 Now we thought you could use a little Tchaikovsky as you step into that orbital dance you'll need to catch up with MIRROR. We're in the mood. I'm not sure if you can check that out for us. Okay, I'm looking at the most recent one. It's grey scale is much lighter. In fact all the earlier messages had almost no tones of grey. All the features on the picture, the portrait were totally black. It's a much better portrait that I'd say the lettering quality was a little bit too light. And there appears to be, this time there's a discontinuity in the bullseye target in the upper left. Only it's vertical. So there's about right through the center of the bullseye there's a little bit of a vertical discontinuity. It runs the whole length of the message. Good morning Commander Cameron and the crew of Atlantis. This is Lydia Dotto in Toronto. I'd like to ask Chris a few questions. Could you describe exactly what you'll be doing during the docking with MIRROR, especially the few critical minutes immediately before and after the point of contact? Five of us have been done in those few critical minutes. Ken will be flying the vehicle sitting right over here. And I will be at this position right here giving Ken all the exact information he needs to know our rate of how fast we're closing because we have to close within three-one-hundredths of a foot per second. So we're going to hit it very exactly. And getting the images up on the screen and using the handheld lasers and the payload bay lasers. And Jim and Jerry up front running all the systems on the vehicle making sure everything's running properly and getting things set up also running the IMAX camera. Everyone's going to be really busy, but this will be the place that I'm working looking out this window as Ken flies the vehicle up into MIRROR. I understand that it's more difficult than the previous docking because you won't really be able to see the MIRROR spacecraft because you're going into a different location. Lydia, their docking plane was right out the back window so when it came close they could just look straight out the window get a very clear picture of what they're doing. Ours, because I'm installing the docking module, is twenty-five feet above our heads. We can't see where the two vehicles are going to hit each other. And the only place we can see it is right here on this monitor. So it makes it a more difficult task. Also, Ken is trying to fly the vehicle around a point that's way up in the air. So you can imagine that it's more difficult like balancing something on the end of a stick as opposed to just flying the vehicle about its center of gravity. So it makes it a more complicated task. Would you be having to speak much Russian while all this is going on? Ken and I will be splitting Russian duties in order to tell the crew on board MIRR how far away we are and what speed we're coming in and our status. Once you get on board MIRR you're going to be doing some measurements of the noise levels and the sound levels in the space station. Can you explain exactly what you'll be doing and why you're interested in getting this information? The space station is to learn about combined operations where you take a shuttle to a space station and how life on a space station is going to be. And this is part of that, part of the mitigation experiments to find out what's involved. What I'm going to be doing is going through all of MIRR working alongside Sergei Avdeev, who's the flight engineer on board MIRR and measuring the sound at various locations throughout to get a feel for what type of working environment you end up in when you get all the pumps and fans and ventilators and experiments all working inside a closed tin can that makes a space station. And so we're just looking to gather baseline data at the only space station in the world or off the world that's been going for the last nine years to maybe modify how the International Space Station is going to be built. Thanks very much, Chris, and I hope you have a very successful mission. Good morning. Thanks, Lydia. Nice talking to you. Good morning, Colonel Campbell, gentlemen. My name is Bill Knapp. I'm with Canadian Electronics Magazine. I have the question for Chris to start. Chris, this mission has been described as the most complex shuttle missions ever flown. Is that true, and if so, why? Ever flown. It's definitely as complex as any flight. We have a very short period of time. We're doing something no one's ever tried to do before, trying to build this thing and install it. And there's a lot of interest in the flight because it's very similar to what's going to be done before the International Space Station assembly. So it makes it a very complex mission. It's definitely a challenge for the five of us. We have a lot to do over the next six or seven days. Excuse me. While you're doing your assembly with the SVS, Colonel Ross MacArthur will be preparing to do a contingency EVA. Can you describe what kind of contingencies you have foreseen that may occur during the assembly? Yes, I'm Colonel Ross MacArthur. I'll be one of the gentlemen who would get to do this EVA. The four, and we've studied, include installing the docking module by hand if it turns out that the other techniques that the other techniques don't work. And in that case, Jerry and I would just go out in the payload bay and restrain the docking module with straps, and Chris would extend the ring of the docking system and we'd engage it that way. And then we have contingency EVAs if we needed some manual assistance to undock from there. Right. The other question is for all of the crew, having worked with the SVS, how do you feel about it as a system and would you like to see it installed on all of the shuttle fleet? We're flying the space vision system is to increase our understanding of it and to increase the ways that we can utilize it. Certainly a way to use computers and cameras to take measurements where we cannot put the human eye gives us a great advantage if we go to build a space station or to do other robotic tasks. And we're taking advantage of cameras that exist in the orbit already and computational power that we can bring on board to make a display that Chris and Bill can use to put themselves in virtually the ideal position to do the task. And I think in shuttle missions that require that, it will certainly help. Thank you, gentlemen. Good luck with the rest of the mission. Hi, guys. A warm hello from Canada. Chris, it's good to hear your voice. It's Hanna Gartner. Hanna, it's great to talk to you. Where are you? Where are you when you look out the window? Where are you? We are right over New Orleans. Forgive me, this is kind of exciting