 discovery and we thought you'd like this piece about Ohio Senator John Glenn suggested it. We're now receiving live television from Discovery's cameras this view from a camera that's mounted in the forward right-hand corner of the cargo bay. We're getting a superb picture from the payload bay and I can see the storm just coming into view. I envy your view for real. In this view of Tropical Storm Chantal maximum winds now about 51 miles per hour as it moves to the North Northwest in the Atlantic well to the north of Puerto Rico. This is Mission Control Houston this television view from Discovery's of Tropical Storm Chantal again in the Atlantic well north of Puerto Rico on a course that it will take it to north northwest. Currently as Chantal is a Tropical Storm has winds of about 51 miles per hour and it's moving on its north northwest track at about five miles per hour. Okay we're ready on the middeck. We're ready to come aboard when you're ready. Discovery Houston three smiling faces there and we have a good frame and a good camera view. Discovery are you ready for the event on the middeck? Maddie Montford this is Houston please call Discovery for a voice check. Hello how are you Nancy, Don and Mary Ellen doing just fine. Before we get started let me just tell you that the show that we do we cater more to moms and children so when you speak about what you do as simple in a simple terms as possible we would really appreciate it. Okay wonderful so we'll just get started I'm gonna enter you right now. We are speaking with Nancy Curry, Don Thomas and Mary Ellen Weber. They are on the STS 70 mission on the Space Shuttle Discovery. They are on the middeck and they're ready to speak to us right now. Hello and thank you for being with us. Thank you for allowing us to come down and be with you this morning. We're just having a wonderful time after our launch. Two days ago from the Kennedy Space Center we had just a spectacular launch. We had the deployment of the tracking and data relay communication satellite on our first day and we've just been having a very successful mission up to this point. Now we were originally going to speak to you a few weeks back and of course that mission was delayed. Can you give us a little insight on what happened? Discovery, Houston we're not getting Don's down like can you try the mic again? Okay do I ask the question again? May I ask the question again? Discovery that last question did not come down so would you give the answer again? Basically the reason for our delay of one month was because of a woodpecker. There were two woodpeckers that were poking holes in our external tank. They made a number of holes, about 197 of them. We had to roll back to the vehicle assembly building to patch the holes and we rolled back out to the pad, launched about a month late, but here we are successfully on orbit. Did that make you any more nervous to go up in space than you probably already know? I don't think so. We've been training very hard for this mission for about a year and we're ready and it's part of the business. Sometimes weather is going to get in your way and sometimes it might be woodpeckers or sometimes it might just be equipment failures but you know we believe our space program is really safe and we were ready to go. All three of you right now are on the mid deck of the aircraft. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do there? Basically the mid deck is where we work and where we sleep and where we eat and also where we exercise. We have a bicycle which does not have a seat on it because we don't need one in zero G just have a seat back on it and we exercise at least once a day on orbit. But we have a whole variety of experiments. We've been keeping very, very busy. And we also have several experiments that we're running from the flight deck. Most of those are camera oriented and are taking up most of the windows on the flight deck. Now people are interested in your day to day activities on board the shuttle Discovery. For example, what did you eat today? Oh, there's this morning I had Rice Krispies for breakfast and for lunch. I had some barbecue beef and a tortilla. That is it good? It's actually pretty good but I'm holding here some shrimp cocktail that we just mixed with a little bit of cold water and that's one of our favorites. I'm holding some chocolate instant breakfast which I had this morning and it's actually very good and we all get to select our own menus. Yeah, we got to speak with most of your family members this morning and aside from missing them, what is the thing that you miss the most about not being on earth? Well, you hit the nail in the head. The thing we do miss most is our family's back on earth. Other than that, it's getting out and being able to take a walk around the neighborhood and join the, you know, fresh air and a cool breeze in your face. But to make up for that, we got a spectacular view out the window here. Yes, can we