♪♪
-♪ Fly me to the moon ♪
♪ Let me play among the stars ♪
♪ Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars ♪
♪ In other words, hold my hand ♪
♪ In other words, baby, kiss me ♪
♪ Fill my heart with song, and let me sing forevermore ♪
♪ You are all I long for, all I worship and adore ♪
♪ In other words, please be true ♪
♪ In other words, I love you ♪
♪♪
♪ Fill my heart with song ♪
♪ Let me sing forevermore ♪
♪ You are all I long for, all I worship and adore ♪
♪ In other words, please be true ♪
♪ In other words ♪
♪ I love ♪
♪ You ♪
-Good morning, Columbia, and good morning, Scooter.
That was for you from Jill and the boys.
Of course, it was Frank Sinatra singing "Fly Me to the Moon."
And one point of history: According to White Flight,
Gene Kranz, that song was played
during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon,
so we think you're in good company there.
-Ah, that was outstanding, Dan.
Thanks so much for playing it.
I think we all enjoyed it.
We're not going quite to the moon,
but I feel like we've reached some real heights
here on this mission, so thanks.
That was great.
-Houston, Columbia, for an Internet question.
-We're ready.
-Mario, this is question comes from Tom Dowling,
New York, New York.
And his message is, "First, great work to all abroad
and at MCC.
I am the webmaster at the New York City
Fire Department, and we all here,
at the FDNY, take pride in your accomplishments.
We are posting updates to our Internet sites,
to keep our uniformed and civilian members current
with your activities.
We are also thrilled to know one of our is on board.
Michael Massimino is the son of the late Mario Massimino,
retired manager and Chief Inspector
from our Bureau of Fire Prevention.
Michael, do you have any messages
for the members here at the FDNY?
All the best to the crew, the MCC and all the staff
supporting these vital missions and programs."
And my answer to Mr. Dowling is, first note,
I am really thrilled to have gotten this note here on orbit.
Just wonderful to know that some people
at the Fire Department are thinking about us,
and you took the time to write this note.
I'm really thrilled to get it.
My father, as mentioned in your note, died a few years ago,
and unfortunately he couldn't be here
to see the launch in person,
but I wanted to do something to commemorate his memory
and kind of bring something of his with me,
and when I talked to my mom about this, she said,
"Well, you know what meant the most to him
and to us was the Fire Department."
So on board with me in my personal kit,
I have my father's Fire Department pin,
and that's really a treasured possession of mine.
It's something that I'm flying not only for my dad,
but in honor of all the folks at the New York City
Fire Department.
And growing up with the Fire Department
being such a big part of our lives,
as when I was a kid and growing up in New York,
it really made an impression of me
of the wonderful work that they do,
how important the work is that they do at the Fire Department.
Some of my best memories are going to work with my dad,
and visiting the fire stations,
and meeting his friends and his colleagues,
and the memory of my dad and those memories of growing up
with the Fire Department are still with me today.
They are my heroes, the people of the Fire Department,
New York City Fire Department, are my heroes.
They were when I was a kid growing up,
and they still are today.
They're an inspiration to me here on this flight
and every day, and I really want to thank them
for thinking about us and for writing this note,
and really hope that I get a chance
to keep in touch with them in the years to come as well,
so, Mr. Dowling, thank you very much for your note,
and best wishes to everyone at the FDNY.
-Mike, nice touch.
Fitting way to honor your father,
and a nice salute to the New York Fire Department.
I appreciate that. We'll pass that along.
Columbia, Houston.
Alpha, Yuri, Carl and Dan are standing by for your phone call.
Please, go ahead.
-It's Space Station Alpha.
How are you today?
-Good, good day, Columbia.
How are you today?
-Hey, greetings from the Space Shuttle Columbia
to the International Space Station Alpha.
It's great to be up here in orbit with you.
We're glad to be along, sharing some flight time in space.
How are you doing today?
-Oh, thank you, great.
We just changed our shots, so what about you?
You can see if you have the yellow and green.
