 From the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this is Space Shuttle Columbia Launch Control. The countdown for launch of Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-78 is continuing on schedule this morning. The window for launch of Columbia opens at 10.49 a.m. Eastern time and extends for two and a half hours. Situated in Columbia's payload bay is the Life and Microgravity Space Lab. LMS is housing about 43 various experiments involving life sciences and material sciences. The LMS mission will seek answers to questions about our ability to sustain life for prolonged periods of time and space and about the subtle mechanisms involved in materials processing that are obscured by Earth's gravity. LMS will continue to expand the foundation of scientific research by studying the effects of microgravity on the physiology, development, and behavior of living systems. This is Shuttle Launch Control at T-minus three hours and holding. We are currently standing by to receive live television of the astronauts and the operations and checkout building where their crew quarters are stationed here at the Kennedy Space Center. The crew members are being assisted with their launch and entry suits by suit technicians from both KSC and from the Johnson Space Center. This is a good view of our commander, Tom Henrichs, who was on his fourth space flight. He served as pilot for both STS-44 and STS-55 and as commander of STS-70. Our pilot, Kevin Kregel, is on his second flight. Jean-Jacques Favier is a member of the French Space Agency. He is one of our payload specialists and will be making his first trip into space today. Captain Helms is the only female aboard the vehicle that will be flying today and she, of course, is a veteran flyer. She has flown in 30 different types of aircraft being named an astronaut in 1990. She has already flown two missions, STS-54 and STS-64. Mission specialist, one, Richard Lenahan, is on his first flight and another mission specialist, Charles Brady, again on his first flight as well. He is giving a thumbs up that he, too, is ready and anxious to go. And the final member of our seven-person crew is Robert Brent Thursk, representing the Canadian Space Agency. He is a medical doctor. He was an alternate payload specialist for STS-41G and in 1993 and 94 he was the Canadian Space Agency's chief astronaut. This is Shuttle Launch Control at T-minus three hours and holding and we are just about 14 seconds or so away from picking up our hold. This has been a standard two-hour hold that follows tanking operations just to give the launch team any extra time to make final preparations before the crew arrives out at the pad. And we are at T-minus three hours and counting. Everything continues to go on schedule for launch of Space Shuttle Columbia from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. And here we have them, our commander Tom Hendricks, mission specialist Susan Helms, followed by pilot Kevin Griegel, Richard Lenahan, Charles Brady, John Jacques Favier and Robert Brent Thursk. And we have pictures of the Astrovan and the crew departing the van as they are now at the pad surface. NASA test director John Guidi has given an approval for the crew to begin entry into the vehicle once they make their way up the elevator to the 195-foot level. And we have views of the crew as they are exiting the elevator on the 195-foot level. In the background, of course, is the swing arm that the crew will walk across, the orbiter access arm that will gain them entry into the crew module. As the crew is preparing to enter the orbiter, the astronaut support personnel have mounted in their crew module a small camera that will allow us to see live pictures of the crew being seated in Columbia. This is the first time NASA TV has shown live pictures of this event. And to assist with the commentary of these new views, astronaut Marsha Ivins is joining us to describe the events as they occur. Welcome, Marsha. Thanks. Okay, the astronaut support person, Jim Halsell, is assisting as Tom Hendricks comes in, so it doesn't bump into anything. Tom's now standing on the MS-2 seat. He's holding onto a handhold above the forward window. And now he'll pull himself up after he gets himself unstuck here, pull himself up into the seat as they hold the parachute down. You see the big bottles on the back of his harness. You need to get those centered exactly right on the parachute so that it's comfortable when you're sitting in there, headrest back down on the seat now. Now the suit tech, Al Rochford, will start to adjust the straps on his harness so that he's pulled down and comfortable in the seat. And then they'll start connecting the parachute and the shoulder harnesses to him. We ask the crew to just lie there and be a vegetable while we strap them in. You can see Al's got Kevin's helmet, kick the headrest back, and Kevin will lift his head up. You can see the little calm pigtail hanging out of the back and Al will fish his hand in there to get it. Marsha, can you tell us what we're looking at at this point? We're in the mid-deck now, and Max Candler, who's the suit tech, and he is strapping in Chuck Brady, who's sitting in the MS3 seat, sitting in front of Chuck, and the rest of the guys on the mid-deck is the whole row or wall of lockers that has all the stuff in it that we're taking to space. Max has got his parachute on, the harness, and looks like he's got