 Welcome to the Johnson Space Center for the STS-26 post-flight crew press conference very pleased to introduce discovery crew led by Captain Rick out Thanks for coming here today when you sure enjoyed that mission And we're very pleased to see from the smiles and people's faces when we got back here that just about everybody did I think it was a great shot in the arm For the agency and as best I can determine it was also a good one for the country We're sure pleased to be the most I guess the most invisible part of that great team effort that involved tens of thousands of people and To start we'd like to acknowledge publicly how much we appreciated all the work that went into making this mission such a success and they're just Many many many thousands of people out there that put their hearts into it and it's very gratifying to come back with Being able to say that the mission was as successful as it was Of course, my crew here with me at the table today at Dick Covey Dave Hillers my clowns And thinking else We'd like to get right into the to the movie So Jeff we can turn down the house lights. We're going to the movie. This is what it really was all about Here's the ending of a beautiful mission and bringing the United States back into the manned spaceflight program and we were very proud to represent the country and to To be part of the team here. We are at suit up the morning before we launch. We really didn't think we were going to go We knew that the winds were such that our pre-programmed profile Might cause some problems with the structure, but we said well, we'll suit up anyhow, and who knows maybe the winds will get better There were a large number of folks down there in the Cape here some of them We certainly appreciated and I think we could almost probably feel the support that we had Took a great effort on the part of the mission management team to come to all right decisions Which allowed us to launch on this day and then some very excellent execution of the flow and account by the launch control team to get us off on the day that we said we Were going to and and not too long after the time we said we were going to go No matter how many times you ride this rocket. You're always a bit taken back by the ignition of the solid rocket motors It's quite a ride as you can expect This is shown in half speed Which makes it take a lot longer than what it really did But maybe that's kind of what was going through our minds as we rode to first stage It seemed like it took a lot longer than it ever did and training We understand there were a lot of the very excited people on the ground when we got off the pad and then they re-emphasize their excitement once we got to the two-minute point and the solid rocket boosters separated Obviously the first part of the flight that the ride on the solid rocket motors was a very critical one for this mission Much of the redesign effort that had gone into the space shuttle program had been centered around those boosters and All indications are to date that those boosters performed exceptionally well We're interested in the follow-up tear down of the boosters to find out if indeed there are any other Deficiencies that we need to look at Here you see one of the sixty-five sunrises that we saw during the four-day mission here We have the payload bay doors open and that's the first thing we did once safely in orbit and getting busy preparing the TDRS satellite for its deployment from the payload bay. There's Rick at the commander's Seat reading a checklist talking to the ground there on the handheld microphone They're going through his checklist making sure the orbiter is Go for deployment making sure everything is ready Dave Hilmer is back at the payload station Checking the CRT and making sure all the parameters are okay and and controlling the switches that release the Mechanisms that hold the payload in the payload bay. It's tilted up here at about 50 degrees Prior to deployment from the payload bay the TDRS tracking and data relay satellite there are the black Shape with the booster rocket underneath it Here I am at the panel on the aft flight deck that had all the switch controls for the Mechanism the ordinance arming functions and the actual switch that you throw to pyrotechnic Devices that cause the payload to separate from its structure support structure When you do that when I did that push-up push-off springs Activate and push that hole 20 ton stack Slowly out of the payload bay at about a half a foot per second The whole sequence worked as it was advertised that had two solid rocket burns that got it to geosynchronous out altitude Which was its target within a very precise? window here's pinky taking documentation of the deploy and Rick performing the maneuver to back away from the satellite about one minute after deployment We've heard that the checkout of the satellite is going extremely well. It's about one-third of the way into the checkout right now fact this afternoon it's a maneuver is going to be Completed to stop the drift To the west and there will be checked out some more All the systems seem to be go right now including the KU band antenna Modernously complex machine that requires coordination of a lot of different organizations to make it work from the booster through the The tinderous upper stage and the flight controllers With the satellite out. We got busy on the number of mid-deck experiments. We had this is the protein crystal growth where Crystals for biomedical samples research ranging ranging from AIDS to cancer research and a lot in between a pretty complex experiment Another experiment we carried was a student experiment sponsored by mr. Bruce Lloyd The idea here was to heat up some titanium wires that are encapsulated in these vacuum tubes beyond their phase transition point to see if on Resolidifying the crystal structure is different than might be obtained on earth the goal being to develop stronger and more pure Samples of that titanium We carried two different student