STS-67 Special Events Resource Tape, Part 2 (1995)

King this is e please call Endeavor for a voice check and deor this is King can you hear us you're loud and clear King okay it sounds like you're all ready to go and and we'll go into this if I can direct this first question to uh to Stephen Oswald I'd like to get a bit of a of a sense from you is to really in in a nutshell why is this Mission so important because you're you're embarking on not one but a whole smorgus Board of different uh different experiments here we've got a full plate and certainly the um the ultraviolet astronomy Community is excited about this flight and and part of the reason that this this flight is so important is because we basically cannot get this kind of information from the ground uh because the ultra violent uh data from these distant celestial objects just can't get through our atmosphere so in order to observe these we have to get up above the Earth's atmosphere and Hubble can do that but they have an instrument that doesn't reach as far into the The High Frequency high energy part of the ultraviolet Spectrum as the instruments do that we have on board here so uh this is the kind of information that they just can't get from the ground and and another none of the other orbiting uh instruments can get it either now a question for John grunsfeld uh you have been working with this uh this equipment um essentially is this really the first time we have been able to look at uh distant novas at quazars these Celestial uh Bodies In This Way well the uh the instruments we're carrying aboard here on Astro 2 are are the same instruments that flew on Astro 1 so we had a peak uh at some of these objects on Astro 1 but uh particularly the Hut instrument is much improved over we Flor and Astro one and we're getting a whole lot more better quality time on on the targets uh there's also another satellite called the international ultraviolet Explorer and it uh can do similar things but in much more crude way so this is the first time that that astronomers have really been able to get a look at these objects uh with the kind of quality that we get from the the big Mountaintop Observatory so this is uh an extremely exciting time for astronomers all over the world now John grunsfeld I know they're saying that they will be looking at the data that you have been able to gather so far they'll be analyzing that for years you've only been up there for a few days though you have been using these three ultraviolet telescopes uh what have you been able to see so far that really uh really surprises you anything yet oh it's a little hard from the data that we have on board to uh to see anything that really surprises us I think uh a couple of the targets that we've looked at have been particularly exciting uh last night we looked at Jupiter and specifically we were looking uh at some of the plasma that encircles Jupiter and we were able to see that data on board and and we weren't sure whether we'd be able to and it's really exciting because there are currently some active volcanoes on uh the moon of D Jupiter EO and uh I think that's very exciting for a lot of folks and in this last shift we were able to do a simultaneous observation of of the Jupiter environment with the Hubble Observatory and when you can do two observatories like that at once Astro 2 in the ultraviolet and the Hubble observatory in the optical you get much more information than you do with uh one Observatory alone now uh Stephen Oswald you uh of course are essentially the person at the controls of the shuttle one of the things that you have to do is try to keep these telescopes on Target and having seen some simulations earlier in the week it would seem like you would constantly have to be adjusting the shuttle uh so the telescopes would be aimed correctly is is that a difficult job well actually the um the job of of controlling the Orbiter is is relatively straightforward we put the Orbiter in an attitude that will allow the instrument pointing system in the astral payload to fine-tune the pointing of the telescopes on these objects and the kind of control that we were having to do earlier on in the mission which was just basically almost a ground controlled approach uh was measured in the uh thousands of degrees and we control the orbit or we can't control it down to uh oh maybe 300s of a degree but we can't get the pointing accuracy that we need to do this astronomy with the Orbiter alone we need to use the instrument pointing system so uh my job as the commander of this mission is is almost to stay out of everybody's way here I've got six real P folks uh uh Wendy and and Bill to run the Orbiter and point it and and the four science folks to come back and run the uh The Observatory so I just try to stay out of their way and and keep the home fires burning well as you've uh as you've been looking out the uh the window of the Orbiter have you seen Bellingham pass below you know I I uh I haven't and there's a real good reason for that on this Mission our inclination is 28 and a half degrees and we just PL don't get far enough North to see it but my first two missions were uh were at 56 degrees which of course gets us high enough to see it and I had um gosh like 11 opportunities to see it on the first flight and 13 opportunities on the second flight never did see it because there was a blanket of clouds over the Northwest which almost never happens of course of course not you've I mean Bellingham is is is about as far away as you can get and still stay within the United States uh from uh from the Cape of course where we've been looking for decades now it space launches how did you ever get interested in this or did you want to be an astronaut as a kid growing up out here well you know I really didn't I wasn't one of the folks and we have several in