 He's after you go ahead discovery Okay, we'll do that Nancy and you'll be happy to know that the Antedrus the two single-axis antenna reflectors are now deployed So all appendages have been deployed and the on-orbit checkout is continuing nominally Being panned over in an effort to For BDS in an effort to look at tropical storm Chantal Yes, Don our suggestion is possibly that you check the jumpers That were part of the IFM for that cable We're asking you to do that in view of the number of restarts We think that there might be a possibility of intermittent contact and When you're certain that the Jumpers are solid. We suggest you restart with step eight on page one dash for the payload ops Good read back Again the instrumentation communications officer here in the new mission control center is panning the Afport camera of discovery to take a look at tropical storm Chantal and the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba As discovery orbits 200 miles above Meanwhile spacecraft communicator Mark Garneau talking with mission specialist Don Thomas on board discovery about the In-flight maintenance procedure designed to get the bioreactor development system working on the crew to check that they have gray tape the appropriate pin connectors properly in a New cable that'll be used to make the experiment active He asked Don Thomas to check and make sure that the rotating wall was rotating Which he did which indicates there's power to the experiment discovery with words on media mark I took out the multimeter and checked our connectors. They look good. I reconnected them and Started performing step eight and we got a message Detected so looks like We're back in business here. We got our experiment timer counting and MET clock is counting That's good news done and we're with you on the flight deck Walk on board discovery We're 160 miles above the earth just approaching the southern tip of Baja, and we like to share a moment with you to dedicate the new consolidated control center after 30 years of hard work Which included over 100 man space flights from our old control room We're now entering the next century by opening the new control center Which will lead our man's spaceflight program into future Benefits aboard an international space station and into the next century Continuing our exploration of the solar system for the benefit of humankind a board discovery on this flight We have a plaque that commemorates the opening of the new control center And it says in recognition of the first flight flown from this mission control room This plaque was flown on the flight STF 70 on board the space shuttle discovery Built by the pirate teamwork and powered by pirate spirit And we dedicate it to all the folks who have worked in the flight control rooms And who will work in the new control room and it's our honor to Carry this plaque for those folks and we do dedicate it to their teamwork and effort And it's not the rooms that make the difference. It's the people that man those rooms And we trust our lives and our nation's manned space program to those folks And we are proud to be a part of your team as one of the members of the crew as well as Don Thomas that did work as a CAPCOM for at least a year in the mission control center I just like to pass on my word of thanks to those folks It's one of the most professional organizations I've ever seen It's so well-run people give their heart and soul on every day of every mission To support each and every one of us and we can't thank you enough Again congratulations to the mission operations directorate and John Morator and his folks that put so many long hours into preparing the room to be prepared for STS 70 Congratulations and we're looking forward to this flight and many more in the future. Thank you Well, thank you very much Tom In the orbit one Shift we're certainly proud to be working in the new facility. We also think it's great You'll be glad to know that Since you're the first mission to fly out of this new Flight control room. We have a very nice plaque of your mission patch As well as your crew photo hanging in our room That's quite an honor for us and we're going to try and download you a closer picture of the plaque And we hope that many more patches adorn a new control center and the historical missions that were flown from the old I'm sure will be followed by future historic missions from this new control center And again, we'll try and show you a good picture of the plaque Thanks, Tom and Kevin that looks good. We have a great close-up of the patch STS 70 commander Tom Hendricks and we're now looking on the left STS 70 commander Tom Hendricks flanked on the left by mission specialist, Nancy Currie And on the right by pilot Kevin Kriegel presenting a commemoration of the first flight of the new mission control center here in houston Once again receiving down downlink television from the payload bay cameras of the shuttle discovery as it passes About 200 miles above the Gulf of mexico cameras now zooming in on the florida peninsula and Cape canaveral area on the previous orbit the crew Downlinked a good view of tropical storm shantel which is In the atlantic ocean just outside the gulf off the coast of cuba There's a good chance we'll get another view of that on this orbital pass Which is very close to the same track as the last pass We're now looking at oil droplets that are Part of the embryo being looked at in the space tissue loss experiment On this image the oil droplets can be seen in the upper right portion of your screen while the Embryo is farther down in toward the center of the screen These embryos are very young and in the glastula stage And again this information is very important to understanding the effects of long duration spaceflight On living systems This video can be Viewed and recorded real time at the kennedy space center Where scientists in the life sciences support center are comparing These embryos with a control group on the ground Okay, Nancy, uh, we'll we'll talk about that And discover Houston. That's an excellent, uh view. It gives us a real perspective on Uh, what this storm looks like on a planetary scale Yeah, Nancy's proud of that one Get that 40 millimeter hassle blade on it Tell me if you can imagine the biggest problem I was having control of the cameras was that I'm on the floor with five people on top of me left out the window Woody's up there too Okay, don't get any boot prints on your back there discovery. This is Houston. Are you ready for the event? New York Times, this is Houston. Please call discovery for a voice check Discovery, this is new york times. How do you hear me? What's the board discovery we're 160 miles above the earth and we're just now crossing the philippines It's dark outside And this afternoon you've got uh mario and weber just now coming into view And kevin gregel and myself tom henricks and we're ready to take your question That sounds terrific. The uh, we're thrilled to have you with us The the only things we'll ask is uh That you speak at a moderate pace because we're we're typing and transcribing your answers as we go And the questions are are mostly for both of you. So if you could identify yourselves before you answer that would be terrific Okay, we're gonna we're gonna we understand with our with our first question The first question comes from uh, bn do in arkansas And uh, she wants to be an astronaut and a lot and she and a lot of other people in our audience Want to hear about the biological experiments you're conducting up there and the communication satellite that you've released into space We'll start with the satellite first. Uh, it was released yesterday And it was the last of a series of satellites to join a system that transmits data from satellites or uh telescopes or any other transmitting device like the shuttle or the future international space station To earth and it acts as a relay system. So it takes the transmissions from things in space And uh passes them on to the earth and it can do that at an extremely high rate and can Maintain that system for many years and this satellite is again the last to join that system and i'll let uh Barry ellen weber answer the question about our biological experiments Can we please move much slower and identify ourselves at the point when we start talking? Uh, houston did you uh discover did you hear that? Yes, we copied that and we will This is mary ellen weber and i'm one of the mission specialists aboard the flight And i'd like to tell you about some of the biological experiments that we're doing The first experiment is the bioreactor and this is a system to rotating the cell and it has nutrients for human cells in this case human colon cancer cells to grow And because it rotates it mimics what goes on in the human body extremely well because of that we can Figure out how cancer cells actually travel from say the colon to the liver or the kidneys And that's the objective of that experiment another experiment that we're doing is protein protein crystal growth and Maybe i can tell you more about that some other time Next question Okay slower, okay, and if we could just go a little bit slower, please George in connecticut wonders is that what you can Wonders what the difference between the shuttle's commander and pilot is and and could the commander and the pilot be the same person This is kevin creagle the pilot and the biggest difference is that the commander is much much older Do most of the same duties the pilot backs up the commander The commander usually has two flights under his belt and there's a lot more experience. This is tom's Third flight and my first flight It's a lot like on an airliner when you have a captain and a co-pilot You have the captain who's highly experienced running the ship And the pilot who's learning and backing him up great