 This television view from the mid-deck of Columbia, coming through another developmental test objective being carried for the first time on board STS-73, referred to as HIPAC, the highly-packed digital television that allows up to six different channels to be downlinked to the Earth, allowing the researchers for the U.S. microgravity laboratory to view the results of multiple experiments simultaneously. And this television view again being sent down to the Earth through that HIPAC television system. The surface tension-driven convection experiment is a cylindrical container that is filled with a silicon oil. This container can then be heated on the surface by either a carbon dioxide laser or heated in the center of the chamber. In case you wanted to reduce that rotation more rapidly than just letting it die out, you can always, of course, go the opposite direction and try to slow it with a torque and then go back to an intermediate setting. I promise I'm not being impatient. I want to hear suggestions. Safe Love Huntsville for Fred, it heads up. We're going to change the IR image or range for a moment and then we'll switch it back. Okay, copy that. And the semester is in between a couple of marks. So let's make that 0, 6, 3, 5. 0, 6, 3, 5. We copy 0, 6, 3, 5. Safe Love Huntsville for Fred. The voice now on the GATV channel. As a matter of fact, it's probably even a little more clear than the air demand. Okay, excellent. We'll let's start into our discussion this morning. We have here the Falcon team on orbit three, Rob Kelso, the flight director sitting right behind me. And we just thought we'd talk a little bit about the status of the flight this morning. Pretty quiet day down here at MCC. There are not a lot of problems being worked as you know. And I thought I'd just ask you about how the routine was settling in on here your third full day in orbit. Could you tell me how you've arranged the sleeping quarters up there for the duration? That's a pretty easy one there. We've got the sleep station set up. So there's four stations and seven people. So three of us hot rack and being a navy person, that means that three of the sleep stations are almost always in use except for the turnover periods. And then the commander has his own sleep station. So he has kind of a locker he can store stuff in as well. Do you find that during the shift handovers you're getting a lot of time to pass news back and forth or do you just sort of pass like ships in the night there? The first hand overseen maybe a little bit rushed, but the last couple days it seems like we've had plenty of time for the turnover. I actually had a left sock sensor that for you because he's doing the majority of the turnover work. Is the awake time split sort of at the beginning and end of each shift so that the overlaps are evenly split or are they all front loaded or end loaded? Front loaded I guess. But we set it up that way on purpose due to our sleep shifts. Now we have a real nice set up. Two hours pre and post sleep for everybody. And this morning we even got together for a little crew meeting about 10 minutes during handover. Copy that. And how are the meals working out? Are you able to take a break together in the middle of the day for the whole shift? We used to do that every once in a while, but rather than eating of course we're like raising as the day goes on. That's about the way we're eating down here at Socks. Food equals sleep. Rob's going to give you a status where you see and the team here. Good morning Socks. You're like you're tired. As you can probably tell this is our first shift with you after the great launch you guys had the other day. We worked all those four or five pre-launch shifts and so it's extra special for us to come in this morning and have you already flying and doing such a great job. Mr. Taff, I've worked a couple of those and it feels really good when you get to go home. Flying over Houston in the last couple of days you could probably tell we had some tremendous weather in Houston and of course this weekend was the wings over Houston and the Navy and the Blue Angels did just spectacular with some incredible acrobatics. So the Navy had a proud day this weekend in Houston. We love watching the Blue Angels. Sorry we missed them. They're always a good show. We had some good pictures of Houston I think when we were flying over and for the first time I was actually able to spot JSC. The air was so clear. Couldn't find my house though. Well, we're looking at the plot board here. It looks like you're coming up on another pass in a few minutes over the Houston area so maybe you'll have another opportunity for that. Okay, well we'll give it a shot. The only thing that we're kind of tracking here, Sox, we're still looking at the main landing gear, tire pressures and temperatures with the port door slightly closed and the pre-flight predictions and the real-time data are running pretty close and it looks like at least for the next few days that we're thermally in good shape and we're going to be talking with Harry Chang and the thermal people a little later today but things look like that's going well and as we had predicted. Alright Rob, good news. Sox and Rommel, if you look behind Rob here on the screen you can see Rich Jackson. The guy got you off the ground the other day after many attempts. He's happier than anybody I think to see you guys in orbit. And you'll notice you made the tire comment. Where's your tire? I thought everybody was supposed to wear a tire in MCC. I think we made an exception to the dress code today for Rich. That's why Jackson's not part of your team today. Oh, he deserves a break after all those launch attempts. He copies that and the room just had a good laugh when he teased him about his tire. Hey, I got one question for you Rich. When we took off the other day I called in the roll and I didn't hear any response and then I called the roll program and didn't hear anything. The first call we heard was go at the rottel up. Just wondered if you guys had heard my calls or if maybe we were... Sox, the word from Rich here is that we may have just had a misconfig on the ground system down here for the first two calls. We heard all of yours crystal clear and obviously we didn't get up to you until after the go at the rottel up call. Not at that point. The camera angle at liftoff showed the view straight onto the orbiter from the end of the flame trench and you guys were buried in a big white steam cloud for about the first five to ten seconds of the launch and then Columbia just came up right out of the cloud. It was really