the office who wanted to be an astronaut for as long as they can remember and I wasn't one of those primarily because uh when they were hauling the gmany capsules around early on um there were a number of times I had an opportunity to see it and it was small enough and looking at my dad's size at about 6 feet a little bit over I just really had no desire to get into the thing uh but I always wanted to fly airplanes and later on uh had a chance to do that with the Navy and they started selecting shuttle Pilots when I was uh doing test pilot work at the Texan River and and then I really got interested that was about 1978 now this is your your what your third shuttle mission and you're scheduled to fly at least one more after this uh is this is this getting to be as routine as doing some of those uh some of those carrier takeoffs and landings as you did as a Navy pilot well I I don't think that either of those two events ever really got to be routined flying off for carriers or and certainly not shuttle flights uh I wish I was scheduled for another shuttle flight but we generally don't schedule folks for another flight before they get back from the one that they're on so uh if that comes along in the future that' be great and I don't think you could ever get tired of this this is just an absolutely awesome experience and uh the perspective that you get on the world from from this vantage point is is one that I could certainly never get tired of and I think most folks feel that way let me throw this next question over to uh Ron pice you are a payload specialist aboard inav uh one of the experiments going on here is something called mace and I think we actually saw some pictures of you were you were showing some uh some video I think of the mace experiment if that's what I was looking at what is Mace and and why is it important I'm probably the wrong one to ask that uh Steve has been operating the mace experiment so I'll give it back to him okay I guess what uh May stands for Mid deck active control experiment and what it is uh is an apparatus that simulates having uh two different kind kind of sensors on a spacecraft one being a scanning type instrument and the other one being a pointing instrument and the problems that we have on on some spacecraft where you do that is that the scanner which which mechanically uh bangs from stop to stop will often disturb the pointing quality of the other experiment and what we can do is try to actively control that second experiment so that its pointing accuracy is not degraded but doing that in Zerg is different than doing it down in 1G and this is really the first time that folks have had a chance to take a a complex instrument into orbit and control uh actively the pointing end uh and then get data we ship it down to the ground on our com system and the folks at MIT look at it and and redo their algorithms and Uplink us some new equations we put those in and run the same experiment again uh with a different set of uh of equations so it's really exciting and it may end up paying off uh really big for us later on down the line in the design of future spacecraft how will that help you give me give me sort of a Layman's explanation of how this will will will yield benefit well I'll stay on the space station if you uh if you have an experiment that requires very very pristine microgravity 10 the minus 6 GS uh meaning that it needs to just be very quiescent uh if you have activity going on in the space station uh like people living on it ends up uh doing considerable damage to that kind of microgravity if we can actively control that microgravity environment uh by a computer then we can get better data uh and still live in that environment uh as we would essentially on Earth so uh there are Untold numbers of applications of of actively controlling uh the environment for the instruments that we fly in space now you you are doing a lot of microgravity experiments again you're you're looking at uh uh potential applications for drugs for crystals uh commercial applications for this microgravity experiments of course have been been ongoing since some of the earlier shuttle missions how will this Mission help advance that research well the crystal growth experiments that we have on board uh are follow on uh to those that you mentioned earlier that have flown on on previous shuttle missions and basically uh we're trying to solve puzzles with this the folks that do the uh protein crystal growth experiment say are doing x-ray U defraction on those crystals that we can grow here on orbit that can't be grown successfully in 1G because they're just too delicate and so we grow those crystals on orbit and and those folks go off and try to understand better the makeup of those protein crystals so that they can manufacture drugs that can either inhibit or uh or enhance the characteristics of that particular protein and that's an iterative process and so we continue to try to grow them uh better and better crystals and crystals of proteins that they haven't had a chance to look at yet so that they can uh hopefully get some Clues on how to make uh better drugs so that we have a better life on earth now one of a sort of a Northwest angle to this next question which is the follow on to the shuttle essentially which is the space station the Boeing Company of course has been given the the contract to manage the space station to help build part parts of it to help get it into the air uh in terms of what you are doing now do you feel like you're uh how much of a step forward closer to the space station are we getting because of what you are able to now accomplish onto this mission is there any any connection there well there isn't that we are the longest shuttle mission that we will have flown to dat and the more data that we get on on keeping folks on orbit in a