the seatbelt on. And we have another view of the flight deck with the ground launch sequencer mainline computer program has been active, and it is now processing all pertinent data. Copy that. I'm managing. Jim, the MFT is working. No issues here cleared to launch. Copy that. And Columbia, you guys have a good mission, and we'll see you back here in about a little over two weeks, and have fun on your mission, Tom. Thanks, Jim. We've got a crew here that's ready to go, and I saw a professional here at the Cape. We're ready to work with JSC during launch, and then the rest of the day we're ready to put our fellow crew to work with the folks at the Marshall Space Flight Center. And we're just about ten seconds away from resuming the countdown for the launch of Space Shuttle Columbia today. Three, two, one, launch. And we're at T-minus nine minutes and counting, and the ground launch sequencer has been initiated. NASA test director John Guidi is about to call for the transmittal of stored prelaunch commands, as Columbia is less than nine minutes away from beginning a two and a half week mission of life in microgravity experiments, taking full scientific advantage of the effects of microgravity in space. Coming up next will be the orbiter access arm being retracted away from the vehicle. This is the walkway used by the crew to gain entry into and out of the vehicle, and it can be returned to position within seconds if need be. And we see first motion of the OAA retract, which is beginning at this point. MS-2 OTC, channel O19, TV tower, foot down. That is clear, that's complete. T-minus seven minutes and counting. And the gaseous oxygen vent hood is slowly being retracted away from the top of the external tank. Inside this tank is about 500,000 gallons of super cold liquid fuels that run the orbiter's three main engines. Flight crew, OTC, close and lock your visors and initiate O2 flow. Have a great flight and have more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Thanks a lot, orbiter. We got the visors down at the Su-02 on it, and we are going to have a good one. Do you have a sequencer? Do you have a sequencer? Do you have a sequencer? When we have a go for auto sequence start, Columbia's onboard computers have primary control of all the vehicle's critical functions. T-minus 20 seconds. T-minus 15. 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. We have a go for main engine start. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. And we have liftoff of the Spatial Columbia on an international life science and microgravity mission. Houston now controlling the flight of Columbia. Houston, Columbia is in a roll program. Roger roll, Columbia. Columbia completes the roll to place the shuttle in a heads down wings level position for the eight and a half minute ride to orbit. 23 seconds into the flight, Columbia's three liquid fuel main engines will soon begin to throttle back in a three step fashion to 67% of rated performance that will dampen the stress on the shuttle's aero services as it breaks through the sound barrier. One minute 45 seconds into the flight, Columbia traveling at 2400 miles per hour, more than 18 miles down range from the Kennedy Space Center, 22 miles in altitude, all systems functioning normally. Booster officer here in mission control, standing by for solid rocket booster shutdown in separation about five seconds from now. Booster officer confirms a normal solid rocket booster separation standing by for the performance call. We're with you during engine start, it's a great shot. This is a silent version, so we'll turn and fill in the gaps. Roger, any narration you can provide, it'd be great. Okay, obviously I looked out the window just during the roll program there. And now we're in obviously first stage, pretty bumpy ride and you can feel the throttle down. Rod deck there, glance out the window to see the high surface deck above. Sure does show the rough rides of the solids. Now it's a pretty impressive ride on those boots and the SRBs, the SRB sub. The sky was dark, but we could still see the earth out the side windows after SRB sub and open the visors while we have tethers. Sure shows where the velocity vector. That was the only surprise and here you see the transition. And you'll see a few reflections of the forward RCS jets firing during AT sep. And of course we did the 11 second plus X after the sep. We see you doing that now Tom and that's a lot of people real happy to see that video. It's sure does show you coming back off your chairs after the 3G, real nice. Camera captured it, making this available to try and bring other folks into the cockpit with us. This is just a fantastic experience to share. Tom, we agree and we really appreciated the end cabin video during the strap in as well. It lets folks see what you did to get to space and what the ride looked like. And I'm sure those people are listening now and happy to go along with you. You should see another one of Lockheed Martin's tanks and a stable flight just after sep. Flight guidance, verify a good horizontal sit also. Thank you. 10 minutes. Grisnell, cut down clock. We'll hold the game on a 5 minutes in 1 minute. GC. Go. Kind of. Go. GC. Go. Max. Go. Eagle. Go. Ecom. Go. FAO. Go. Payloads. Go. GPS. We're go. Inco. Booster. Go. Surgeon. Go. Thank you. And weather gave me a go, OBS and forecast at all 3 sites, KSC, Edwards and Ben Gurrier. So Fido, that's all that's required