by Ray Oyung

November 5, 1998

We're on flight day seven (FD 7), and things are going nominally. You might have heard this word often during media interviews and discussion on STS-95. It's definitely a good thing to hear. It basically means things are going normally as per scheduled flight plan.

The mission is scheduled to end this Saturday (as of this writing), and it's been very educational being part of this segment of the project. I'm currently in one of 3 Science Centers with dozens of other researchers listening to several key people who manage daily operational shuttle activities. Everybody in Mission Control is connected on the "loops," a huge networked chat line. Imagine having 12-way calling on your telephone and listening into six different conversations! We can select various channels or loops (for example, air to ground 1; air to ground 2; payload operations director; crew interface coordinator; payload coordinator, etc.). We can listen to some or all of these loops.

The structure for communication with the astronauts is quite elaborate. Communications are divided into two groups. One is the mission control group. The other is the payload group. Only one position is allowed to speak directly to the astronauts from the payload group. That person is called the Crew Interface Coordinator (CIC). On the orbiter side, the Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) and the Flight Director are the only people who can communicate with the crew. With 83 experiments in the payload on this mission, there may be quite a few questions that the astronauts have when carrying out these experiments. This is when we have to be on our toes. If an astronaut has a question about our experiment, we answer back to the Experiment Systems Engineer (ESE), who then relays the message to the Crew Interface Coordinator (CIC), and up it goes to the astronaut.

So here's a typical scenario. Astronaut Ray calls down with a question about strange sleep signals showing up on the laptop just after instrumenting one of the other crewmembers. Ray calls down to the CIC. Since the Sleep Team is listening on the loops, they say to change from nominal procedures 03 to malfunction procedure 01. The ESE relays this to the CIC, and the CIC sends the message to Astronaut Ray. Whew! I told you it was an elaborate communication system. So now you might be wondering why it's so complicated. With so many acronyms, experiments and people involved in a shuttle mission, communication to and from the crew must be clear and concise. Mistakes are rare, and this is one of the reasons why they're rare.

The Sleep Team! Recognize the two people on the monitor to the right?

John, David, Angie, Elkin2: Other important members coordinating life science experiments for STS-95 and other shuttle missions.

Tim and Ray at the Science Center in the morning...

Tim and Ray at the Science Center after a long day...