STS-70 Day 3 Highlights
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- On Saturday, July 15, 1995, 9 a.m. CDT, STS-70 MCC Status Report # 04
reports:
- Halfway through its third day in space, Discovery's crew has settled
into a routine of conducting and monitoring nearly 20 different
science experiments on the orbiter's middeck and flight deck.
- Pilot Kevin Kregel and Mission Specialist Don Thomas began the day
working with the HERCULES camera which will record pinpoint data on
the surface location of Earth observations images. A first attempt to
align the camera's Inertial Measurement Unit was unsuccessful, but the
crew attributed this to a need for some practice with the procedure,
which involves locating two stars with the camera in different
orientations.
- Mission Specialist Mary Ellen Weber checked the Bioreactor
Demonstration System and found the cells there to be developing
well. She also participated in visual function data gathering. Weber's
test followed a report that Kregel had successfully extricated a mote
from her eye.
- The workday began shortly after two o'clock this morning with a
wakeup call from Kate Smith singing "Beautiful Ohio" in honor of four
of the five crewmembers being from that state. Kregel claims New York
as his home state.
- On Saturday, July 15, 1995, 3 p.m. CDT, STS-70 MCC Status Report # 05
- With Discovery performing as flawlessly as has any spacecraft in
history, crew members completed a steady pace of experiment work
during their third day in orbit, taking a few breaks to speak with
media and other guests.
- The day's work centered on the HERCULES video camera, a camera
experiment sponsored by the Department of Defense Space Test Program
that allows the video to be automatically marked with the latitude and
longitude of its subject areas. Pilot Kevin Kregel and Mission
Specialist Nancy Currie worked with the camera, attempting to finely
align its internal navigation equipment by using star
sightings. Payload controllers are currently evaluating various
methods that may make it easier for the crew to take sights on stars
and align the camera as the flight progresses.
- Other work included operations with an experiment that gauges
astronauts' reflexes and hand-eye coordination by having a subject
respond to quick questioning from a laptop computer using a touch
screen. Another observation was made with the Windex experiment as
well, a study that observes the glowing effect created by the
shuttle's surfaces as they encounter atomic oxygen in low
orbit. Windex observed the effect of an engine firing on the glow
yesterday and today observed the effect of a waste water dump from the
shuttle.
- The crew also is maintaining a variety of biological experiments
ranging from tissue loss in space to the growth of cell cultures in
weightlessness to the effect of space flight on the early development
of animals.
- During the day, the crew spoke with World War II veteran Harland
Claussen at the Clement Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in
Milwaukee, WI, celebrating the installation of the first phone in that
VA facility for the free use of patients. Later in the day, ABC's Mike
and Maty show interviewed crew members as did the Toledo Blade
newspaper of Toledo, Ohio.
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