 Good afternoon from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is Space Shuttle Endeavour launch control The countdown for launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour tonight on mission STS-89 is continuing on schedule Launch is scheduled to occur at about 9 48 p.m. Eastern time And we are currently at a scheduled hold at T-minus three hours Work at launch pad 39a as well as operations here in the firing room and are continuing as planned This is Endeavour's first mission to dock with Russia's space station mirror The previous seven docking missions were all successfully done with the orbiter Atlantis With an on-time launch docking of Endeavour with mirror is set to occur at about 3 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, January 24th And we're with live pictures now from the crew quarters and the operations check out building as our seven astronauts are seated for their Traditional meal prior to launch our Sherapov as mission specialist As well as we just saw mission specialist James Riley here is a Bonnie Dunbar who is preparing for Her fifth flight into space today. She is the most experienced astronaut of all the crew members today Which are commanded by Terry Wilkett who will be leading this crew of seven Andy Thomas will be remaining on mirror for four months Michael Anderson and Pilot Joe Edwards are preparing for their first flights into space today Everybody looks like they're wide awake. They have been in fact awake since about nine o'clock this morning They've had two meals since that time and this is simply a snack that they will have before they Make final preparations to board the orbiter Endeavour and Then launch tonight at our preferred launch time of 948 p.m. At the shuttle pad the final inspection team is Continuing their operations to make final inspections of the orbiter as well as to look for any potential debris items that may be on the Pad surface or on any of the number of walkways that go run up and down the full length of the vehicle They'll also be looking for any build-ups of ice Or frost on the external tank following the loading of the cryogenic reactants And we have now moved to live TV of our astronauts that are being suited up they've just completed their weather briefing and our Making an effort to Get a little bit ahead of schedule so they have moved on into the pseudo prune commander Terry Wilco of course being the commander of this mission is Did again receive his weather briefing just moments ago and Was told that we will proceed with our activities tonight that there are no technical issues that we're dealing with Bonnie Dunbar who was preparing to make her fifth flight into space tonight is also Making final preparations to ensure that her suit is tight and snug Joe Edwards of course seen he is the pilot of this Crew and he is preparing for his first flight into space And we have seated here at Michael Anderson again also making his first flight into space Jim Riley also making his first flight into space He is a designated mission specialist number one and he is saying hello to his Friends and family who may be watching or who have actually come to the Space Center to watch his launch tonight Salzan Sharapov is a graduate from the Moscow State University He was also a pilot instructor in the Russian Air Force and he was I've been training at the Gagarian Cosmonaut Training Center to be an astronaut or a cosmonaut candidate since 1990 Andy Thomas will be Making his second trip aboard the shuttle But this will be his first time to visit the space station mirror Which will be his home for the next four months. He will replace astronaut Dave Wolf who has been on mirrors at September Thomas is Scheduled to be the seventh and final astronauts live aboard mirror And at this time we do have live shots from the third floor of the operations and checkout building as the crew exit Their crew quarters and make their way down the hallway toward the elevator which will take them out to the astronaut van Which will then Take them out to the pad and they're being greeted by well-wishers and supporters employees at the Kennedy Space Center who Like to get a last glimpse of the crew before they head off into space spending the next nine days in orbit Five of those days docked with the mirror space station And the astronauts coming out of the quarters right now As they are being led by their commander Terry Wilkut followed by pilot Joe Edwards mission specialist Bonnie Dunbar Michael Anderson Salazan Sharpa James Riley and And this is a view from the white room as our commander Terry Wilkut Is making final preparations to enter the orbiter he is he will be the first to enter the vehicle so that he big he can begin the Enormous task of making sure that everything is set up and ready to go for a launch tonight Mission specialist dandy Tom Thomas making his second trip on board the shuttle Again, he will remain on mirror for the next four months Replacing astronaut Dave Wolf who has been on board mirror since September Thomas will become the seventh and final astronaut to live aboard mirror Pilot Joe Edwards as just now crawled into the orbiter And he will be followed by mission specialist Bonnie Dunbar The most experienced astronaut in this flight having gone into space four times already 544 okay, but