a dramatic way to send you guys off. Yeah, we saw that in the uplink video on the KCA. It was really impressive. We appreciate it. Well, how's the view been from orbit? I know your attitude points the payload bay windows down at the earth or if you've seen any particular favorites of yours on your circuits around the globe. Attitude makes some things a little bit hard coming in at any native shots. I've got the overhead windows and getting things at 20... Now the Indians are coming back to play in Cleveland with the Braves. I guess they're down two zip right now. So you'll be able to watch some of the night game action probably later this week. Any tropical storms left in the Atlantic we should watch out for? It's amazing. I think it's finally dying down. Seems like there's more clouds over Africa than I remember. It's been great in Houston. We've had a great high pressure system sitting over us and the weather's been fantastic. It's a shame that you're in orbit and not enjoying the few weeks of good fall weather we get down here. Want to trade? Yeah, that's a real shame. We've got some pretty good weather on board though. Clear skies and since we adjusted the temperature controller. We're having plenty of fun up here. I think it'll be okay if we miss a little bit of the Houston fall. It sounds like a great environment to work in. You've got a lot of room to rattle around in and it's got a great team, obviously, meshing together up there. You guys hit the ground running and we've been very, very pleased with how well the timeline's been working out. You guys have been hitting everything right on time and it seems like the payload ops as well as the orbiter ops have been extra smooth this flight. Good. I think a big measure to the folks who did the planning pre-flight. I think another thing that helped us was that we were just a little bit lucky having to get five new guys who are just natural space people. That's obvious from what we can see. The laboratory ops in the back are just like you would imagine in a laboratory down here on the ground where tweaking, making some fine adjustments but the overall scope of the experiment seems to be working along just fine. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of that years ahead so you guys are really showing us what it's going to be like in just a couple of years with Alpha. Well, good deal. I think this two-way video capability is going to be something neat that they'll enjoy too. It's really nice to see your faces and see your lips move while you're talking to us. There's always a little bit more that can be carried in the expressions and hand motions that you can capture over the underground. That's true, Sox. We just got a call from Moscow and Mission Control over there with Jim Weatherby this morning and everybody's watching your flight with great interest on that side. All the folks in our office over there are watching 73 and they're very pleased and proud of your performance. Great. Glad to hear it passed them our best wishes and I know they're glad to get us in the air so that we can get 74 launched here and get those guys flying up to the mirror to say hello. That's right. We're looking forward to that as well but I think we've got another two weeks of fun with you folks before that happens and we'll be ready for 74 in time on the 11th. Yeah, we're looking forward to the rest of the flight. Don't think you can spend too much time in orbit. I know I can't. I can't get enough of the view and the floating around. We just continue to feel better and better up here so let's hope it keeps going that way. In Columbia, the guys on the ground who prepped this ship sure did a great job. It's just humming right along with the things about Columbia and about being jinxed and having a lot of problems but you sure wouldn't know it here from our point of view up on orbit. It is just a super spaceship. She may be the oldest ship in the fleet but it's obvious she's been maintained very well and it's the cleanest ship that you could hope for on orbit on this flight, that's for sure. You guys, but I guess we better get back off to work. You got enough video and information for the GATV guys? Yeah, if you'll stand by one. I just want to do one more config test here and we'll wrap it up after that. Stand by one. Columbia Houston, just to close off GATV and now transmitting on air to ground one. Could you give us a report on the voice quality? It's lime clear. This is what we had a minute ago. It's just a little bit if that's a decent description. I understand. Some of that is probably due to my throat this morning but we'll try this config out again later in the flight. We'll spend on other flights with the families. This capability is going to be great for us. Thanks a lot for talking to us and spending some time on the air and we'll talk to you on the regular loops. Space Lab Huntsville for Kathy. No need to respond but we are currently waiting on approval to tips up the IFM to shim the X-axis video camera to correct this problem where it's currently slightly below center and as soon as that gets tips up to you you can go ahead and start but we want you to start this before you finish the RP-1 instrument bay activation. Space Lab Huntsville for Alby Advise. We have KU band coverage back and SCDC really likes that image. Now as we heard with KU band signal capability we're again back into bringing multiple channels of video to the ground and we have two types of video coming from the surface tension driven convection experiment currently. The module on TVC2 with your permission. This live video now showing us some dramatic gyrations by a drop of liquid which is currently deployed in the drop physics module and now we're taking a 90 degree different view of it. It's shaped much like a pancake now oscillating in one dimension primarily in... DPM said you can reduce the Z drive level to 8 volts if you want. And so below the spacecraft we have basically broad ocean areas with a few scattered high clouds. Columbia on its 51st orbit now out of what's planned as a 255 orbit mission and flying continuing to orbit the Earth in a gravity gradient attitude where the tail of the spacecraft is towards Earth and the nose remains pointed towards deep space and now with a little camera switching we can take a look at its payload bay door the one which is partially closed that payload bay door being directed be the one which is in the velocity vector orientation. A new view, new type of view since this is the first mission where we routinely have been keeping a payload bay door partly closed like this.