for me. I've never interviewed anybody in space, but it's a list of firsts for you, too. We take advantage of every chance we can to take a picture here, Hanna. So Ken's going to get pictures of the coast because it's a clear day over New Orleans right now. But, yeah, this is a tremendous experience for me. I've seen all the pictures, but there's nothing like being here. You are the only rookie on the flight. What are you going to remember about this first time, Chris? Probably not going to remember enough. The thing you remember the most, I think, is the people that you flew with. That's what everyone says, and I sure can see why. The crew makes all the difference. The people always make all the difference. But some of the images, even so far, are fleeting images of seeing the Sahara in a minute and a half or seeing some Mount Everest today. And seeing the whole planet as one globe in 90 minutes is just an amazing, humbling thing to see. And that probably strikes home as much as anything. You were planning to take a shot of Canada with the Canada arm in the picture. Did you manage to get that shot? It's afternoon for us. We just deployed the arm this afternoon. We haven't gone over Canada during the day like with the arm deployed yet. Since we're going over to New Orleans now, we're probably going to just cut up the coast to Newfoundland, so over the next few hours we're going to go over Canada with the arm extended. And sometime in the next six or seven days I'm going to get that picture. How far up are you? 60 miles up, and now we're over Atlanta. How much can you see? Did you get that shot? You can see the whole south of the Appalachian mountains and Atlanta and a large part of the United States. When do you actually meet up with Mir? It's not as if you just drive up in parallel park. It's a mile orbit. It's up to Mir because the closer you get to it, the faster you have to orbit. So we're slowly catching up to Mir's orbit right now, and in about two days we'll be docked with them. We'll maneuver close and then spend about the last four or five hours doing all the fine maneuvers to bring ourselves in close and then drive the two mechanisms home. This is something that I can't get in my mind. I've been reading about it. I've heard you describe it, the shuttle and Mir, where a quarter of a million pounds. I can't imagine how you're going to do this. It's pretty amazing. It'll be the heaviest assembly of vehicles ever put together in space before. It'll be over half a million pounds. Mir has been up there for nine years, and this shuttle's flown 15 times, and we're just happy to be onboard for this flight. Can you give me an idea, the procedure, what it is you're going to do? Certainly, the first thing I'm going to do is take out of the back of the payload bay and build a long tunnel that will stick up the top of the shuttle sort of like this, only it'll be bigger around, and then Ken, with the help of all of us, will drive the whole vehicle up and attach it to a long limb that sticks out of Mir, and then when we leave this whole tunnel attached that'll provide a permanent docking station for all subsequent shuttles onboard Mir. That's the purpose of our flight is to build something onto the space station so that the shuttles ever done that. What if it doesn't work? Do you get a second chance at this? Yes, we do. We're flying over Washington now, Hannah. We do have a second chance. We always can stop for a little while, back off, hold our position, and try and fix whatever obstacles come up, and once we're close to Mir, we basically are in the same orbit, so as long as we have the various consumable propellants and cryogenics and things on board to keep everything running, we can stay and give it another try. You know, Chris, I have this romantic, vivid image of what it takes to fly a shuttle. You guys are just hanging around. Don't you have to do anything? To the scene, it's a couple hours ago. We were busy men, but right now, we're taking advantage of the little break in the flight schedule to take these pictures. Anytime you get a clear shot of Earth, we do a lot of training, of Earth observation and taking pictures of all the cameras we have on board, and that's what all these bodies around me are doing. When you hook up with Mir, you are going to meet three guys who've been up there for two months already. You're bringing some R&R for them? I came with those guys for a month on the ground, twice over in Russia, and once they came to Houston and trained. So we really aren't just visiting them. They're good friends, and we're looking forward to the reunion. We have brought some gifts along because life can be fairly repetitive in orbit for six months at a time, and that's the life that they're leading. And so we're bringing them things from their family. We're bringing them gifts, some fresh food, some chocolate, and we're also bringing them a guitar for something to do because they get evenings and weekends off. Chris, I'm fascinated about this guitar. I thought this is a very confined space and you don't have room. I know what a guitar, what kind of space it takes up. I'm lucky enough to find a guitar that is just perfect for our purposes. It's a collapsible practice classical guitar, and it's really just the size of the bridge of the guitar, and then the shape of the guitar clicks into place, and then it has an electric pickup and you can just play it with headphones. So in a noisy environment like this one, you can play quietly to yourself, and also it only takes up maybe about a foot long, weighs about three pounds, so it works out very well for storage. And I'm not showing it on TV yet because I wanted to be surprised for the Russians how it looks. Okay, let's try this. I know this is a very serious flight, and you have a lot of serious scientific operations to perform, but does the rest of the super team know what a ham you are? That you do play well and you're a really good singer? I'm really looking forward to have a chance to play a game with one of the astronauts. It's onboard Mayor Thomas Ryder. He's quite a good classical guitarist. I look forward to playing with him inside Mayor and also to leaving him with this gift because I think if I were up in space for six months with a little bit of time on my hands occasionally, it sure would be welcome to have a gift like that. Okay, we're getting Bill up here, so you can listen up. We're doing SM checkpoint initiates and air log resets. Copy all, Jerry. And heads up the message 16, the OSVS troubleshooting should be on board. It's about a 10-minute procedure and you can perform it or any of you can perform it at your discretion when you get a moment.