Is this correct?
-Yes, hopefully you're getting a good link with us.
-Yeah, you guys look great.
Must be good to be getting out of those space suits
for a change and into some regular clothes.
Looks like you're having a good day.
-It's been a very busy time, but you're right.
We're having a little bit of a kick-back
relaxation time today,
and I think the whole crew is appreciating that.
Let me turn it over to Jim Newman.
-Hey, Dan.
It's good to be talking to you here,
and I just wanted to, from Nancy and I,
fellow classmates to you and Carl, wanted to say hello,
and, in particular, it's good to be back in space,
at least at the same time as you and Carl.
-Yeah, it's great. It's a lot of fun.
This past week has been great following you guys, and, Jim,
we just want to let you know that some things never change.
We still have lots of shrimp cocktail leftover
that Frank left us. -Well, very good.
I was telling some stories about the overdosing
on shrimp cocktail myself on STS-51.
Didn't put quite enough water in one of those,
and that horseradish was a little bit too much dry.
-Yeah, we've been
sort of working at those shrimp cocktails,
and we're trying to whittle them down,
but there's a whole bunch of them.
And, Jim, how did those tools work up there?
Yeah, we had a chance to look at them
I guess about 8 years ago,
and they worked pretty well then.
They still working pretty good?
-Yeah, in fact it is alarming
because I ended up being on the HST PFR,
which we tested, and also using the HST PRT
for swapping the big scientific instrument in and out,
the power ratchet tool
and the portable foot restraint, and they both worked great,
as you and I showed those many years ago.
-Well, that's great news, and I am glad that we were able
to work together on that out back on STS-51.
-That was quite a treat, and we have enjoyed following
what you all are doing on the Space Station.
We're very impressed.
Now that we've been up here a little over a week,
we can only marvel the fact that you all have been up there
for over 3 months, and how you guys must be doing,
and how expert you must be at everything you do
because we're still in that first week,
second week learning curve,
and, as you know, it goes quickly,
but still we can only imagine
what finesse you all must have in space now.
-Yeah, it's -- We've probably come a long way,
but every so often I have some moments where I --
Maybe right after I wake up in the morning,
and I'm a little clumsy, but anyways, yeah.
It's been a lot of fun.
We were wondering what the view is like from up that high.
-We just had an incredible pass at night over the US,
and it was so clear we could see from Miami to Boston.
We saw Chicago.
We could see well past Houston, and Tim
and I were up here in Scooter's window,
and we just could not believe the incredibly awesome view.
Up here at 315 miles,
you're really getting a lot of curvature of the Earth,
and it is just incredible.
-Are you guys --
It sounded like you guys have an early morning.
Is it going to be a night landing,
or are they shooting for right after sunrise?
-Our first opportunity is at night, we think.
It depends on what they decide to bring us in for.
The second opportunity is going to be one of those navy
Pinkies, commander's landing, as we used to say in the Navy,
as I know you remember, Dan.
-Yeah, don't forget to put on your cheaters, Scooter.
-Hey, I haven't gotten to that point yet.
[ Laughter ]
Just the hairballs are wearing cheaters.
-Yeah, copy that.
Hey, before I forget, I don't know if you heard it yesterday,
just wanted to say congrats to Digger and Mike
for their first flights,
and congrats to Rick and also Mike, for the first CVAs,
and congrats to all of you again.
I'm sure you heard this too many times,
but you all have had a great mission,
and we wish you all a nice, soft Navy landing.
-Thanks, thanks, man.
It really is a thrill to be up here,
a dream come true. It's been a great flight,
and great to fly with these folks here,
and just a wonderful experience and a great first flight.
-I just wanted to give you all our very best wishes,
our sincere appreciation for what you're doing on Station,
how important we think it is,
and I want you to know you're --
our hearts and thoughts and prayers will be with you
until you guys return,
and we hope to be waiting there on the ramp when you come back.
All the best for the rest of your mission.
-Okay, same to Columbia.
Have a good flight, and see you on the ground.
