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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