STS-85 Day 9 Highlights

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On Friday, August 15, 1997, 6:00 a.m. CDT, STS-85 MCC Status Report # 18 reports:

A final day of robotic arm testing with a prototype destined for use on the International Space Station signaled the start of Discovery's ninth flight day in space.

Commander Curt Brown, Pilot Kent Rominger, Mission Specialists Jan Davis, Robert Curbeam and Steve Robinson, and Canadian Payload Specialist Bjarni Tryggvason were awakened by Jackson Browne's rendition of."Stay" which prompted Brown to jokingly wish for an extension day to the planned end of mission Monday.

Jan Davis watched over the Manipulator Flight Demonstration experiment while Japanese investigators again maneuvered the Small Fine Arm remotely from a control room near Mission Control. It is the final planned work with the arm during this mission.

While MFD operations were ongoing, Robinson again used the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System's ultraviolet imaging telescope to observe Comet Hale-Bopp and Curbeam continued his work with the Bioreactor Demonstration System designed to perform cell biology experiments under controlled conditions. Tryggvason spent his day supporting data gathering with the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount experiment.

Before the crew's workday began, they discussed the mission's progress with reporters in the U.S. and Canada as part of the traditional crew news conference. Questions ranged from life in space for the first time space travelers to providing a report card on the more than 24 experiments being conducted throughout the mission.

With landing scheduled for Monday, Brown and Rominger conducted routine communications checks with ground stations in Florida and California to ensure a good link when Discovery is on final approach to the runway. Forecasters predict favorable conditions for the single landing opportunity available at the Kennedy Space Center.in Florida, Monday, citing a dominant high pressure system that should remain in the area for several days. While the actual landing time is likely to change following tomorrow's rendezvous and retrieval of the CRISTA-SPAS satellite, Discovery is expected to touchdown at about 6:14 a.m. Central time on the concrete runway at the Shuttle Landing Facility.

On Friday, August 15, 1997, 5:00 p.m. CDT, STS-85 MCC Status Report # 19 reports:

Flight day nine activities aboard Discovery today saw the STS-85 crew support the last test of ground commanding capability of a small robotic arm, final data collection and deactivation of several science experiments and a checkout of the equipment that will support satellite retrieval operations Saturday.

Commander Curt Brown, Pilot Kent Rominger, Mission Specialists Jan Davis, Robert Curbeam and Steve Robinson, and Canadian Payload Specialist Bjarni Tryggvason are in an eight hour sleep period and will awaken at 10:41 p.m. CDT.

Friday, Davis watched over the Manipulator Flight Demonstration experiment while Japanese investigators again maneuvered the Small Fine Arm remotely from a control room near Mission Control. This final test completed all of the planned objectives for the prototype of an arm that will be used at the end of a larger Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) arm on the future International Space Station (ISS). Shortly before going to sleep, the crew received a musical thank you -- part of the song."Mr. Robot" by the group Styx -- from the MFD team in Mission Control.

Robinson completed final data takes with the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System (SWUIS), mounted to the inside of the middeck hatch window, to observe Comet Hale-Bopp. Today's data, along with information gathered during three previous sessions, will help investigators understand what the comet is made of and how it is being affected by the solar wind.

Curbeam completed his work with the Bioreactor Demonstration System. More than 30 data runs with human colon cancer cells were completed. Future research on the ISS may reveal a way to halt the growth of these cells or kill them in the human body.

Tryggvason spent his day gathering data with the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount (MIM) experiment. The experiment, designed to gather data on how to protect sensitive microgravity processing experiments from spacecraft operation vibrations, is a more advanced version of one that has been flying on Space Station Mir for more than a year.

With landing scheduled for Monday, Brown and Rominger conducted routine communications checks with ground stations in Florida and California to ensure a good link when Discovery is on final approach to the runway. Forecasters predict favorable conditions for the single landing opportunity available at the Kennedy Space Center.on Monday. While the actual landing time is likely to change following tomorrow's rendezvous and retrieval of the CRISTA-SPAS satellite, Discovery is expected to touchdown in Florida about 6:14 a.m. CDT.

On Mir today, the Commander Anatoly Solovyev, Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov and NASA Astronaut Mike Foale took a brief ride in their Soyuz spacecraft, relocating it to a different docking port. The Mir 24 crew undocked from the Kvant-1 module at 8:30 a.m. CDT and redocked to the transfer node 44 minutes later at 9:14 a.m. CDT. During the fly around, Vinogradov took still photos and Foale recorded video of the damaged Spektr science module, its solar arrays and other parts of the station. Downlink of the video is not expected until Monday.

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