-Hi, this is an answer from Kefren --
a question from Kefren Hunter from Centreville, Illinois,
age 8.
And the question is, "To pilot Duane Carey.
I noticed you have a pretty cool watch
from the pictures on NASA TV.
Do you need a special kind of watch to fly in space?
What kind of watch do you have,
and do all astronauts have the same watch?"
Well, this is a pretty special watch.
It's made by Omega,
and NASA actually gives us choice of a few different kinds
of watches to fly in space, and I chose this one
because it has a lot of features that I like.
It's not my watch.
I'll have to give it back when I'm done with the mission.
What makes it handy to fly in space, Kefren,
is the fact that there are several timers.
I can, with this one watch,
I can see what time it is at the Cape.
I can see what time it is for our mission,
the lapse time on the mission.
I can see what the Greenwich Mean Time is,
and I've also got several timers and alarms I can set up,
and a lot of our tasks on space are tied to certain times.
That -- We have to accomplish them at certain times,
so I can set alarms on my watch to remind me
to do the next job that I'm scheduled to do,
so it's a very handy watch to fly in space.
Yeah, it looks real fancy and everything,
and I really like it, but after the mission,
I'm going to give it back.
Thanks a lot. -Okay, Houston.
Now we have an Internet question here,
and this one is from Nigel Middleton, from England.
The question is actually addressed
to the pilot and commander,
but they said that I could answer it,
since I sit right in the center and just behind them.
And the question is, "When the shuttle takes off,
we see the amount of vibration on film.
How do you cope with this when trying to view
the instruments and press buttons without losing focus?"
And that's actually an excellent question.
We have a whole suite of simulators that we train
in prior to the mission,
and, Nigel, actually the one thing that we really don't train
quite exactly for is the intense vibration,
especially in first stage,
when you're on the solid rocket boosters.
That was probably my biggest surprise on my first mission.
This is my fourth mission as a flight engineer,
and that was really a surprise to me
that it took a little bit of effort
to concentrate on the forward displays,
so I could assist the pilot and commander
in watching over the systems.
And, of course, you can see I wear glasses now,
and it's even a little worse when you wear glasses
because they start bouncing around too.
So you can probably see in the camera views,
that are typically located behind us looking forward,
that it is shake, rattle and roll in first stage,
and then it gets quite smooth after the solid rocket
boosters are away from vehicle,
and second stage is actually quite smooth,
except for the constant acceleration
and the g-forces building up.
-Hey, Nancy, if you don't mind,
I'd like to ask you a quick question.
There is something that we practice numerous times
in the simulator, yet it surprised me
when we finally did it in space, especially after we were up here
a while and got adapted to zero-g.
Was the first -- Not the first, but after about 3 days in orbit,
we did a rather large OMS burn,
and something happened that kind of surprised me.
Do you remember that particular incident?
-Well, Digger, I think what was amusing to the crew up here
was to watch the flying MS 2 on the flight deck
during any of the OMS burns, a two-engine OMS burn.
MS 2 went from my position, just hovering over C3 here
in the center panel, as you can see behind me,
to being plastered against the aft wall and the aft windows.
Jim Newman really helped out.
He planted his feet right behind me,
and pushed me back forward, and it's amazing that,
even after just a few days in space,
that acceleration from the OMS burns
lighting up really caught me by surprise.
-As it did me.
As soon as the engine slipped, we were --
Scooter and I were watching out instruments,
but out of the corner of my eye
I could see Nancy in one instance,
and the next instance she was gone.
And that's all for today.
Columbia currently passing over Houston
and the Johnson Space Center.
The crew, again, enjoying an off-duty period this morning.
A quiet day in orbit for Columbia's astronauts
before they begin the work to prepare to come home
early Tuesday morning to the cape.
-Houston, we have some folks outside.
You're going to have about a 34-degree elevation,
so it should be a good pass as you're going overhead here,
and we're also done with the next card
in the ProShare machine.
If you have any more, we'll certainly get
to work on it. -Okay, Mario.
