 We're speaking with the Commander of Space Shuttle Discovery, Kanth Rolmanger. First, tell us where Discovery is at this moment. Now, let me peek over here by world map. We are going through the Atlantic Ocean right now, coming up on Africa. It looks like we're going to go right over Gambia. Now, as I mentioned, you're the pilot. It doesn't look like you're at the controls right now. Who's flying the shuttle? We've got five computers on board that do a great job. And as much as pilots hate to admit it, we've got a super autopilot. And the majority of the control of the spacecraft on orbit is through the autopilot. So the autopilot is in control. And actually, Colonel Bryan is sitting up here at the controls ready to grab them. He's hoping he gets to grab them if the autopilot comes out. Well, we won't keep you too long, so that doesn't happen. This mission marks the first time an experimental robot arm was moved back and forth by controllers on the ground. How did that go? This arm is a very dexterous arm. Unlike both shuttle flights fly a large arm that's the length of the payload bay, about 60 feet long, a Canadian designed and built arm, that we use to release and grapple satellites with. This arm is designed to go on the end of a large arm similar to that on space station coming up. And it was designed by the Japanese to do a very fine task. It can unscrew bolts. It can open doors. It's a very nimble, dexterous little arm. It's only about six feet long. Does it work the same way as the Canadian arm where somebody inside kind of uses a joystick to move it around? Yes, and it's too bad you don't have video this, but right behind me is a control station. And we have two controllers, similar like video games. One's a stick and one's another control stick. But we can control all six degrees of freedom, all the rotations, pitch roll and yaw, as well as translations in all three axes. So we fly it from on board. Additionally, this arm can be controlled from the ground through a computer link-up. It can actually be flown from miscontrol there in Houston. Why is it so important to have an arm that's capable of working, I guess, more like a human hand? In orbit and the space station, we're going to have pallets outside of the station. So a lot of the research goes on inside. But in addition to that, there are pallets outside where there's a lot of science conducted. And you need an arm that's very dexterous, similar to a human arm, to go out and change out different payloads, open doors, pull in a new one, and the one that may have been done, position it so it can be sent back to Earth or bought inside the station. Ken, you and the rest of the crew have been keeping watch over an ozone mapping satellite that you deployed into orbit last week. I understand that satellite had what might be considered a close call with some space junk. In orbit, a lot of it's left from the space programs around the world. But I guess it could have been as close as a mile and a half of rocket left over from the 1984 launch passed within a mile and a half of Krista's paws. How much of a problem is space junk becoming for astronauts who go up on space shuttles? Not really that big of a problem at this point. The debris, all the debris that's larger about the size of a softball is tracked. It's actively tracked. So on some missions, the space shuttle may get a call that they see a potential hazard with some space debris, and it's fairly easy for us to go ahead and maneuver the shuttle out of the way to put us out of the flight path without debris. So we do actively track that and make sure we stay away from it. Have you personally ever had to maneuver out of the way of space junk? I did. On my first space flight, we had a small maneuver to make sure we've had an adequate space between us and the debris up here. Now tell us a little bit about the satellite that's out there. What exactly is it doing? It's looking back towards Earth and it's looking back into the medium atmosphere and looking at the trace elements and what we're really trying to do and it's going from close to the north pole to close to the south pole back and forth is trying to determine what the dynamics of that medium atmosphere are and ozone is one of the elements in that and we're trying to determine the dynamics involved in the ozone holes moving around and marching, closing back down and they're trying to get a real good handle on that. Now, when will you actually recover this satellite and do you know about the data that it has been receiving or will we find out about that later on? We get some feedback and the ground gets feedback from that satellite real time but they don't get all of the data so when we retrieve the satellite and bring it back to Earth they'll read a lot more of the data but they have been receiving data they're very excited about it and one of the things the satellite has already shown them is that there's a higher water content in the northern regions, the northern latitudes than we earlier thought and water plays into the formation of hydroxide which are a key element in ozone so already the scientists on the ground are very, very excited about the results of crystal leaving it day after tomorrow. Will you talk about this water? Is this water that is in the atmosphere? Yes, it is. And one of the theories is maybe from house-sized snowballs or their comets long ago impact our atmosphere that's where that water came from. What do you all do for entertainment as you're flying around weightless in orbit if you have free time? I think that would be an overwhelming we look out the window the Earth is a beautiful planet and as we travel on this 57 degree inclination we see the most of the world from 57 degrees north to 57 degrees south and it's just an incredible sight flying over countries and seeing for example we're coming up over Europe and you can look down and see all of Italy you can see the boot but just studying the geography and looking out the window is a tremendous show. The A-23 crew has landed in Kazakhstan. Hey Houston we're glad they're safely on the ground thanks for the info. And these views now aboard the Russian space station Mir Commander Vasily Tsiblyev has been aboard the station for 185 days headed home today along with his flight engineer Alexander Lezutkin Lezutkin And Commander Vasily Tsiblyev talking with Russian mission control outside Moscow at Korolev thanking them for all of their support during his and Lezutkin's 185 day in space staying in space saying that the time had gone by rather quickly and they're handing over the vehicle in good hands to Anatoly Silvyev and Pavel Vinogradov aboard the station now as the Mir 24 crew and a Mir 24 commander Anatoly Silvyev hugging Alexander Lezutkin Silvyev most recently flew aboard the space shuttle on the first docking mission as part of the Mir 19 crew that was his last mission the Soyuz capsule for the Mir 23 crew docked to the transfer node and the undocking of the Soyuz now underway, this view looking back at the station from the Soyuz and the Soyuz now slowly backing away from the transfer node attach point on the Russian space station Mir ending 185 day stay aboard the station by commander Silvyev and flight engineer Alexander Lezutkin