zero g environment uh the better off that we are certainly all these flights that we fly contribute to our knowledge base on living and working in space uh until we get a space station though I don't think that we're really going to have all the information that we need to move on to the next logical steps which would be going back to the moon and then maybe on to Mars do you think you'll uh you'll make it on a space station Mission well you never know it's um we should be starting to launch those mission in the 9798 time frame and have a have a permanent man capability by just after the turn of the century so uh I'm getting older but I'm not at that old yet and and it may be that that'll happen well how does everybody feel so far as you did point out this is going to be the longest shuttle mission I see smiling faces there it sounds like everybody's getting a lot done and and things are going smoothly is that a is that do that does it feel like it looks from here on the ground yeah I think everybody feels real good we um after you get up here it takes about a day or so to get yourself oriented to the uh zerog environment and um and after about the second day what's scary is it starts feeling normal to be like this and you're you're going from the flight deck to the mid deck head first down through the hatch and uh kind of flying around the cabin and and it just starts feeling normal and and certainly by uh eight days into the flight where we are now it's U uh everybody's very comfortable with it and we're all feeling good do you think they will extend the flight by two days there was some reports that you were you were hoping to be able to make a longer Mission out of it well you know there are a lot of targets out there we haven't run out of stars yet to look at and so uh we hope that we can stay up here a little bit longer it's it's a lot of trouble to get here and we trained for a year to to get here and so we wouldn't have our feelings hurt at all if they left us up here a little bit longer but we will certainly come home whenever they tell us that it's time and uh and and we'll be glad to be back home too because there a lot of folks down there that we uh we don't get to see now will it be uh will it be easy to get used you've been on these missions before how difficult will it be to get used to being back on the ground again it takes a day or two to get used to that and uh the funny thing is that after 40 plus years of of living on the ground it's almost as as difficult to get used to going back to the Earth as it is coming up from the Earth to space so uh including even just sleeping back in one G but after a day or two it's you start getting your strength back and uh and it's really like you never left okay thanks uh thanks again Houston uh King we are uh we are out we're ready Houston w o r this is Houston please call Endeavor for a voice check all right Endeavor this is w r how do you hear me I hear you loud and clear this is endeavor all right uh lady and gentlemen Wendy Lawrence is Lieutenant Commander on the Space Shuttle Endeavor and Dr Samuel Durant is a payload specialist they are live with us this morning here on rambling with gambling Lieutenant Commander uh good morning from New York City good morning New York from Endeavor uh Lieutenant Commander where are you at the moment on your orbit currently we're over the Pacific Ocean we uh just passed to the south of the Hawaiian island it probably about another 5 to 10 minutes or so we'll be crossing the western coast of South a excuse me South America South America and then you will be uh near New York in about 15 minutes unfortunately our orbital inclination is such that we won't pass directly over New York however uh the other members of my crew last night said that they had a beautiful pass along the east coast and got to see they thought up as far as DC but not quite into New York all right have you have you passed passed over New York uh City uh in your travels which are about halfway through your plan Mission no unfortunately we will not be able to do that uh our orbital inclination is at a latitude of 28.5 degrees basically where Cape Canaveral and Kenedy Space Center are located uh we're on what we call a low inclination flight the high inclination flights however do get a chance to fly over New York so perhaps on my next slide I'll have that opportunity uh Lieutenant Commander before I talk with Dr Durant tell tell us your impression of this experience and and and really watching the Earth uh pass by you every 90 minutes I wish I could find the appropriate words to describe just how beautiful the Earth is in fact right now we're experiencing a sunrise and from up here we can see sometimes 10 to 15 different layers of the atmosphere and the colors are just spectacular it's like nothing I've ever seen down on Earth and I've seen some beautiful sunsets on the Pacific Ocean but nothing beats what it's like up here in space it's absolutely fantastic even the weather when I have seen pictures from the space shuttle of thunderstorms are absolutely glorious to see they are in fact yesterday we had an opportunity to pass over a volcano in the Andaman island chain which is a just to the the west of India in the Bay of Bengal and that was really a spectacular site also Dr Samuel Durant is the payload specialist one of the payload Specialists and by the way we are talking live with the Space Shuttle Endeavor here this morning on W o r Dr Durant explain what you do as payload specialist well my job is to uh operate the telescopes that are part of the Astro Observatory um I've been working with them for a number of years uh one of the telescopes the Hopkins ultraviolet telescope I helped to design and build and I worked with the team uh putting together the Astro Observatory so I know quite a bit about it and early