take a look at where you're flying over right now? Is that possible? That we're going to, it's a little bit of what you can see from the shuttle as we speak. Well, currently we're in the middle of a night pass over Southeast Asia just going over approximately Indonesia. I'm not sure you'd be able to see much out of our payload bay cameras. It's dark, but we can get a sense. The top part, of course, is the earth. Most of our flight we fly facing with our payload bay facing the earth. So as we look at the overhead windows of the shuttle, we're looking down at the earth. However, last night we were flying with the nose of the orbiter down and so we were actually looking at the forward windows of the orbiter down at the earth. And for the first time, I think some of us got the sensation of falling towards the earth that was quite interesting. What does that sensation feel like? Well, basically, you know, floating here in zero gravity, you feel quite comfortable from the time the main engines cut off. You let go and you just float around as long as you don't get a raid on yourself. This is a question for Nancy and Angela. Maybe you're the best to answer this. Do you have bad hair days up in space? I don't know if it's a bad hair day. Do you know that as I've spent a couple of days here at NASA, I've just been so impressed by what a great personality the astronauts that I've spoken to have, aside from your technical skills and the academics that you must know to get to where you are. Is personality a big, big part of you getting where you are? I think so, of course. But the selection, a large part of it is based on a one hour interview with the selection committee and they hold their cards pretty close and they tend not to talk about what exactly they're looking for in the personalities. But certainly being able to take the initiative and demonstrating that you can work with others and things like that, we have to believe that that does come into play. Now, Mary Ellen, I know you're adventurous as well. You're a competitive skydiver with 1,900 jumps under your belt. Who does that thrill compare to the one you're living right now? Say no. This is pretty awesome. This is really pretty remarkable. Although I really do enjoy jumping. Now, what do you do for fun? You said you have some time to exercise. But other than that, what is your off-time like? What do you do? I had a whole lot of off-time this far in the mission. And so I think every possible opportunity that we have, particularly during meal times, you'll find five noses crossed up against the window looking at the most spectacular view we'll ever see in our lives. Yes. Now, Nancy, we got a chance to speak with your eight-year-old daughter this morning. Stephanie was on our show last fall when Mike, my co-host, interviewed you. And she said to me that she would love to see herself and your dog, Augie, up in space sometime. There's some of the fun things that you all do in weightlessness. I mean, right now, obviously, you are hanging on. To what exactly are you hanging on to? Okay, let's give you a short demonstration of something we were showing a couple of new guys last night. It'll take just a second, then released inside here. You're an easy gymnast, Nancy. Wonderful. Now, if you all had a chance to live up in the space station for a year where you wouldn't be able to see your husbands and your children and your wives, would you take that opportunity? That's a great question. I sure would like to bring them along if we could do that. And hopefully one day in the future, we'll be able to bring our families along on longer voyages into space. Mary Ellen, did you want to answer that? Okay, I would go. I would certainly go on the space station and, you know, with or without my family, but I would certainly rather have them along. Tell me a little bit about, in the simplest of terms, what your responsibilities are aboard the Discovery. Responsibilities are mission specialists, too. All three of us are mission specialists. Mission specialists, too, is a flight engineer on the flight. So I was sitting center seat between Tom Hendricks, the commander, and Kevin Kregel, the pilot, all the way during the ascent, and Don was sitting to my right. And it was really spectacular. Don and I both had out mirrors so that when the main engine flipped, we could actually see some of the flames. As we rolled heads down, we could see the earth start to go by. And then, of course, all of our concentration was on the four-porsche of the cockpit, monitoring all our instruments on board. My main responsibility was deploying the TDRS satellite, our tracking and data relay satellite that we deployed on day one. In addition to that, I'm responsible for a number of the smaller mid-deck experiments that were flying in this mission. And I'm one of the two crew members who would go out and do a space walk in case we had some kind of emergency or contingency and needed to go outside