 Go on there. Thank you very much. Our pleasure, Leonid. Happy Thanksgiving to you. This day is a big family event throughout the United States. How are you celebrating it? Well, thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you. We're going to celebrate it here and right after this interview with a meal of turkey and cranberry sauce and some pumpkin cookies and pecan pie. So about as traditional as you can get, being 150 miles up. As I was saying, it's a family day and all of you guys are family men, I understand. Have you been able to speak to the folks back home? Well, as a matter of fact, we were able to speak to the folks back home. We had some of us had family conferences yesterday and some of us had family conferences this morning. And I tell you, being away from home, it's always nice to be able to talk to the family and know that they're doing you well and to maintain those folks back home. I'd like to stay with you, Winston Scott and also Tutako Azoi. This shuttle flight has been a little more exciting, probably when you came back to this, you had to do a space walk to retrieve the Spartan Observatory. What were you thinking as you were doing that? What were your greatest concerns? The captain's burden, so I was just thinking how to capture this Spartan satellite. And we are worried about the Spartan satellite that the altitude, because we didn't know whether it had an easier attitude for us to capture or it might be very difficult. But that was the only concern. But at that time, we were just determined to capture this satellite. Right. Going to you, Commander Krigel, it was your job to steer the shuttle for that operation. What were you concerned about when you were doing that? Well, of course, my primary concern is the safety of my crew, which is always theirs. But the flying qualities of the shuttle are really very nice. So, believe it or not, being able to fly the satellite to within just a foot of both Winston and to Cal was really quite an easy task. Scott and Mr. Doyle at all? Having the shuttle only a foot away? I'm sorry you were breaking up. Can you say that question again, please? I was asking Mr. Scott and Mr. Doyle if they were at all frightened having the shuttle just a foot away. There's a matter of fact. I mean, that was some excellent flying that Kevin did. And while we were standing out there with the satellite just a few feet above our heads, I at least wasn't afraid at all. I was very, very comfortable. I was more concerned about handling that large mass. You know, Spartan is about 4,000 pounds, which is more than most automobiles way. And to be able to capture something like that manually oriented and berthed was more of a concern of mine than the flying is. Really some outstanding flying with Kevin Spartan. Congratulations to you on that successful spacewalk. But I understand that you're conserving fuel right now for a possible relaunch of the Spartan observatory. Is that affecting your day-to-day operations, the microgravity experiments that you're conducting? Well, the folks on the ground are doing most of the hard work burying out ways that we can get all the science that we plan to do. And also conserve fuel. We're just doing, using their bag of tricks. And hopefully we'll have enough fuel to maybe perhaps do another spacewalk or hopefully deploy the Spartan satellite and get one of the primary objectives of this mission out of the way. Another primary objective was to test out a prototype free-floating television camera. I understand it's about the size of a basketball. Is that still gonna happen or has that been put off because of the problems with Spartan? Well, that's the air-cam sprint. It's a little bit bigger than a basketball or a beach ball. And it's a free-flyer that pilot Steve Lindsey is planning to fly. But it needs to be deployed during the spacewalk. So this particular spacewalk, the time that we spent capturing the Spartan ate up by that time, unfortunately. So unless we get the go to do another spacewalk, we'll have to save that particular experiment for another flight. Why is the Spartan observatory so important to this mission? What does it do? Well, the Spartan satellite is gonna be looking at the sun, which of course the sun affects life here on Earth. And particularly it's looking at the solar wind and temperatures and try to understand those characteristics. And particularly solar flares. We know solar flares affects life on Earth and it affects our satellites that we come to depend on day-to-day. So really it's trying to understand that it's a special body that affects us everywhere here on the Earth. Well, people down here on Earth are always very interested in life up there in space. And this particular mission on this shuttle Columbia is particularly remarkable because it's very international. I'd like to ask how that's working out. Does that affect the way that you relate with each other? I'm very lucky that I am a member of this international crew. And we are having fun now that native foods or discussing in native languages sometimes. And it's just fascinating to work with other people with different cultures. And it's a way that the space dinner should be in the future. All right, I should mention that apart from Commander Krieger and Winston Scott and Tako Doi that we're talking to you right now, there's also Kalpana Chawla, who's originally Indian, I believe, and Leonid Kodanyuk, who's a Ukrainian. Have they been contributing also with insights from what they've learned in their countries? Well, they certainly have. As a matter of fact, during our evening meal last night, KC, Kalpana Chawla, we call it KC for short, played some Indian music for us and also some Hungarian folk songs that we all had a ball and Leonid is doing the same thing. He's teaching us some greeting in native language from the Ukraine, so we all are learning a lot from each other and just having a ball doing it. Great, I'd like to go back to Tako Doi. Understand this is your first flight. How do you feel for this first experience? Yeah, since I was a child, I wanted to go to space and explore E-Bus, so it's just my dream come true. I was just fascinated by watching the Earth and doing E-V-A. Especially during the E-V-A, we had a panoramic view of the Earth and the Earth itself, and I really enjoyed being out there. I should explain to our viewers that an E-V-A is a spacewalk extra vehicular activity, I believe that it's short for. Back to Commander Kriegel, I'd like to ask you, sir, how do you look at this mission? Do you think it's been a success despite the disappointment with Spartans? Well, each mission holds a little surprises. I think one of the great things about human spaceflight is the ability of people to adapt. We had a little difficulties to overcome. We overcame them through teamwork here on the orbiter and also several hundred people on the ground who very quickly came together with a plan, communicated that plan to us so that we could recapture the satellite. So I really think it's a success and that the versatility of humans working in space. Congratulations to you on that. We've spoken a little bit about the solar research that this mission has been trying to accomplish. Let's look at the other primary objective, the microgravity experiments. What are they about? Yes, we have been running the material science experiments in this mid-date. It's called the Integrobux experiment. Actually, they are free experiments based on science to investigating the retina characteristic of materials and also the intercess phenomena. So we are carrying the material science experiment in this mid-date. Also, we have other material science experiments that are going on in the pair of the bay. How will your discoveries in those experiments be put into action? Well, a lot of the work that we're doing here is pure research. And they're looking at things like we're looking at how to make semiconductors, make them smaller and more reliable. Of course, you can see the application of that in electronics along the same lines. We're doing a helium experiment that measures temperatures to a very, very small degree. And we're using this again to be able to make things smaller. We're doing a lot of material science that's looking at the structure of metals, kind of understand how they join together, perhaps make stronger metals. I'd like to mention one of the experiments, Mephisto, is a combined US French experiment, again showing the international flavor of both this mission and the space shuttle and the international space station in the future.