on in the program uh it was decided that it was more efficient and you would uh come out with a more reliable mission to train someone who has that much in-depth knowledge with the actual instrumentation that you're using to train as an astronaut and uh take on board and to help operate the observatory so that's what I've been doing really for the past 11 years uh I understand that with the telescopes that you have a aboard uh Endeavor in in the in the back if you will in the cargo bay you have been able to see some things never before is seen a quazar that is figured to be at the edge or near the edge of the universe uh do you find as you Circle and conduct these experiments that those big questions about how big the universe is what might be Beyond it what makes it up are even more um what's the what's the word even even larger than they are when we peer into the heavens from Earth Well you certainly have a a feeling of awe and and inspiration as you're flying around circling the earth the thing that uh strikes you most though from orbit is not the stars but the Earth itself the view from orbit of Earth is uh is truly breathtaking and I think very few people who have who have been able to see this uh have not been emotionally affected by it and the Deep questions that we have I think are really enforced by being up in space and looking back at the Earth and seeing how beautiful and how fragile it is and looking just above the Earth and seeing the Blackness of space and it's just a a beautiful island of Life uh isolated in the universe how has life been aboard the space shuttle you as you are about halfway through this mission is it at all uncomfortable or or is it just a natural setting for all of you no it's very natural um it's there are seven of us in a fairly small uh area like about the size of a Winnebago and uh so we have to live in Fairly Close Quarters but we all get along fairly well and uh the feeling of weightlessness is very natural once you get used to it in fact when you come back you feel very odd with having to hold yourself up against this strange Force um it it's a lot of fun of course being able to float around and uh it feels very natural Wendy Lawrence is lieutenant commander of the Space Shuttle Endeavor Lieutenant Commander what what's it like to uh fly this I guess I guess your real work comes when you come back to earth so my job on board this mission is that of the flight engineer so I assist the commander and the pilot during uh the real Dynamic phases of flight which are asked an entry and the commander is the one who will actually land a vehicle and that's certainly a challenge after you've been up here for 16 days and you haven't had an opportunity to to practice but both the commander and the pilot of this flight are very very fine aviators and uh it makes my job quite easy I just back them up on the procedures but during the the orbital phase of flight that's when I have a little bit of an opportunity to act as the pilot of the blue shift so as a someone who's got a a background in flying helicopters uh this certainly is the thrill of my lifetime to actually sit in the front two seats of the Orbiter and have an opportunity to to input the Maneuvers and allow the onboard computers to fire the maneuvering Jets and put us in the proper attitude W do you and Sam and the rest of the crew get the opportunity to sit around the uh the kitchen table and talk over lunch breakfast or whatever well we're actually working at two shifts the other shift is a sleep right now we work about 12 hours a day so unfortunately many of your meals are spent while you're working working but what we enjoy the most is just view the views out the window in fact right now it's it's Sunrise we're out over the Pacific and it's a beautiful Blue Waters and white puppy clouds and when you feel like you need a break you just look out the window I'm thinking of I'm visualizing this that there you are in the Space Shuttle Endeavor and I'm I'm thinking of almost a bus with its line of Windows and the Seven of you staring staring out the window all the time well as you can see um there are two of us here there are four of us asleep and one of us is working feverishly behind us this is our crewmate uh Dr Tammy Jernigan who is handling the operation of the telescope right now we of course continue to operate even as we're talking to you and uh so we the windows are close to where we work so it's nice to look out the windows but uh that's not all we do do you sleep well oh you do and uh once you like Sam said once you get the hang of being weightless it really feels a lot better I think I've slept better up here than I slept down on the ground and and we do sleep in um some modified sleeping bags that somewhat hold you in position but you can definitely tell that you're just floating in the air and I found it to be quite comfortable and quite natural and Sam Durant live from the space shuttle Endeavor this morning here on rambling with gambling at w thank you very much best of luck in uh continued success in the rest of the flight well thank you it's been great talking to you and uh see you and goodbye New York Fairfield University home of the famous Fairfield Stags please call Endeavor for a voice check this is Fairfield how do you hear me well you're you're loud just a little bit garble but we understand you Fairfield we are ready with uh with our questions we have a bunch of students here to talk to you um okay we're looking forward to it send them on Chris Bon your question you've been using the uh telescopes to observe magnetic fields around white dwarf stars how are you able to determine the magnetic fields and what are the effects let me let our resident astronomer answer that one hang on just a second actually we uh are observing quite a number of uh White dwarves uh