and fix something on the orbiter. And my role is pretty similar to Don's. I was helping him out with the deploy, as well as working on some of the mid-deck experiments, and I'm the other crew member that would go out and do a space walk if we needed to do that. Bob Cabana, the head of the astronaut program here at NASA, told me that the single most important piece of equipment that all of you have is your spoon. Do you have them handy? You bet. We never leave home without it. There they go. And Don has two of them. He's ready. That way we can hold them for ransom if someone loses theirs. You get a lot of chance to talk to one another, or is it basically difficult to speak up there where you can hear each other clearly? You can hear each other very, very clearly. It's kind of like having a fan on in a room, and you may have to talk just a little bit louder, but you can hear just as well as on the ground. We got to speak to your husband, Nancy. We didn't get to speak to yours, Marilyn, because I know he's still in Florida. But I was curious, when you both were single, did you intimidate men because you were astronauts? Was that an intimidating factor in the dating process? My husband, he's an Army helicopter pilot, and I met him when he was teaching me how to fly one of the Army's newest helicopters, the Black Hawk. And so I don't think he was intimidated at all because I was a pilot just like he was. And so it's quite interesting because he can understand my job very well, and he's tremendously supportive. How about you, Mary Ellen? No, I was actually dating my husband for many years before I became an astronaut, so I'm not real certain if anybody was intimidated or not. Don... He certainly wasn't. He wasn't. Now, Don, was being an astronaut a babe magnet for you? A married man, and I'd have to say absolutely not. No, but I meant before you were married. That's why I got married here. Well, we got a chance to meet your baby, Kai, and we got a chance to spend time with Simone. And for you, Nancy, we got a chance to speak with your husband and your daughter. They're all doing really, really well. Is there something you would like to say to them? Boy, sure, to Kai and to my wife, Simone, I love you, I miss you very much, and I can't wait to see you next Friday at landing time. Love you. And to Dan and Stephanie, I love you with all my heart, and don't eat too much pizza before I get back. Once again, I guess I have to say, just I love you a lot, Jerry, and I can't wait to see you. Now, I understand that all of you swapped rings with your husbands or your wives. Do you have them on you right now? Well, you know, I know they're missing you bad. I know they're missing you and they love you, and from down here on earth, we send you the very best wishes, and we hope you get back safely on Friday. God bless. Thank you very much, Patty. Give my best to Mike. We enjoyed meeting him in Houston. You're welcome. Good luck to all of you. Thank you. Discovery, we have a picture. Caraco will be very happy to know that we are cleaning the windows, just like you taught us there. And the next thing you'll see is doing some robots, and we, you know, you're very well familiar with, we had some fantastic passes today over the US, and we also were able to capture Hurricane Chantal. You can also see the six crew member on board in this view, and just to the right of Woody, you can see the MCC plaque in honor of the first flight control that is a new MCC. That's a great shot, Discovery. I imagine it was quite the photo frenzy as we came over the hurricane today, including one crew member with one ergonometer shoe on and one shoe off. That sounds like just about the scene that we're familiar with from last year. Tom, also the other interesting thing is that between Windex, Turcules, and Sarex, the windows have been kind of hard to come by during this flight. That's one thing we appreciate looking at the timeline is how difficult it is to work all those payloads with the Windows SIMO. Tom, and this is a picture of Tom and I doing Turcules activation, and this is just one part of Turcules to happen, the IBM ThinkPad computer, and you'll see the actual camera come into view in just a little bit. We're on the ground, weighed approximately 70 pounds, and it was quite difficult to train with, particularly for star alignments, to hold this device over your head and be able to get an alignment within 0.05 degrees. We had some difficulty with the alignment today, mostly due to the stabilization of the camera because it is so large, and there's the camera that I'm holding right now. This is IBM Camera, which is a multi-spectral imaging intensifier camera, and it's got its own alignment system that's the canister on top, and then a view cam attached to that. Discovery, we really see how that space is a premium working with the camera and a couple of crew members. That's why the last man at the PAO event was from the mid-deck. Roger that.