today, correct? Correct. Fido, launch director entity. Your launch team is ready to proceed. Copy that. I'll run a poll in a mad 30. GLS is go. I'll turn it open. Start. Thank you. SRB team. Lift off confirmed. Trottle up, 30104. Sadiqom, good fast cooling. Thank you. Team status as we press onto the checklist. Sadiqom. Go ahead. Yes, sir. He has done fast and he reconfig and ass head checklist. Thank you, sir. Let's see prop flight. Yes, sir. I just want to make sure that the injector temps on your left jets that are on F1. It's hard to work. And Susan's sorting out some of the other things that are on the middeck. And we've got most of the crew out of their helmets and the folks on the middeck are really busy getting ready to take the suits off. Roger, we're looking at it now. It's a good picture. Had failed to relax the floor. So he came wrecking task during an adaptation in the lab. The tunnel now is about wired up with... On the left side of the picture in the red and white striped shirt is payload commander Susan Helms. And near the tunnel at the rear of the picture connecting the space lab to the rest of the orbiter's crew cabin area, mission specialist Rick Linehan. The white shirt adorns Jean-Jacques Favier, the French payload specialist with Canadian payload specialist Bob Thursk in the foreground. Good morning, Tonya. Welcome aboard the space shuttle Columbia. This is STS-78. It's a live and microgravity science mission. I'm back in the space lab module at the moment. And behind me you can see some of the crew members working on the experiments that we will be conducting today and over the next several days before we return July 7. These are microgravity experiments. Can you explain what that means to all of us? Well, the mission is pretty much 50-50 what we call live science and microgravity science is the other half. The live science is a study on the effects of the human body being exposed to this environment. And behind me you can see Dr. Bob Thursk is on one of the experiments which is what we've termed the leg wrestling machine. He is testing his muscle strength and helping him as Dr. Rick Linehan. And we also are conducting simultaneously furnace operations and bubble drop operations to see how materials operate in microgravity. So it's both the material science and what we call human study science. What is interesting to Dr. Watt is that astronauts tend to inadvertently develop a torso rotation motor strategy as well during the first couple of days of space flight. And we probably do this to try to minimize our symptoms of motion sickness. But in fact, we might be exacerbating the symptoms. For Dr. Watt's torso rotation experiment study on the life and microgravity space lab mission we are going to be measuring our eye movements with special electrodes that we apply to our face with special velocity rate center that we rigidly fix to the top of our head and also we'll be measuring our torso movements as well with a special backpack accelerometer which is fixed to our back. After the flight is over, Dr. Watt is going to compare our eye movements to our head movements and our head movements to our chest movements. And he'll be looking for any evidence that we might have adopted some torso rotation motor strategy during this flight. We'll be doing this experiment once early in the mission, we've already done it. Secondly, towards the middle of the flight in a couple of days the last day or two of the space mission. If it turns out in fact that we'd have adopted torso rotation motor strategy during the flight which might cause symptoms of motion sickness it would be relatively easy to train future astronauts to avoid this type of motor strategy or to pre-adapt them to the atypical movement environment in a ground-based laboratory prior to flight. Welcome aboard Columbia in SPS-78 the Life Sciences and Microgravity Space Lab or LMS for short. My name is Rick Lenahan and I am the MS-1 on the flight and this is ALPHY short for Astronaut Lung Function Experiment. Now ALPHY is the brainchild of Drs. John West and Elliot and Kim Prisk from UCSD, University of California, San Diego and it is designed to measure the physiological processes of gas exchange in the human lung, on earth and in space for freefall. Now there are discreet differences which will occur in space for payload crew members who are participating as well as the onboard crew members in ALPHY experiments throughout the 17-day LMS flight and what we hope to ascertain from these experiments is how the gas flow rate in the lung changes due to microgravity or freefall in terms of how gas dissipates or aligns itself in the lung. Now when we learn things like this we are able to predict how the lung will function obviously in space and we can use that knowledge to determine how things should function on the ground and with this information we can also hope to understand various pathological processes which occur in the human lung different diseases that we might be able to study when we have better controls and additionally we will use this information for long term stays in space on the space station and hopefully for long duration space flight maybe one day to colonize the planets all this information will be put to use in one way or the other for long term space flight and stays on space. Now this rather debonair suit that I'm wearing is now called the Mark I mod of the RIP suit and RIP basically