that's one of the major programs of um at least uh two of the telescopes and um magnetic field Fields show up in the Spectra of the white dwarfs and the U in the line shapes and structure of the Spectra lines that we see and so um uh that's a very important program we have ongoing we've observed several of them in the last few days enen benic your question how are small crises maning the mission and what is the sequence of steps that you take to resolve problems with malfunction equipment could you repeat the first part of your question again please how are small crises managed during the mission oh okay well we inevitably run into uh into minor problems that that come along and we are trained to uh handle most of those actually we have worked through uh over the past 15 years or so that we've been flying the Orbiter uh most of the different kinds of problems that can come along and we're trained to handle those we have a number of Mal malfunction procedures that are on board and the same is true of the payload folks they've trained for uh actually in the case of uh Sam Durant and Ron pice for uh gosh the better part of a decade on this equipment and they're well versed in all the kinds of problems that you can have so uh we take those on one at a time and work through them in cooperation with the folks on the ground to resolve whatever problem we have Chris tayor your question what exactly involved in the mid deck active control experiment and how will that Aid in the uh development of a future space station well as you know uh one of the main reasons that we go to space is to obtain uh as pure a microgravity environment as we can 10 Theus 6 GS is what we try to look for on the Orbiter for uh crystal growing experiments and some of the life science experiments that we do and space station is going to be the same kind of operation a lot of the operations that we're going to have to do will require a very quiescent environment the problem is that that having people on board tends to disrupt that quiescent environment if we can control on the space station some of the areas where we're trying to do the very uh High highly intensive microgravity work through active control and isolate them from uh from the other movements that are going on on board the uh the space station we will be much much better off and we're hoping that we can incorporate the technology that the folks at MIT are working on uh with the mace experiment in the space station as well as other satellites where we have say a scanning instrument uh on one end of the U of the satellite bus and a pointing instrument on the other end of the satellite bus uh joh answer we read in uh the mission status report that on day four the team observed a rapidly spinning star five Pai with perhaps a shell of gas around it is this a b star and uh if so why was uh the whoopy most appropriate for this observation well uh you guys probably are a little further ahead of what our U what our progress in solving some of these scientific problems are and what the status of our observations are than we are we U we do get a little bit of a briefing back up of what the quality of the science is but um uh right now I don't have any details on U on uh the results of any of the individual observations that we' made I'm afraid Virginia your question as the space shuttle moves in its orbit how does the instrument pointing system the IPS keep the T pointed toward the selected Target what we do is uh initially we point the vehicle at the Target and we hold the vehicle within about a degree pointing at the Target and then the IPS just has a little bit better accuracy at pointing and so it continues to train and take care of any vibrations that we might have and then the instruments themselves also have some compensation and we can actually detect movements of astronauts moving around by pulling on ladders and see that that actual motion can be detected and in many cases just damped out mayor your question assuming that you're able to collect good data on primordial helium will these data be helpful in the determination of the age of the universe I think you were asking about the um helium abundance measurements we've made um quite a number of observations of a quazar uh the purpose of which is to measure the amount of helium between us and the quazar we're just using the quazar basically for a light bulb and um in measuring the amount of helium uh if we understand what the helium abundance out in Intergalactic space which hasn't been modified by star formation and star Evolution like our like the helium in the galaxy has been uh then we can uh let the theoreticians put that back into their models it turns out that the models uh which uh involve the early um Evolution the formation early evolution of the universe are highly dependent on the uh amount of helium that was present in the very early universe and so um we've made a lot of measurements and hopefully uh we'd be able to shed some light on that Greg your question okay what instruments have been used to observe volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon EO and what kind of data have you obtained and also what kind of adjustments have you had to make in switching from observing Stellar objects to observing planetary events yes we've um with regard to the volcanic activity on EO we've made uh quite a lot of um quite a number of observations of uh the Jupiter system uh some of them of the Taurus the the so-called IO Taurus which is a a band of U material around Jupiter through which eio the moon eio passes and contains a lot of the um uh ejecta material from the volcanic activity on the moon and so um uh we have observed that we have uh observed EO itself and the planet as well and uh so all of these data together will hopefully um allow us to shed some light on the on the