that you can take. And instead of taking a shot every day for insulin, maybe only have to take a shot once a month because it has very small-time release capsules in it. We're also doing another one called NIH which is looking at the skeletal structural which will help perhaps in people with osteoporosis. So there's quite a few secondaries that we're looking at. All right, let's spend a few minutes talking to Don Thomas who is on his second flight as a mission specialist. Don, welcome to Good Day USA. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. It's nice to have you here. Tell us a little about you and where you're from and the same sort of thing that Kevin gave us. I was born in 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio. I went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, got a bachelor's degree in physics, went on to Cornell University in Central New York, and got my PhD in material science. I'm a materials engineer, a crystallographer background. I worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories for six years in New Jersey and moved down to Houston in 1988 where I worked as a materials engineer. I'm married and I have a five-month-old little boy. It was home waiting for me to get back. Congratulations. Have you, as a matter of course, or the other members of the crew, had conversations with your family? Can you do that when you're in space? Yes, we can. We had one opportunity during the mission to have a private conference with our families. I just had mine last night, and I'll tell you, it brought a big smile to my face. We've been in quarantine a week before the mission and then being up here for a week or so. It's a long time away from home, and it's good to talk to the kids and your wife and everybody else back home. This makes it feel a little bit part of the family again. Your first mission was about a year ago at this time, wasn't it? That's right, it was exactly a year ago that I was up on STS-65, and that was a 15-day mission last summer. And how much different is the job that you're performing this time from what you had to do last year? Last summer, I was on a space lab, which is a science module that we have in the back of the payload bay here and we conducted 84 different experiments from around the world. We had 15 different countries participating. So I was busy the whole time performing experiments during the 15-day flight. This mission, as Kevin mentioned, our primary objective was deploying the tracking and data relay satellite. As you know, this is critical for all the images of the Hubble Space Telescopes. Every time you see one of those great pictures from Saturn or Uranus or one of the other planets or galaxies out there, those are all being transmitted to the capabilities of the tracking and data relay satellite. And so in this mission, it's a little different. We were deploying a satellite. Now we're working on these smaller mid-deck experiments for the remainder of our flight. The kids that watch you in space, that follow you, are inspired usually. I have been doing a program with NASA, bringing Jay Honeycutt and Mike McCulley and some other former astronauts around to schools here and there in the country because I believe very strongly what NASA does. How do you, fellas, the people, the men and women of the crews themselves, get around and get your message around so that kids will really understand what you are doing while you're out in space? We have an amateur radio on board. We have an experiment called SARACS. It's the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment. And it's specifically designed for astronauts here in orbit to talk to students on the ground. And during our mission, we've made contact, we will make contact with eight different schools from around the world. We've talked to Argentina. We've talked to a school yesterday. Kevin did up in Schenectady at the Schenectady Museum. And as I said, we have eight schools that we're talking with students from answering their questions. And it's so much fun for us to share our enthusiasm with them and to try to get them motivated to learn more about science and math and maybe, you know, become future astronauts here. We're talking to Mission Specialist Donald Thomas who's on his second shuttle flight. And Kevin Kriegel is on his first shuttle flight from Discovery. Where exactly are you? If you look out the window, tell us where you are. What do you can see right now? Right now, we're coming up over southern Florida just heading out over the Caribbean. We go around the Earth every 90 minutes or so and we're 160 miles above the Earth. That's kind of a low orbit, is it not? Actually, no, that's about our standard orbit is 160. We have gone down as low as around 105 during some of the Earth's observations. And we'll go up to as high as almost 300 to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Yeah, I thought that the average was around 200 to 20, 230 in there. What difference explain to the audience what difference it makes, whether you're at 160 or whether you're at 200 miles or I know the 300-mile thing is for things like the Hubble that are out there far, but what different sensations and what can you see differently at 160 miles? You can't see at 220. Last summer, I was at 160 miles up for 14 days and the last day of our mission, we dropped down to 135 miles and that 25-mile difference was just spectacular. The ground seemed so much closer to us, the detail that you can see. I could see runways at airports and almost the marking, the numbers on the runway from 135 miles up. So the farther out you go, you lose a little bit of detail on the ground, but then again, you gain the perspective, the global perspective of the planet Earth. You have brought some Windex with you. I don't know that you really did, but what's the window experiment that I've been reading about? Well, the window experiment, in fact, Nancy Curry is setting it up. We've already done one day to take today and we'll do another. It's a look at the environment and space that we're at actually does have some molecules out here. And so we're looking at the interaction of the shuttle and the shuttle's jets with the very thin tenuous atmosphere that we have to try to understand it better from just a physics perspective, but also on a practical perspective when we dock with the Russian space station as we did earlier this year and when we dock with the International Space Station, we want to know what kind of effects the plumes will have on that station and how we can protect against that. You have a new engine in Discovery, do you not? We sure do. Have the block one engine. It worked like a champ. It had a new turbo pump on it, which brings down the wells from a couple of hundred to just a hand fell, which anyone who does any kind of maintenance knows that that should make it a more reliable system as far as the performance from our aspect. It worked just perfect. And we're looking forward to putting three of them on the shuttle, I guess, in September. All right, can we go back and talk to Kevin for a second? Actually, I want to talk to the two of you together as you live closely in the environment. You're five people distinct to have all different backgrounds. Have you become friends and do you become friends because of the work that you do together or do they actually put you together because you all seem to work well together? Well, I think it's probably one of the traits they try to do when they do the selection is folks that can work together well as a team because it is a close environment. And we've been working