it's a respiratory plasmidography suit which will measure our rib cage and abdomen contractions and expansions while we breathe and this is measured over on our AFI KDT here and with that signal that is routed to the ground the PI's Dr. Elliott, Dr. Westman, Dr. Pritz we able to determine differences in how we expand our chest and how our muscles function in space when we breathe. It's a very very important experiment and one of the best experiments I believe to fly on the SLS series flights we're going to get a lot of good data from it and I'm really excited to be able to participate in this experiment. Thank you. involves Brady from the space shell of Columbia mission specialist number three I'm standing in front of today an experiment developed by Dr. Reggie Edgerton at UCLA Laboratories it involves measuring arm, wrist and hand strength it is well known that in space over long durations of time our muscles and our bodies grow weaker it fell however that the hand and wrist and arm muscles stay essentially the same here aboard Columbia myself and my crew mates are going to accurately measure exactly whether or not this is true this device I have in my hand right here accurately measures our hand, wrist and arm strength it's pointed out on the graph here and given a curve which we can exactly duplicate over time we measure this pre-flight and four times in-flight and post-flight basically involves grabbing the hand grip diameter and squeezing in various levels of contraction ranging from 10 to 100 percent these are later plotted out on curves that we're asked to follow in graphs that spike and we're asked to trace these this will give Dr. Edgerton and his assistants all the data that they need to accurately measure whether or not the muscles and our wrist and arms continue to stay the same are grow weaker thanks for joining us aboard Space Show of Columbia today and we'll be continuing with some examples of muscle and ball experiments in the succeeding days, thanks can we get an early start on putting in the next cartridge? stand by one Susan we'll check for you space lab, Ralphie hey Gory Luca how's that KU coverage would you like me to try and start that verification on the rip? affirmative Eric you can proceed muscle physiology experiments we're making use of a very sophisticated device called a torque velocity dynamometer or a TVD it's contributed to the mission by the European Space Agency I sort of think of the torque velocity dynamometer as an arm wrestling or a leg wrestling machine this morning as Jean-Jacques Fabier my colleague is working out here he's using it in the leg wrestling mode sometimes the machine wins the wrestling match against us and sometimes it lets us win but who wins the wrestling match is not important what is important is that the TVD can measure the torque or the force applied by the limb and also the speed at which we contract our muscles and the position of the foot or the arm at any instant in time and with this information the scientist on the ground can understand how muscle performance is adapting to weightlessness our primary goal in LMS is to quantify the effects of microgravity on the adult human body but what happens to a developing organism in microgravity? well we're flying an experiment called STLB which studies just that now STLB is a module filled with Madaka fish embryos which are being allowed to develop on orbit with us during the mission and during that time they're being closed circuit monitored by a microscope television system and relayed to the ground so that the principal investigator Dr. Kerry Phillips from Bowdoin College and NASA Ames Research Center will be able to quantify the differences between our space embryos and those in the ground you'll actually look at the differences later on at the end of the mission too between fixed embryos that we have here and the controls in the ground to quantify how much change has occurred or has not occurred between the two now initial results seem to indicate that our space embryos develop somewhat slower than those in the ground and NASA some day hopes to use this information to better understand the normal embryological process of development and also hopefully to apply this knowledge later on to long duration space travel and colonization throughout the night experiments have continued to work in a space lab module while the crew slept included among those experiments is the bubble drop and particle unit which we're seeing some downlink video from right now this is a fundamental science research into theories of nucleation and boiling as a function of temperature and pressure and the long term possibility of developing cooling mechanisms for electronic applications possibly even for spacecraft applications is the end result that's hoped for from these experiments we can see here in the foreground one of the plant growth chambers and floating above it from our perspective is payload commander Susan Helms documenting the plants via still photos this particular container holds four of 20 seedlings some of fur and some of the loblolly pine two of each four in each of these containers are bent the other two are the controls in the experiment are left unbent samples of both the bent and the unbent pines will be cut on this flight day and another flight day after having been bent on flight day three those samples will be preserved and returned to earth for further study