This question is from Brian Mindaman
of Mosinee, Wisconsin, age 35.
His question is,
"How do the shuttle crews keep from dropping tools in space?"
-Well, Brian that's a really good question,
brings up a good point.
In space, just about anything can get away from you,
including the shuttle if you're out there floating,
so for that reason we have tethers on everything
that we take out with us and use, including ourselves.
We're tethered to the orbiter along one side rail,
as you might see down the sides of Columbia
where the radiators go out on the payload bay doors.
And every piece that we take out with us from the air lock
is tethered to us, or a large tool station back,
so a lot of times when you see us working,
you'll see things floating everywhere,
but if you check really close,
there'll be little tethers coming down, attaching it,
because if you lose it and it's out of your grasp
more than an eighth of an inch, it's gone forever,
and so for that very reason we're very careful
with what we do out there, and everything is tethered.
Okay, my commander brings up another good point.
He asked, "Why didn't I tether to the solar rays?"
And I wanted to, but because it was such a large mass,
it was determined that it would be unsafe to tether to that
because it could actually cause problems
in terms of taking me off the arm with it,
and perhaps damaging the suit and/or the RMS,
the manipulator arm, because of its large mass,
so the only tether in that case were my arms,
and you can bet that I had a death grip on that baby.
-Hey, Rick.
I was curious when you guys were out there,
how do you keep from getting disoriented?
It looks like there's no up side ...
up, no up side, down, no sideways.
How do you keep from getting all turned around out there?
-Well, that's a very good question, Digger,
and the answer is we don't.
The first time I was out there, I came down the payload bay,
and I thought I was all lined up
and everything was looking nice and rosy,
and then when I looked down at the payload bay,
I realized I had lost my frame of reference
and didn't know what was up or down,
and I literally had to take a couple seconds
just to get my brain back, and figure out points in space
where I actually was before I could move.
So you have to be careful when you're moving around out there
that you don't move too fast,
and that you're always watching where you're going
because you can spin your gyros really quick.
-Columbia, Houston,
we've just completed the handover in the Control Center,
so this will be the Orbit One Team's swan song for the flight.
It's been said that one picture is worth 1,000 words,
and that couldn't be more true than in the case of the Hubble.
The words are inadequate to describe
what you have accomplished.
Simply put, and if you'd allow me to turn a phrase,
you have enabled mankind to look where no one has looked before,
and I am certain that in the ensuing weeks and years,
the world will marvel at the inevitable discoveries to come,
so rather than a swan song,
this is a new beginning in more ways than one.
God bless you for your reference,
and may he guide you to a safe landing.
And on behalf of the stock at Goddard,
the CSR here in Houston and all the folks at MCC,
we'd like to say: Thanks for the ride.
We'll see you at Ellington.
-Thank you, Mario.
Your message was very well received up here.
Of course, we couldn't do it without all the help
from the stock and the back rooms
and the CSR and, of course,
all of the support we've gotten from the Johnson Space Center,
from the Control Room to the engineers,
to everybody who helped prepare all our equipment
for the space walks.
The Hubble -- It's been a real privilege to work on the Hubble.
It's an experience, I think, that's changed
all of our lives up here,
and I know that in the coming months and years,
the beautiful images and data that will come
from the Hubble Space Telescope will change the lives
of virtually everybody on planet Earth.
Thanks for your message.
-As you're out there and you're walking in space,
what are you looking at? What are you seeing?
I mean, aside from your mission, which is working on the Hubble
and getting that back into shape.
What are you seeing around you?
-Oh, this is Mike Massimino.
For me, at times I was really concentrating
on what I was doing, and you're only looking straight ahead,
say into one of the bays of the telescope
and works on an instrument,
or removing an instrument or putting it in,
and you almost forget where you are.
You're -- I felt just like I was in the pool where we trained
because it was very similar to that experience,
but then that time would pass,
and it would be time to move to another location,
and you might have a minute, sometimes I had a moment or two
to look at where I was, and it was just amazing.