I put my reward Higher 30 step 554 new tapes copy of complete 1390 1390 and there was just 554 I Dave King is being introduced today as the new launch director at Kennedy Space Center He is only the third launch director the Cape has had since we had returned to flight Of the space shuttle King began his career with NASA in 1983 as a main propulsion engineer He later served as flow director for the orbiter discovery And as the acting deputy director of the installation operations director it and see there He looks like weather is good looks like we got a good vehicle And we're gonna try to get you out of town tonight and be looking forward to seeing you back here and Attendee and we'd also like to extend our thanks to your workforce here at KSC And all the honorees that are down here for this space by the way as long and we have orbiter access arm now being retracted away from the vehicle this Arm can be returned to position within seconds if need be Starts complete Starts complete Final air surface checks of the orbiters alabons as well as the rudder are being completed at this time This verifies the orbiters hydraulic systems And the three main engines are being gimbaled for a final test before launch And we're standing by for the retraction of the gaseous oxygen vent hood away from the external tank And it is being retracted at this time Inside the bronze color tank is about 500,000 gallons of super cold liquid fuels that run on the orbiters three main engines OTC closing lock divisors and initiate O2 flow. We begin 98 sending our last astronaut for his stay on mayor We're gonna howl for the wolf man T-minus 13 seconds Nine eight seven six we have a go start four three two one We have booster ignition and liftoff of the space shuttle endeavor continuing the union of us and russian space endeavors Houston is now controlling the role maneuver is complete and ever is now heads down winged his level position headed to a rendezvous with the mayor space station To flight endeavor now traveling at about 520 miles per hour Endeavour's engines are now throttling down to 67% of rated thrust Endeavour is now passing through the area of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle in the lower atmosphere Downrange from the Kennedy Space Center 2.3 miles traveling at a speed of just about 870 miles per hour One minute 19 seconds into the flight endeavors three liquid fueled engines are now back at full throttle 104% of rated thrust endeavor downrange from the Kennedy Space Center a distance of about 10 and a half miles traveling at the speed of about 2,000 miles per hour Just about seven minutes of powered flight remaining Two minutes nine seconds into the flight the booster officer confirms good separation of the solid rocket boosters And never now downrange for the Kennedy Space Center at a distance of about 38 miles Houston performance nominal endeavor Houston to engine town Two minutes 35 seconds into the flight Endeavour's performance has been as expected and in the event of a single engine failure endeavor could now reach the transatlantic landing site at Saragosa Spain Telemetry still continuing to indicate that all three main engines and auxiliary power units and fuel cells are performing well Commander Terry evoke it continuing to fly a very precise course up toward the mirror space station and this View from the mirror space station looking at endeavor as it continues its approach Toward the mirror now at a distance of just about 45 feet And this view of the crew cabin of endeavor from its overhead windows Houston we're with you Tiedra Z and via mirror. We're looking in through your two overhead windows And these are the overhead windows in the crew cabin of endeavor as it is now just about 43 feet away from mirror This view coming from the mirror space station as endeavor approaches the 30-foot distance from the mirror space station This view of the overhead windows in the crew cabin of endeavor Very shortly the crew will begin its station keeping at the 30-foot level before receiving their final go decision to proceed for at the docking with Mirror that docking expected just about 11 minutes from now Docking will take place in darkness as this view also is in orbital night as the two spacecraft now are some 209 nautical miles or 240 statute miles High over the African continent The crew is reporting that they have sighted the docking target on board mirror and that no Course correction is required at this time And the crew is now beginning its final approach to the mirror passing inside of the 30-foot mark as it continues a very slow Approach for docking with the mirror space station endeavor now within 25 feet Closing at a rate of about one-tenth of a foot per second and Contact between endeavor and the mirror space station confirmed on time at 2 14 p.m. Central time Good view of the flight deck. What's it look like? Right, it's got all kinds of wings on it. It's an incredible sight once commander Anatoly Soloviev is done with his activities opening up the mirror hatch As well as some housekeeping activities at the conclusion of that the shuttle will begin a pressurization Equalization prior to the opening of the door from the or the hatch from the shuttle side Allowing the mirror 24 and STS 89 crews to greet each other personally This is mission control