we can now see payload specialist Jean-Jacques Favier floating near the front of the space lab module in front of the workbench where he is stowing equipment used to take cuttings from fur seedlings as part of the plant growth facility experiment we can now see payload specialist Jean-Jacques Favier working within the plant growth facility glove bag he has isolated a fixation bag and is now removing one of the fur seedling samples harvested a few moments ago Columbia Houston your mission and we know you'll be glad to accept it is to extend to 17 days on orbit congratulations, good work on the IFM near the center of our screen we can see mission specialist Chuck Brady participating in the canal and otolith integration study or COIS Chuck Brady is wearing some electronic light occlusion goggles part of the hardware for the COIS investigation and he is involved in voluntary head movement protocols in which he follows a target on the luminous target display which we are viewing from the back near the foreground in this picture on the other side a series of light emitting diodes or LEDs lighting up at various times Chuck Brady must follow the movement of these LEDs to complete these protocols put to sleep ok, we've got the reset light on we're going to go ahead and reset it notice that I'm getting a lot of equinox and now I'm going to go ahead and do the cockpit much commander and to all of your international crew aboard Columbia and to our friends aboard Mir congratulations great success of your mission as we begin as well to spread your cooperation continue it in the Olympic Games to bring the world closer together we're very proud very proud that you have taken our Olympic torch into space with you now traveling some five and a half million miles we're very very proud to be included hello commander, hello to the other crew members we are very proud of the opportunity to talk to you to convey our Olympic torch already into space this will allow us to make our exhibition of the world even more impressive and we all feel as members of the same one and the same society we compete in a peaceful environment for the benefit of all mankind and that competition is to gain as much from each of our efforts just as these athletes that will participate in the games well beginning July 19th this was taken this morning when Dr. Brady was exercising and we thought this was setting a new standard for ham radio operators he's operating Sarex simultaneously with getting his daily exercise and we thought this was above and beyond the call of duty happy birthday Canada from the space shuttle Columbia bon anniversaire Canada depuis la navette spatial Columbia from the STS-78 crew aboard Columbia happy Independence Day America we ready to go home? there's a moon that's pretty nifty that's the entrance do you remember the moon? just give it over here now almost white did you do that L over D calculation? yes okay another quick introduction we may drop in a little bit we'll wrap up Mach 11 copy probes okay go for probes 5000 radar those channels look good 4000 3000 the rate's coming 2000 pre-player next gear ball bar 1000 ball bar 800 600 500 gears on the way looking good 60 feet 240-30 slightly low 230-15 hold it right there 220-7 216 touch down at 270 knots 0-2 rotate ground speed set 150 knots 7000 to go coming under brakes 6000 going to the center back off the brakes Houston, Columbia, we'll stop we'll be back, we'll stop and congratulations on a great life science mission and a new shuttle record in one immediate delta for the Delta Houston, Columbia, runway in sight Roger, Tom, runway in sight and the runway is now visible in the picture right, time to touch down now 34 seconds Columbia descending at the rate of 165 feet per second and we can see the nose coming up as the pre-player is happening getting lined up for touch down landing gear down and locked main gear touch down pilot Kevin Kriegel has deployed the drag shoot Columbia now rolling out on runway 33 Columbia now on the ground at runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center bringing to an end a record setting mission 17 days of life and microgravity science your time welcome back we'll stop and congratulations on a great life science mission and a new shuttle record in one immediate delta on L1 we like right out-temp to high and stand by for further deltas out-temp to high and this payload crew that's given so much during the flight is ready to go to work here at KSC yes sir, okay now we're there now yeah, just go ahead and press with those we'll start with taking the secondary off and high load to enable you go for those now that's a good read and you go Tom, you have a go for that at this time GNC, did we get a gimbal check? I want to mention that FCS channel 3 on the rudder may fail and we may deselect him later but all other channels are good and we're go for this burn Columbia, Houston we'll give you a go for the deorbit burn be advised we're seeing some intermittent problems on rudder channel 3 and we may deselect that guy selectively do that first yeah then I'll get you the ammonia steps okay, you can do that Max, any changes? no changes props, no deltas okay, eagle? none okay, DPS none beyond what we ordered GNC welcome back, we'll stop and congratulations on a great life science mission and a new shuttle record in one immediate delta on L1 we like right out temp to high and stand by for further deltas