You'd look out over the shuttle, and at times during the daylight
would see the earth below you, and it was just spectacular.
It was incredible.
The view around you and the suit where you can look all around
and see the Earth going back is just beautiful.
It's amazing. It's hard -- It's really hard to imagine.
I don't think any adjective that I could think of,
or any words I could use, could ever describe it.
It was just an awesome sight, and to be out there
and to look at your friends inside,
who I could see clearly into the shuttle
when I was pointed in that direction,
to see my friends inside working with us,
Nancy flying us around on the arm and our other crewmates,
and to also look at my buddy, Jim Newman,
who I was space walking with,
and look into his eyes and see what he was seeing.
It was -- Just though are the memories
I think that will stay with me forever.
-What will you think of when you look back on this,
and how do you feel about being such
an important part of history in the making?
-Well, this is exactly why I wanted to come to NASA.
I wanted to be part of what I believe
is the greatest advantage that mankind has ever undertaken,
however small my part.
Right now I think, when I look back on this mission,
I'm going to have an immense sense of pride
that we took a team of seven folks, including --
We took a team of seven folks,
and were trained by literally hundreds of people back at JSC
and KSC and Goddard Space Center,
and actually folks all over NASA,
and we were able to,
within about a year's period of time,
get it all together and pull this mission off,
and be able to come back and hold our heads high
that we did everything we said we were going to do.
-Can you give us a little sense of what Hubble can do
in its current state better than what the ground can do,
and what the ground with adaptive optics
and other technologies better than Hubble?
Kind of how they work together to do whatever it is
that you guys are going to do.
-So there's a couple of things that Hubble does really well
that can't be done on the ground yet,
and one of which is that Hubble, being in Earth's orbit,
can observe during the daytime,
and so you're able to point at a single source in the sky,
say some very, very distant galaxy,
and look at it almost around the clock,
and that's something that obviously the
ground observatories can't do
because as soon as the sun starts coming up,
or as soon as the galaxy sets in one horizon or the other,
they have to stop observing.
And so Hubble has that ability to look at an object
for a long period of time.
The pointing system on Hubble is also superb,
and so it is unrivaled in its ability
to be very steady when it looks at a source,
and anytime anybody has taken a photograph
and the camera shakes a little bit and the image is blurred,
that's an inevitable consequence of being on planet Earth.
Now, these very big telescopes, like the Gemini telescopes
and the tech telescopes
and others that are coming online,
are rapidly encroaching on Hubble's territory,
but that's a good thing because
the two types of technologies work very well together.
You can do an initial discovery observation on the Hubble
and then go follow up with one of the big light buckets.
The limitations on the ground-based telescopes now are,
they really only work well in the infrared and red to make
the kind of images that Hubble makes whereas
the Hubble works throughout the entire visible spectrum
and also the infrared and ultraviolet.
Now that we've brought the NICMOS back to life,
we can do the infrared again.
Eventually I think the technology will be there
that the ground-based telescopes
will be able to do most of what Hubble does,
but it'll still have a very useful function,
in fact maybe still a leading function,
in helping to expand the discoveries space,
and so I really have to stress
that the telescopes all work together,
and that's really the wonderful part of all this astronomy.
-This is Mission Control, Houston.
About 4,300 statute miles behind Columbia
is the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Hubble Space Telescope was released from Columbia
yesterday morning, about 4:04 a.m.
-Columbia. No reply required.
We're 3 1/2 minutes to the LOS.
Message 83, 84 are on board.
With the comm situation that we have,
we will bid you a good night now.
We know you have a busy day tomorrow.
We will be listening if you need anything.
Have a great sleep.
-Houston, we'll go ahead and reply.
Thanks for everything.
We'll take a look at the message and talk to you later.
-This is Mission Control, Houston.
You're looking at a view of the Galapagos Islands,
from a camera in the payload bay of the Space Shuttle Columbia,
as Columbia orbits over the eastern Pacific Ocean
at an altitude of 350 statute miles.