Houston Hatch opening and a first greeting between mirror 24 commander Anatoly Soloviev and mere STS 89 commander Terry Wilkett As endeavor mirror are passing just to the southeast of Australia and greetings all around I'm going to push and hold the bipsmoo The end of things here pretty well, we've got to take out the mgbx tonight yet and change over this Tissue culture equipment, but I think we're pretty much closing out of most of our items We've got a few hard ones yet that we're waiting on but There are little items that I think we can come home without that's how I see it right now Glad to hear it Dave. I know you've had a very busy four months And I know that the guys who brought endeavor up to you if had an extremely busy four days So we'd be happy to have the pace slacking off just a little It's just a pleasure being with my American friends again, and this whole thing is just a wonderful experience I can't wait to see on the ground and Maybe you'll get drag me to the ski course a time or two This is mission control Houston and this view once again of the double space have module in endeavors payload Bay in The aft section of the space have module is mission specialist Bonnie Dunbar and in the foreground Mission specialist Jim Riley and with his back to the camera Dave Wolf who has just completed his 119 days stay as a member of a mere crew The astronauts have just completed stowing away one of the experiments that was conducted during Wolf's tenure on the Mirror Space Station for its return trip back to earth and have been conversing over the past several minutes With the scientific community here in Houston to ensure that the stowage was accomplished properly and Provide the status of that stowage down to the payload community here in Houston Bonnie. We've completed step three who were closing the hatch Houston endeavor on the standoff cross is installed and the hatch is closed I I Endeavors crew confirming physical separation of endeavor from the mirror space station Diagram Md All the way around to the last 90 degrees or so, given to the city, we're going to have more watching you back away now. Congratulations. Nice job, bro. Very good. Nice. Nice. Very pretty. Very pretty. Oh, man. OK. Read our name. Disconverter. OK. Target ID plus 1. OK, there she goes. Target ID plus 1. Body vector plus 3. 14 plus 3. Looks good. Pitch plus 90. That's good. Yaw zero. Omicron zero. OK. OK. Track ID 19. OK. She's here. Yes, she's here. She's here. She's hanging on the background of the solar battery. Anatoly. Yes. Well, you asked me about this transfer of closed hatches to the right. I'm afraid we won't be able to do this because we're tied to telemetry. We have empty zones. We have telemetry. Endeavour Houston, we're on the flight deck. OK, welcome. I'm going to go ahead and start our tape. What this is is a little tour that we took from Spacehab down the tunnel to the mid-deck and the flight deck. And I'll introduce it by saying that, you know, we're on the day before landing, so there's a lot of activity as we prepare to stow our hardware and finish up our experiment ops. And I hope that what you'll see is the environment that we've been working in and get a feel for what it's like. This is not Cecil D. DeMille. This is our eyeball view of living in zero gravity. So stand by. Grab right now from the tunnel, which runs from the mid-deck to the Spacehab. It's floating right in front of my eye. So you're seeing what we see as we come in. We're looking out towards the tail of the shuttle. That large white package you see in the center is actually an empty foam cushion that contains some of our transfer cargo. We're now scanning to the starboard side. And now to the forward side, you can see the tunnel we just came through. And the Spacehab subsystem computer that we set up every day. We have our cue cards up, a handheld mic there, a Velcro, and then over to the starboard side you see many of the soft containers that were used for our cargo that worked out very well. Now going back towards the aft end, you see the OPM rack. The OPM is safely secured within it. The cushion that's gently tethered to the front. Now let's go back to the aft end. We just missed Jim. We'll see him again a little bit later. We're looking on MGM, which is in the center there. You'll see it in a moment. Right in front of you are the two SAM sensor heads. Those are acceleration measuring systems. And up there the blue box is the EOS freezer. And now the two CGDAs that Dave tended to during his flight and that we transferred during the flight. Those are part of our status check every day. Those surrounding them are more of the transfer containers, the cargo containers. We get a closer look at the SAMs here. It's flown many flights. It comes out of the Lewis Research Center. It's an excellent acceleration measurement system. These remote heads can be put anywhere to measure in different frequency ranges the acceleration that experiments are exposed to. There are two chambers to the SAMs. I'm not showing you the active one right now. This is one of these test cells. And up on the ceiling there is part of the Japanese experiment for radiation monitoring. It's called the detector unit strapped to the ceiling with a silver dosimeter strapped around it. Another advantage of a weightless environment