 Good afternoon. This is the STS-29 post-flight crew press conference We're gonna look at some home movies slides video film and Listen to the crew tell us their tales of STS-29 I'm happy to introduce the STS-29 crew commander Michael Coates Thank you, Jeff. I Have the distinct pleasure and I'm very proud to introduce the crew of STS-29 John Ball hot to my right To his right is Jim Buckley To his right is Bob Springer and to his right is Jim Bajan and I'd like to start off by Expressing my thanks and gratitude to everybody that worked so hard to get us ready to fly and to get the discovery ready to fly We have a movie home movie. We put together We'd like to show you and then some slides. We'd like to talk to a little bit after that Jeff if we're ready to Rotate There's a discovery sitting in the launch pad. We hope to see that quite frequently in the next few years We had a hard time getting Jim Bajan to wear a coat and tie and our last chance was a launch morning So we all got dressed up and he finally agreed to do that We work coats and ties Here we are in the suit room Getting those Launch and entry suits on If they look uncomfortable, that's because they are And we're walking out of the crew quarters into the astronaut van looking like five orange dough boys here If we ever end up in the water, we'll be glad we had those suits on but they sure are uncomfortable to wear Especially for use to the old flight suits that we wore for so many years Of course, if most of you realize we had a couple hour launch delay waiting for the fog to burn off and the upper level winds to Excedences to go away So we're really Pleased when they started the countdown out of the nine minute hole after four hours on our back. It was a Relief to start counting down again realize we're gonna go fly Turned out to be a beautiful day. Once the fog had burned off one of the things we did during his flight was Activate a camera to recording debris striking the windows during the first couple minutes while the solid rocket boosters are firing John cameras on John's side over there Got down to 10 seconds for a lift off and all five of us in unison said get the camera John Wouldn't let him forget that and of course after two minutes the solid rocket boosters come off and That's always a good feeling Here we have a shot of the Indian Ocean the southern tip of India with the island of Sri Lanka Used to be a salon called salon Down there. I think that's a beautiful shot Once we got past the launch and into fully into the orbit phase We started reconfiguring the cockpit to try and get things ready for the IUS deploy I think one of the more difficult things about this particular mission is the the post insertion timeline and getting ready for the deploy Operations you've got to get Configure from your launch configuration reconfigure the entire orbiter for the deploy operations for the on orbit operations We facilitated this to some extent as soon as we got on orbit By going ahead getting out of the launch entry suits and getting into our are more comfortable on orbit Clothing which you can see very somewhat getting ready for the TDRS and I us deploy Once we got everything started six hours and 12 minutes into the mission. We went ahead and deployed the IUS TDRS It was a successful deploy. We had a hearts almost stopped about two minutes before deploy We got a series of anomalies and warnings that looked like everything had failed And it turns out it was just a data drop on the communication link between the IUS and the orbiter We got a quick go for the deploy from the ground when they saw that the their telemetry was all right So we proceeded with the deploy And got it off on time. We were very delighted Shortly thereafter the had the two burns that it took to get the IUS up to its geosynchronous orbit And we found out that those two burns went on schedule and as programmed The TDRS was put into its initial orbit I think it had a initially had a 40 a foot per second under speed as far as getting to its It's geosynchronous altitude, but it turns out that that was not all bad It was a slight underburn and it was on the right side of things as the orbital mechanics of it go And was actually started to drift already toward its park orbit Right after we got done with the TDRS deploy. I had to get into the experiment activation This is the protein crystal growth experiment Fascinating experiment because it's one of the things we've learned to do in the microgravity environment of space is to be able to Grow crystals in this case protein crystals that are used in a variety of applications in pharmacology from our standpoint on on the orbiter Our biggest job after activating the experiment going ahead and mixing the ingredients the precipitants that would Help to form the crystals was to do some photography of it We did an activation photography to capture what the experiment looked like as we started up This is the chromax experiment. It's a plant growth experiment. We flew to see how Plant roots that would just start to germinate would develop one orbit without the influence of gravity and that way to see if the chromosome divisions that normally take place would proceed as you'd expect and Allow the growth of the plant. This is particularly useful for future ops and space station Where people worry about both for food growth and close the environmental control systems where you can not only scrub CO2 but generate some oxygen This is one of the life sciences experiments. It's a trans cranial Doppler It's one of the DSOs and here we're looking at some blood flow in the middle cerebral artery And that's the the velocity waveform looking there on Mike And we hope to try to correlate changes in blood flow in the brain with possible symptoms of space adaptation syndrome and in that way maybe get a little bit better handle on what the cause of that is so we We did a fair amount of studies on that to try to get that wrapped up Here's a little thing we did on the side There was concerns for space station about how to this will be there for a longer period of time How to deliver normal type health care how to care for people and this is an IV bag intravenous fluid You have bubbles in it well on earth They just drift to the top and you get them out in zero G They just kind of look like effervescence just bubbles suspended in the fluid will by just centrifuging by hand like that You're able to have all the bubbles