experiments on board. This is the second one that grew some Crystals of acetate crystals that grow to a very large size in a short time Was activated by mixing two fluids together and then right before eyes We could watch these huge crystals grow They will be at once once they got back on the ground to see if there are any differences between those in an earth by I'm setting up a phase partitioning experiment phase partitioning is a method for separating biomedical cells By using two different types of liquids. We had a container with 18 chambers that we documented the demixing characteristics of the different types of liquids another engineering Evaluation or test that we did was taking pictures of the earth's limb at sunrise and sunset to Measure exactly what the brightness was so that sensors could be built for future satellites After the primary payload have been deployed and we spent much of our time Accomplishing earth observations photography now during the course of our mission. We took over 1870 millimeter Photographs of the earth we also had about 4,000 feet of 16 millimeter film that we took much of which was at the window As you see here coming across the Middle East This is always a very important part of our flights to the crew members because We not only get to look at the window, but we get to document what we see turns out that during the course of our flight. It was an unusually Clear period across the Northern Hemisphere According to those people that are used to looking at space photography And they're very excited about the photographs that we took And they've even said that there are things that we've taken pictures of that They haven't seen before or it's been a long time since they've had a good photograph of them This data that comes the data that comes from these photographs is used by a wide spectrum of people geologists photographers people who study agricultural trends such as the burning of the the equatorial jungles and People who look at our atmosphere and try to ascertain that changes in the atmosphere Those people are quite excited about what we what we've seen on these photographs as they have been on previous space flights This was an exceptionally good pass over the Hawaiian Islands We had many opportunities to photograph Hawaii Primarily because of the lighting and and the time of day that we launched We probably saw more of it than we did of the other parts of the United States The equipment that we use is primarily for observations is a Hasselblad 70 millimeter camera Which is saw Mike there with 5100 and 250 millimeter lenses Volcanology is one of the areas that we're always interested in Photographing from space. This is a pass over to Canary Islands off of the West Coast of Africa They happen to be very clear many of the days that we passed over them We also had several different attitudes that we had the orbiter in which let us get this particular One of those attitudes let's get this pass over the Himalayan Mountains looking up into China This was when the orbiter's nose was pointed to the South Here's a shot of mealtime. The meals are always enjoyable As a social event we play with our food a little bit like we're supposed to And just get a chance to discuss what's going on that day and what's planned for the next day Here's a tour of practice with an M&M that's out there in the middle and I think it's a bullseye Must have been a fluke because the next shot misses my three inches We do carry up with us some photographs of our families and see them on the lockers to the left We also During a period during one day take some pictures next to some stickers from our alma mater and so on But you can see we keep a pretty clean cabin in the back. You can see the sleep stations that Mike and I use Had a fishbowl here We've eaten most of the fish by this time Sometimes you've got an eye on the commander a little bit This was the entry day you see as wearing the gray Underwear that goes under the orange suits We were inspired I was inspired to try a little pommel horse routine Using the treadmill there. I didn't find this so hard at all. I don't know why However the judges did vote They were fairly generous Zero G Olympics. We did want to communicate particularly to the youth of the country that we we really This is space is a fun place and even though we went through a terrible tragedy several years ago We still want to communicate that there are some things up there that are unique We want to really inspire the youngsters to take an interest By the entry you've got to get the suits Again the seat set up and and strapped in after the luxury of being in a shirt sleeve environment for four days It's kind of hard for us to Get back come back into these things that hurts just to watch it But these are the suits that we wore them both during the launch and during the entry turns out to be not much Different getting into them on the ground. You can see the pole on strapped to the ceiling Well, this is a sunset taken out the window before we close the payload big doors just to transition into the deal of it and landing phase It's always beautiful as we fade from bright sunlight to darkness. This is real time we cross the Western coast between LA and Santa Barbara is a beautiful day at Edwards and as we have done many times before Came in overhead the Edwards Lake bed and made our 300 mile an hour descent to a Floor at about 2,000 feet above the earth and then that did cover the pilot did whatever good pilots are doing that is lower the landing gear when we ask and Came down to a Touchdown that happened 190 knots about 200 miles an hour The machine was absolutely superb in performance cleanliness. We had a few System problems that we had backups to but at touchdown we'll stop we could look back on a Flight that was as far as I'm concerned picture perfect and could not have been better for the country and getting us back In the manned spaceflight business That we love love so much that symbolizes so many things to us