well together for the last nine months. I have to correct you, though, that the backgrounds aren't that varied. We have four people from Ohio and I'm from New York, so I'm the only one who has to really try to fit in. That's right, this was the so-called Ohio crew, as I recall. That's correct. Well, we have stations all over Ohio, Columbus, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, and the suburban Cleveland area that are hearing you right now, so it should be like old home week. What day are we in, Kevin? Are we in the fifth or sixth day of the mission? I really had to think about that because when you go through 16 sunrises and sunsets every day, it gets kind of confusing. But we're in the late morning of flight day six. Okay, so you have not only the Windex operation scheduled today, but you were talking about Hercules and the Bioreactor demonstration system. Do these continue every day like tomorrow and then the eighth day and so forth? Will you be working on all these things for the rest of the mission? That's correct. We'll be kept busy the rest of the mission, doing all the secondary experiments, getting as much data as we can for the investigators. And then the day before landing is passed with basically tidying up, putting away the experiments, and getting the orbiter ready to come home. And so if I asked you to give us the things that this experience, both Don and Kevin, this experience means what to you personally? For me personally, this is my second flight and it's a dream come true for me. I've wanted to be an astronaut since I was about six years old. So to have a little boyhood dream and to be living it now is just the best thing that can happen to you in life. On a personal note, what I'm taking away from this mission is working with these great people on the STF-70 crew. These are friendships, so I'll have the rest of my life I know. And the images that I have in my head right now of the planet Earth as we go around it, when you're flying 160 miles above it in the shuttle, you really get a perspective of the Earth as a planet. When you can look out and see the moon out there, you can see the Milky Way, the moon also. So you really get a sense of the solar system here that we're in. And as we fly over the blue water of the planet Earth and look over the continents, it's just a great perspective to bring back to the planet. Well, we want to thank you gentlemen. We've enjoyed this. This has been our first on Good Day USA and I hope it will not be the last. I hope that both of you, if you want to stay in space, are able to do so. Kevin Kriegel, astronaut Don Thomas, enjoying the view and the work from Discovery. Houston, Good Day USA. This concludes this event. And we are with you in the mid-deck. Okay, so Houston, it's actually prerecorded. We're shorted through the flight deck. Okay. This is Mission Control Houston. We're expecting to get some videotape downlink video of the window strike reported earlier. Apparently a micro meteoroid hit the corner of one of the shuttle windows. Of course, the daylight makes a little more dramatic than it really is. So, after this daylight, we took some under a flashlight and we'll show that at the end. Copy, Tom. And can you gauge any kind of depth? It looked like maybe a 30 seconds from an inch. It's tough to tell depth because we can't get close to it either. In fact, it's about the same angle you're seeing here. That's as close as we can get. Copy. MS-1 said he'd be glad to go check it from the outside. And this is just to show you where it is in the window. Up the left-hand corner. Okay. Houston, we did have a flight delay getting off the ground but once we got into orbit, we were ready to go right to work. And one of the first things that we found on orbit was an extra crew member that had come along and we heard that there was some relation to this crew member that was also participating in the control activities at the new MCC. As you can see, he was happy to come along and really had a smile at MECO. And at MECO, the first sensation, as you know, is the relaxation of G. After three Gs, you're happy to get out of the helmet. It's more difficult for some than others but once out, you're floating free. And right after we get up on orbit, it's really important to document the condition of the external tank and you can see this crew member is doing an excellent job of tracking the external tank as it falls back to Earth to burn up in the atmosphere. Had some particular interest in that tank, do you think? I think so. And I'm more serious about six crew members been helping us with some of our secondary experiments. This is the NIHR experiment looking at mammalian development and developmental changes induced by microgravity. There's another experiment that this crew member was helping us out with and during this fight, we managed to grow some outstanding human cells, human tissues, and you can see this crew member about to take a sterile cell culture right now. I think it's always a good idea to learn a lot of that. If I want to board, we were able to make a lot more CERICS contacts at the Stel amateur radio experiment in which we're contacting eight schools from around the world and talking with hundreds of students trying to get them enthusiastic about the space program and get them steered towards engineering and science fields. The next experiment you'll see our crew member monitoring is the CPCP, which is a protein crystal growth experiment, growing crystals of alpha-interserum, which is an anti-viral, anti-cancer fighting drug. We're really excited about the crystals we're growing and hopefully we'll bring back some good science for the experiment at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. There's microcapsules in space. An experiment we're going to activate tonight and let it run overnight, in which we'll be producing some microcapsules of hampacillin and hydrate, which is a drug that we use for antibiotics. The STLB experiment, which is a space tissue loss experiment, we're applying these embryos, in this case mesocintins, and looking again at developmental changes induced by microgravity. And we've already been told they've been noticing significant changes between the ground control study embryos and ours on board. So the extra crew member is doing the Hercules experiment, which is a digital video camera used to geolocate different targets on the Earth and a little bit of problems with it, but we've got some good multi-spectral data and also some panachromatic data looking at the Earth. The other experiment that's also using a zion-type camera, as in the Hercules, is the window at the particles around the altar, which will help us understand the physics here in low space orbit and also help us with the documentation. The internet completes the downlink so we hope this draws some attention to the secondaries that we have on board. And we did appreciate to help our sixth crew member in bringing all the benefits of the secondaries to light. And if we have any more work for them, we'll send that down later. Copy that discovery, and it's obvious that with the high level of activity on board, it was handy having that extra crew member to help out. We also think that we understand now the alignment problems with Hercules. And we'd like you to check that your extra crew member is not going outside. We think that might explain the W-6 ding. Exactly. At the W-6 ding, we think was to do this crew member and we're also suspicious of him pecking into power cord for the vacuum cleaner. I think we can absolve all the other crew members of blame in this flight.