details of the Jovian system kid your turn your question one of the main aspects of this Expedition is the study of white dwarf stars what are you looking for in these stars and what can we hope to learn from them well um white dwarves um are one of the end points of Stellar Evolution one of the possible end points and uh what we're trying to do in in a couple of cases for example the ultraviolet Imaging telescope would like to see the uh population of White dwarfs which exist in um um in globular clusters to try to uh characterize the evolutionary state of the cluster if you uh one of the ways of studying what the evolutionary state of the cluster is since we can't watch it evolve because it takes far too long for us uh what we do is uh look at different clusters and study how many stars in each cluster are in different evolutionary in the different evolutionary States and so um um the white dwarf end of the end of the um uh Stellar evolutionary scale is is one that's difficult uh to study in that um uh in that region and it's um it's something that we're trying to do a lot more of uh on this flight Anthony your question knowing the amount of primordial helium 4 left in the universe has a bearing on Big Bang nuclear synthesis were you able to to get readable uh readings of the helium for density well this is H back to the helium question um the um the detection of the helium is U is going to be the helium absorption Edge is going to be difficult and um the signal to noise is very very low on each individual observation and so we're making many many observations with the intent of co- adding them together after the flight in order to um in order to increase the signal to noise ratio to make the um uh make the edge visible uh I don't think uh I'm not sure whether we can see it on one Spectrum or not we just see the raw data available here on board and and it's certainly not processed at all so um uh I don't think think we know the answer to that until after the flight because uh all of the Spectra of the quazar 1700 plus 64 will have to be added together after the flight in order to get sufficient signal to noise to to um see that feature Terry your question um I was wondering will you be able to obtain evidence during this mission to support the existence of dark matter I don't think that we're sure at this point and as Ron said uh we really don't have access to an awful lot of the data that's being taken and and certainly not to any processed data Morin your question the status report on day number nine of the mission mentions an observation of a middle-aged Supernova Remnant the sinus loop with the intent to study the shock wave which followed Supernova explosions do we know for how long these shock waves go on and how exactly do you observe the effects of the shock wave as it rushes through the intergalactic medium well we have um two instruments which primarily look at uh yeah we've been looking at the signis Loop uh uh several positions in the signis loop during the course of the mission and um um the two instruments that are primarily looking at that are the Hopkins ultraviolet telescope and the ultraviolet Imaging telescope and uh at different wavelengths you see uh features in the shock wave which occur at different velocities and so by looking at different parts of the shock wave at different wavelengths we can tell something about um how the uh shock wave is being propagated through Intergalactic space or Interstellar space in this case it's not Intergalactic space and uh and try to extrapolate back to to um um learn something about the details of the Supernova explosion itself alen you have a followup question on day number five of the mission the team observed a binary star system Nova acul which seemed to become much brighter over a short period of time what measurements did you make this phenomenon and how will your data help to resolve questions on Stellar Evolution I'm sorry there's an awful lot of feedback and the first part of your question was completely garble could you repeat at least the first portion of that on the fifth day of the mission the team observed a binary star system NOA ACU which seemed to become much brighter over a short period of time what measurements did you make of this phenomenon and how will your data help to resolve questions on Stellar Evolution yeah I'm I'm afraid I'm not um familiar with the details of that observation uh we have probably a hundred uh scientists on the ground who have um scientific programs that we're trying to satisfy the data requirements for and uh those of us on board although we're familiar with some of them and um would like to be familiar with all of them we we just can't possibly do that so I'm we've observed so many targets I'm just afraid I'm not uh familiar with that particular one gemen thank thank you very much and safe for return toward Houston this is Fairfield Houston this is Fairfield you go ahead that this concludes the event at Fairfield thank you very much Fairfield University this is UN Houston thank you for your insightful questions and your interest in the space program we appreciate it thank you very much Fairfield and we're sorry to have been bouncing around here a little bit but we uh we had an Orbiter maneuver kicking off and we've been chasing that around but your uh your questions were excellent and uh we hope to get a chance to chat with you again we go cpan our Endeavor this is cpan can you hear me this is not we have you loud and clear Brian this is endeavor okay the next voice you hear will be our host Brian Lamb ready ready will devoted primarily to space space station operations I understand we have on on the screen here in about two seconds Tammy Jernigan and Sam Durant and I'll ask both of you how's it going up there well Brian it's going great we're uh taking observations