migrate to the one end and just bleed it right off without any extra equipment on board Just use a blood pressure cuff in the IV bag just as you would here on earth. So it works real well Here's Bob doing a central venous pressure measurement and by blowing in that mouthpiece He raises his pressure in his lungs to the same pressure as the as the central venous pressure And then when that happens, there's no longer any flow and he was measuring the flow in the external jugular vein there with the flow Also, we thought that there is there was a study to look at changes in the intraocular pressure Just as you measure intraocular pressure for glaucoma We're using what's called a tonal pen and here you have to anesthetize your cornea Which I just did with those little drops and now I shove this pen and tap it off my cornea and continue to tap it and You got to get used to that just staring in the eye as you bounce it off your cornea You can tell when you touch it not because you feel it, but it changes your refractive area This is John Vellinger's experiment, you know, he's a senior at Purdue University now He started this experiment many years ago He really did a great job with this. I really congratulate him. We saw him last Friday He told us preliminary results so far as it turns out the embryos at launch that were two days old We're all had died on landing for some reason up in orbit and they have to figure that out yet Also on Easter Saturday all 16 of 16 that launched that were nine days old hatched. So Maybe some very significant results and a lot of unanswered questions from that experiment This is another thing for space station. We were looking at they were concerned could use standard type medical equipment like for suturing wounds Stitching up wounds as you would in 1g So we just had a little little block with some basically like artificial skin with various lacerations made in it Since they didn't want us to lacerate ourselves plus it's a little tougher to get volunteers for that And we're gonna first though anyway We got the suture material out and just see to see if you could stitch up a wound in the same way you would here on earth and Bob did a good job focusing on the suture. You can see it right there It doesn't tangle up the normal lengths like you use in the operating room here will work there at worst just fine What you see on the larger on here is Share experiment which is a space station radiator assembly Though it didn't perform as we had predicted the NASA engineers and Mission control team were able to get an awful lot of very very good data from this Experiment and it really tells us why it's so important to fly Pieces of the space station and equipment on early shuttle flight so we can get a good engineering basis for station Here we are in the mid-deck Mike's looking at a tags picture tags is Texan graphics Which allows us to send up high fidelity Almost like thermo graph type pictures. We use these during our IMAX Filming to look ahead at weather satellite photographs so we could tell what areas We're going to be clear around the world in which we're not On the flight deck. We did several experiments. This one happens to be a co-ass Which is an optical device allowing the crew to realign their inertial platforms in the event that they should malfunction and Lose their nav base Mike was able to do that sighting on the Sun This is the IMAX camera and you see Jim here loading the magazine Putting the film into the camera. I might compliment the IMAX people Excellent support and training they gave us throughout the lead-up to the mission Which really enabled us to be very successful We found operating with the camera in zero G to be Quite similar to one G and had no difficulty loading the film Here's a scene on the flight deck Jim's holding the camera here And I'm trying to put a hundred millimeter lens on in this case And you see Mike up front talking to mission control. This is usually the sequence Mike was trying to maneuver the orbiter Here's a shot of me taking a picture of this case Florida and Coming into the Bahamas here, I believe But basically the way we work with IMAX is we had somebody filming we had somebody as a spotter Looking out the window because when you look through the viewfinder of the IMAX it really shrinks your field of view And so you need a spotter and somebody maneuvering the orbiter and of course Jim was working Changing out the magazines and the black bag usually and I was loading the camera So quite a team effort to pull off the film we did for IMAX Some of the other cameras we had on board that we used for earth observations or 70 millimeter has a blad This happens to be a shot over Cuba Of note is all of the active coral reefs just at the south side of Cuba We added some very very good shots of that And showed some live coral and reformation just south of that island as you can see the whole East Coast was Was very clear for most of our mission including the Caribbean so we got some footage that Normally is cloud covered Another camera that we used extensively Was the Errolin Hough It's a handheld aerial photography camera a little bit larger film format and as a result the resolution is is somewhat better than some of the smaller film cameras This shot is coming over Central America Looking down a chain of volcanoes you can see the volcano sticking up in the lake And again John using another has a blight camera. We're able to use with the attitude We're in use just about all of the windows The side windows for blight shots overhead windows for directly down And it worked out very very well for our earth observation program four good windows and five crewmen This is a shot of the Himalayas It shows a view looking north and you see the orbiter tail at the top And the brownish air in the background is the Tibetan plateau and it gives you a nice feel for it In the look in the north looking view you see it more in profile It really gives you a feeling of the relief the elevation of the Himalayas there because in the foreground the Ganges River basin Is basically sea level so you're seeing a 29 000 foot rise down to a 13 000 foot plateau behind And it's uh even more impressive in person That's the problem of having your satellite deploy on the first day is that after that Somebody has to get stuck with the housekeeping chores. So here's a shot of uh of the food preparation process uh actually What I would note is that uh