is that you can use all surfaces. And off to your right there on the starboard side of the space tab is the DTO-1125 or TIPIC experiment out of the Johnson Space Center where the dosimeter falls that's strapped in various places. Now we scan to the port side with a large rack that is a combination of two experiments, the VRAFD and the Japanese Radiation Monitoring Experiment. We've been doing quite a lot of work with the RRMD. It has an electrical panel there at the top and then a data recording unit next to the computer and that's the RRMD laptop that we have set up for keeping track of data. Now we're going back down the tunnel and we're going to pass through the ODS or the Orbiter Docking System which is also now our external airlock. Those yellow handrails on your left and right are what I'm using to kind of float myself down the tunnel. I'm going to come in under the EMUs in the external airlock and just look up and take a look at what we were calling MS-7 and MS-8 on our mid-deck for quite a few days. Now we're going into a tunnel adapter which is where we keep several bags of stowage during the mission. Here we keep our laundry bags and the flight data file that we're not using. Now the mid-deck is not only a laboratory, it's also our living area. Mike's been working on a lot of our mid-deck experiments. Here he's setting up the camera operation for MP&E. As you know, we've been working some anomalies with that and we're trying to understand what's happening in that experiment. Just above that is the sea bass experiment and certainly while you can't see the fish, the big ones or the little ones or the snails, we've been peering through the screens because it's backlit back there and find it very interesting. The commander is working out on the bicycle to get our turn today and you can see that we have quite a bit of stowage that we've been moving around on the mid-deck. These two laptops represent what's happening on the GPS experiment. DTO 700-14 and DTO 700-15, which they call SIGI. Now we scan to our port side to the Mar area, the Galley area and the WCS area and our prime payload just needed to have something to do so we put him to work and he's turned out to be very good at this. This is a check of the refrigerator, the TEHM and one of the things we noticed is that we have to keep the filter clean and so we just cleaned the filter for those folks. We had a small pallet that had been sucked in. We also have activity up on the flight deck so we'll just float up there where Jim has quite a few cameras arrayed and every time we all get a chance we come up and take some photos for the Earth Ops folks. These are 70-millimeter Hasselblad and this is the EarthCam camera set up in the starboard window. The view of the front cockpit, that's the flight plan that's tethered and floating in front of you and the DSC, which now has the EarthCam software is sitting up on our port panel. Let's go back down the inter-access deck area. We'll go down head-first this time. Say goodbye to the commander. I woke up who's just done a superb job with this flight and brought the support that we got from the ground. Endeavour now on final approach to runway 15. Endeavour Houston on glide slope on centerline. Roger, runway insane. Endeavour is descending at an angle six times steeper than that of a commercial airliner on its final approach. Altitude now 3,400 feet. Time to touchdown 40 seconds. Landing gear coming down. Landing gear down and locked. Mangear touchdown. Drags you now being deployed. Nose wheel touchdown. Endeavour now rolling out on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center at the end of a nine-day 3.6 million mile journey bringing home Dave Wohl from his four-month stay in space. I'm glide slope on centerline. Thank you, Susan. We love the field and sight. 20-degree dive. We're looking for a 195. Roger, runway insane. There's radar. Check them out for me. About one or two are good. 3400 now for 2,000. 4,600 for 2,000. Looking good. Keep that thing in the center. Preflare, gear is armed. Okay, I'm in the preflare. It's pitch rate. Looking good. 1,000 for 300 feet. 900 for three. A little bit to the right. Looking good. Six for three. Five for three. Four for three. Straddle the centerline. Here. Gear is coming. Straddle the centerline. Nail that ball bar. There's 100 feet looking for 50. Nail the ball bar. A little bit to the right fence. Straddle the centerline. Final flare. Looking good. 35 at 240. 21 at 231. Hold it off. 15 at 223. Hold it off. Hold it off. Hold it off. One at 209. One at 199. Touchdown. Let's shoot. Shoot. And de-rotate. We've got 9,500 feet to go. I'm looking for 60 knots. There's a good shoot. Touchdown. Straddle the centerline. Looking good. 140 for 60. 125 for 60. Mike, don't let me forget the shoot. 110 for 60. 100 for 60 knots. That's for the bark. There's 80 knots for 60. 75 for 60. 70 for 60. Medicine. Yeah, it looks good. You too, man. Nice touchdown. Real good. Real good. Joe, beautiful focus. Good pictures. Good TC breaking. Breaks coming in. Get out your inter-check list, guys. Got some work to do. Outstanding. Outstanding. Good job, Joe. Thank you. Excuse the endeavor. We'll stop. Roger. We'll stop the endeavor. Welcome home. Congratulations on a perfect mission to Mir. And, Dave, welcome back from 128 days on orbit.