um moving from Target to Target looking at everything from planets and stars to galaxies that are billions of light years away so it's been a fine Mission so far Sam yeah that's right Brian I'll just Echo that it's going great we're uh just circling around the earth once every 90 minutes observing about two Targets per orbit and we're just clicking right along before we grab the first call let me read you a fact from Don Reen in Chicago and remember this is a show that deals with tough questions and this question is are you and this is addressed to you all are you at all embarrassed by these media interviews and public relations dog and pony shows constantly thrust upon shuttle Crews by NASA bureaucrats shuttle missions cost American taxpayers at least $50,000 per minute of flight time so how did public relations get to be such a mission prior to uh uh priority for busy shuttle Crews well um I'll give the case we're doing of the interview right now right now we're taking uh observations and so this interview was scheduled on a non-interference basis with the data we're taking right now and so the taxpayers are getting um good value for their money in addition it is is America's program and I think America has a right to know what we're doing in space and so I'm really happy to be part of the mechanism to disseminate information to the American public and we do try to schedule these events so they don't negatively impact our operations let's go then to the first call for our two special guests from space Grand Rapids Michigan your first up go ahead please hi I'm 10 years old and I'm just wondering um how did you get involved in the space program I'll answer that first and then I'll hand it over to Sam um I was getting a PhD in astrophysics I always liked science and math and I was interested in flying and I thought NASA was just a fascinating organization and I applied and was fortunate enough in 1985 to get selected to find Space Sam yeah thanks Tammy well I was uh studying physics and astrophysics in school in college and I went to work at Johns Hopkins University and I helped to design and build one of the telescopes that we're we have out in the cargo bay right now and I came along to operate that and I've been doing that for several years and that's how I got involved Tammy jigan is on the left of your screen as you're watching from space he's from Chattanooga Tennessee originally and Sam Durant considers Tampa Florida to be his headquarters let's go next to Wheeling West Virginia go ahead with your question i' just like to as or astronoid G um I would like to know have some kind of a brief synopsis of the training that you have to go through to get the job that you're doing well the training varies from position to position uh my position is payload specialist and my training uh primarily is on how to operate the payloads I help to uh design and build them and go through all of the testing procedures so that I thoroughly understand the operation of the payload and then I train also uh to operate some of the systems on board that I need to live and work and to operate the payload itself and uh Tammy is a mission specialist her training is a little bit different yeah the way my training differs um I train on or all the Orbiter systems I train to do uh space walks we do not have a plann spacewalk on this flight but we do have a contingency Space Walk and so if we needed to do that we would suit up and go outside talk GL St in myself I spent a lot more time training on all the Orbiter systems where Sam would spend a lot more time training on the payload since I'm considered a career NASA astronaut one quick question we'll go to calls Norm thard one of your colleagues is going to be launched from Russia at 113 a.m. on Tuesday will you all see him on that mirror satellite up there somewhere in the next few days unfortunately we won't um actually we had hoped that the commander of our flight Steve oswal who was flown with Norm on a previous shuttle flight would be able at least to talk to him um and we'd only be able to do that if we extended a day or so but uh we won't get to see nor but we sure wish him well and wish him a wonderful trip on here San Bernardino California your next up go ahead please hi um I would like to ask them their feelings on uh seeing the edge of the universe the black hole through the ultraviolet telescope thanks well we don't actually see the edge of the universe ourselves through the ultraviolet telescopes the data we have on board is data that we can make sure that the telescopes are working correctly the seeing of the edge of the universe is done by looking at the data once it's got once we get it back to the ground and we analyze the data when we look out through the telescope we're looking out through basically a TV camera and that camera is used to precisely point the telescope so we we're looking at the edge of the universe so to speak and that's exciting we know that but we don't actually see anything like that through the telescopes if you look out your window right now what what do you see down here on Earth where are you okay it's sunrise over the Pacific Ocean we're approaching the coast of South America and sunrises are incredibly beautiful things and we see about uh 16 of those every day and uh it's uh you can see all the colors of the rainbow this scattered light off of the various layers of the atmosphere it's just beautiful next call Old Hickory Tennessee go ahead please uh hello Tammy and Sam I'm glad to talk to you my question is that uh people have mentioned extra extraterrestrials they've mentioned the big space f but none have uh put on the theory of God created the Earth and are you looking into that we're not specifically looking into the theory of God creating the Earth um I certainly believe that God created the Earth