number one the galley worked very very well for us. I was at Since this is my first flight I was very pleasantly surprised at At how palatable the food was the cold water was cold the hot water was hot It's the way it's supposed to be and and uh that was actually a bit of a surprise We actually have an oven on board that we can use to heat up the food And it's a bit like a camping trip in a way that there's a lot of overhead that goes into Uh maintaining the shuttle and the food preparation is part of it We did finally get together for a crew dinner although that was a rarity actually on this flight We we stayed busy enough that uh for most of the meals we just worked right through the meal and Somebody that was available would do the food prep down on the mid-deck and then as as you had a couple minutes You'd you'd float by and grab something and have your dinner on the run So to speak or or on the fly I guess is more appropriate But we did sit down I think on the fourth night or fifth night and and have a Uh a dinner all together and it was uh it was the one family meal that we had on board The shuttle on this this particular flight We wanted a shot of the sleeping bags. You can see I'm getting into one sleeping bag and Jim Buckley's getting into the other He's more or less heads down and I'm somewhat heads up here You can obviously sleep any way you want up there You don't need to sleep in a sleeping bag I like it because it keeps the temperature pretty constant it keeps just floating off and bumping into things in the middle of the night And I found that very comfortable just to put a sleeping bag up against the lockers and Gave me a little bit of stability This is uh Jim and Bob actually one time I came into the mid-deck and I saw them doing this So I grabbed the 16 millimeter and started taking this footage I couldn't figure out what was quite going on here Here we had a doctor and a marine trying to prove prove who could do the most pull-ups so I I couldn't resist the picture Marine one the next time I came The next time I came through the mid-deck Jim happened to have this set up the our treadmills. So I jumped on there. They looked like they were doing real good I thought I'd try it and uh, unfortunately that was a lot tougher than I thought it was Well, despite the fact that uh, we were working very hard There's always the the ever-present Fluid experiments that that we wanted to do And and while on one hand it's a it's a bit of fun doing this It's also very useful when we're talking to school children It allows you to see what happens to a fluid when it's released in the microgravity of space And of course a fluid will tend to assume it's a minimal energy level, which is a sphere and That's the science part of it. Uh, the fun part of it is is watching a bunch of grown men trying to play with Bubbles of fluid and in zero gravity We tried very hard to get two bubbles of two spheres to float together to see what they do That may be impossible. I don't we couldn't do it in an hour or so of trying This is actually remarkable This is a remarkable shot because we had uh, this was just the the morning before our uh, our press conference On board the the shuttle and we had all changed into clean clothes Mike had gotten cleaned up put on a clean white shirt and then proceeded to play with the drops of Strawberry juice, which he managed to splatter across his white shirt just before the press conference Well, this tells the truth. We uh We said we wanted to fly tortillas and we're more interested in that than fresh bread But I think it was probably more for the aerodynamic qualities of the tortillas than than their actual flavor Interestingly enough though that that proved the tortillas proved to be a very good bread substitute didn't crumble as much The suits we normally stored in the airlock except when we first got on orbit When you're not in them, there's no weight. They just kind of take on a life of their own and they're You know they take a lot of room and here we are just kind of playing around the night before We pulled the suits out to check them out to make sure Everything was set up the way we thought they should be and if there's any repair or service and they needed We could do that and it just shows, you know, there's only two or three suits in the picture And there's actually five in there takes a lot of room Here's a we're just going through a suit dining here Bob and I Jim just helping us a little bit to get in and you find you just kind of float and just kind of With more or less effort pop on through I don't have to worry about catching my hair on the neck seal when I come through So that's probably a little easier for me in that respect But they're fairly fairly quick dining. The biggest trouble is getting the zipper. You have to pull around And you always can most of this need a hand all this time. I certainly do It's the shot of a sunset again We really enjoyed the sunsets and sunrises as you've always heard whenever we have a cloud mass sticking up into the atmosphere at It's a beautiful sight This is a shot during reentry taken from vandenberg Air force base they tell us this is about 150,000 feet up. So that's quite a camera. They've got down here Here we are coming down the outer glide slope Uh getting ready to land on the runway edwards 2 2 We do so much training in the shuttle training airplane that once you get down below about 15 000 feet You feel like you've been there a hundred times before it's a very comfortable Situation the only difference is the wind noise, of course in the shuttle training airplane You have the engines running all the time even in reverse And it's a little bit noisy and you don't have that of course with a shuttle So you can hear the wind noise We're very interested in doing a braking evaluation Which is why we landed on the runway And we wanted to follow our normal breaking profile and put about 25 million foot pounds into each of the main brakes main gear brakes And we hit that very close. I think we had 22 million in The left side and 29 million foot pounds on the right side So it was a very successful test and it it responded quite well. We're very pleased with the brakes Since it was so cool outside about 40 degrees we elected to keep the Launch and entry suits on instead of trying to struggle at them down in the middeck after we landed It's really crew preference what they want to do when they get on the ground