and set the universe in motion and we're just trying to understand the physical laws and all the fascinating objects inside the university created Granite City Illinois next go ahead please um yes I was wondering for the both of you um when you were uh small were you influenced by your parents or anybody to study space or science caller if you don't mind me asking how old are you I'm 12 and um I'm I'm really looking forward to a career up there on the shuttle of the station once it finally gets up I think that in in my family my mother certainly encouraged me to pursue the things I was interested in and gave me a real sense of of self-confidence that I could do anything I wanted to do if I just kept at it um and there are a lot of wonderful careers in the space program even if you if you don't grow up to be an astronaut and I certainly wish you the best in that the the Space Program depends on the talents of many uh scientists and Engineers who worked very hard um and I think one just has to be persistent and there a lot of wonderful things to do in this [Applause] world yeah I certainly have been influenced by my parents when I was growing growing up they uh taught me to study hard and to believe that I could do things and and it uh has helped me throughout my life next call Atlanta Georgia go ahead please hi I'm um I'm 11y old 11 years old and I was wondering what you guys eat for breakfast well this morning let's see I had uh scrambled eggs and uh granola and coffee and and I think that's it it's uh the scrambled eggs they come in little plastic packages and we have to fill them with water uh but it's pretty good Houston Texas you're next this is CHL G I wanted to know if either of one either of you envision this becoming a WHL project where you had other astronauts um entering into these projects and we got world financial support so a lot of these Grand IDE is wouldn't be squashed because of lack of fund um what do you feel about this well I think International cooperation space is a wonderful thing and uh the space station that project that were we have embarked upon with the Russians is is really uh right to the heart of the point you're making where uh two countries combine their resources on a great space adventure which is space station and and someday we might even do more than that go on maybe back to the Moon Back To Mars but I think International participation is going to be the wave of the future in the space program and we can all pull our resources and derive a world benefit from space exploration do Delaware you're next for our astronauts go ahead please hi my name is Rebecca and I was wondering how fast you're going well right now we're traveling 17,500 miles an hour uh it's pretty fast but from up here um at times it looks like you're just kind of rolling very slowly around the earth or sometimes it even feels like the Earth is rolling slowly under us Rebecca how old are you eight eight years old would you like to go in space yes thanks for calling Prescot Arizona you're next thank you very much you're on the air go ahead with your question Prescot good morning good morning Prescot please ask your question of our astronauts uh I'd like to know if there's any chance that the astronauts will be sent on a nationwide tour so they can visit students who have been working in the CX program thanks well I don't think uh there's a chance it we'll be sent on a nationwide tour but we do visit students quite often in schools and uh I think almost all of us get a lot of enjoyment out of that talking particularly to young people and you know showing them the excitement of of uh space flight have two minutes three minutes left here gree Greer South Carolina you're next go ahead please good morning um what I'd like to know is um with the ultraviolet camera are you looking at any planets B besides the moon I knew that you've already looked at the moon and they said it was like trying to catch a picture with a moving car um but have you looked at any of the other planets and we just think you're doing a great job up there and we love every one of you and hope you get to go up a million times that's very nice thank you very much and yes we have looked at other planets in fact uh just the previous shift we looked at both the planet Venus and the planet Mars and earlier in the mission we have looked at the planet Jupiter and so we have looked at the moon Jupiter Venus and Mars all three Del Ray Beach Florida you're next good morning just want to say how proud We Are that uh you people are up there and I wish our young people in the country would uh use use you people as an example rather than Madonna and some of these Baseball Stars and we just had an opportunity to visit the Kennedy Space Center so we saw some of the instruments and some of the other objects do each one of you know all the instruments that are uh on the board or there certain areas thanks well my I train on boast the instrument pointing system which is the platform we use to precisely point the instruments and then also on the The Hut whoopy and UI instruments on those telescopes but um my knowledge is not as detailed as Sam Sam's emphasis is on the telescopes and mine would be on the Orbiter systems and the instrument pointing system we go next to Pittsburgh running out of time go ahead Pittsburgh how do how do you compensate for uh motion of the astronauts versus shaking the scope and how hard is it on your thermal balance when you're pointed like that for a long period of time well there's um a compensation system on the telescopes themselves there are gyro packages and Optical star trackers and uh there's a control system that tries to compensate for vibration of the shuttle motion of the shuttle and things like that and pointed at deep space all the time uh it gets kind of cold during the night passes