ISS: A Home in Microgravity

John Rau and Mike Chenelli shown on screen.

JR: Good afternoon from Kennedy Space Center and welcome to a station update. My name is John Rau and I will be your host for the next hour. Today's topic will be the news surrounding the launch of STS 109. However, the mission will not be visiting the International Space Station. Therefore our discussion for today will be news about the space shuttle Columbia, its payload and crew. Before we start the discussion, let's take a closer look at the schedule for this afternoon.

List of Objectives shown on the screen.

Our objective for today is to begin the Web cast with the latest processing news surrounding STS 109. From this we will then talk about the following. Over to maintenance, [Curb] STS 109, payload of STS 109, and then to close things out we'll talk about the current status of the shuttle fleet. John and Mike shown on screen. At this time, I would like to introduce our guest for today, his name is [Mike Chenelli]. He is a test project engineer at Kennedy Space Center. Mike could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for KSC?

Mike: Sure. Hey John, Good to be back on the Web andÉ

John: Glad to have you back.

Mike: Thank you. And kicking off the brave new year of space shuttle launches, promises to be a real exciting year and it promises to be a great year in the space program business and shuttle launching and it's starting out pretty big in the first half and getting a little quieter towards the second half. That's our plan, anyways. So basically what I do as a test project engineer is we are responsible for the overall integration testing of the space shuttle. And by that I mean we kind of watch it when it lands on the runway and nurse it through the flow all the way up into the point she takes off from pad.

John: Okay. Thanks a lot, Mike. Okay let's start by the latest processing news of STS 109 in Columbia, what's happening right now?

Mike: Okay. John: Fill us in, please.

Mike: Great. This next launch is STS 109 and it is part of the space shuttle Columbia. It's been a while since Columbia's been back in space, so we're kind of eager to get her back up where she belongs. And it's been a long flow, which we'll talk more about that in a minute.

Mike is speaking on screen.

Most recently, space shuttle Columbia has been over at a processing facility Bay 3, and it's been there for some time, and it's nearing the end of its OPF stay as we call it. We've got the [tail] of the doors closed a couple of days ago. Our new engines are installed. All the systems are checked out. We have a few remaining tasks to do in the next couple of days, and then we plan on taking Columbia out of the processing bay next Wednesday. And we're going to roll her over to the vehicle assembly building to mate it up with the external tank and boosters which are waiting in the vehicle assembly building. And then subsequently a week later, we'll roll out to the launch pad. So it's a good time in the flow.

John and Mike shown on screen.

John: Now before all this happened, do you-, did you take a trip to California and you went through what's called the over to maintenance down period? Could you explain that a little bit and tell the viewers what exactly that entails?

Mike: Sure. That'd be great. As John referenced, there is a-, every approximately 10 flights of the space shuttle, we go through a process called an OMDP, Over To Maintenance Down Period. And that's an excellent opportunity for us to kind of vehicle up in dry dock and take a good look at her. And we go through a tremendous amount of structural inspections. Basically, take her right down to the bottom bare bones.

John: Like a ship would be? Put a ship in the dry dock for a couple of months or what have you and then

Mike: Exactly.

John: It's like that?

Mike: Exactly. Right. We make sure all the structural integrity is right, if there's any problem structurally, we also go through all the systems. If there's any modifications or enhancements that we have planned, we go through those at that time and work those in, installing new systems, taking out old ones. And so it's a really good way to get the vehicle modernized.

John: In what way would we take the shuttle from Kennedy? What kind of transportation do we use to bring it from here to California?

Mike: Okay, what we do is we-,

John: Actually we've got a picture of that right here behind. Mike: Exactly, it's a great shot of Columbia.

John: Pull that up for you. A picture of shuttle Columbia on top of modified 747.

Mike: What we've done is we bring Columbia, or any space shuttle, over to the mate/de-mate device at the shuttle landing facility, load it on top of one of two of our modified 747s, which is called an SCA or a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. And then we fly it cross country to, in this case, Palmdale, California. And then offload it and then begin the extensive modification period.

John: What type of an aircraft is this that's carrying the shuttle?

Mike: It's a 747.

John: Specially designed to carry

Mike: It's been specially modified. If you were to look on the inside of the fuselage, it's mostly been taken out. All the seats of course are gone, and of course the space shuttle weighs a lot, just under 100 tons. So basically what we try to do is make it as easy as possible for the 747 to carry it.

John and Mike shown on screen.

So basically all you'd see is a lot of support structures to support the weight of the shuttle on top of it, and pretty much it's an empty aircraft except for a few seats.

John: Okay. All right, let's go down to the next picture here.

Mike: Okay, well as John said, last January I flew out to California, stayed out there about a month to work on Columbia. A picture of the hanger in the facility in Palmdale, California. And Columbia actually was out there for quite some time. It left, after its last flight, Columbia flew in 1999 on Mission STS 93, which delivered an extra telescope, you might remember.

Eileen Collins was the first female shuttle commander, and that was the last flight for Columbia. And she came back, we got her all ready to go, sent out to California, September 24th, 1999 and she stayed out there until it was like late February, early March of this past year, of 2001. So she was out there for quite a while. There is a good shot of the hanger and I like to talk about this because a lot of folks rarely see our shuttle operations out in California.

Mostly everything here is at the Cape. This particular facility which you're looking at is the hanger in Palmdale, California. Palmdale's about an hour east and north of Los Angeles. And probably about a half an hour away from Edwards Air Force Base where the shuttles land, should they do a California landing. So this particular facility is actually where all the shuttles are built. This is the actual place where starting with Enterprise back in the mid-70s, all these orbiters were built.

John: So they have all the parts and pieces and what have you to like repair or-, they're right there ready to go.

Mike: Right, right. All the tooling-, not really the tooling for structure components. They were built in other locations and shipped here. But as far as the structural connections and all the final assembly, it was done here and the initial testing was done in Palmdale. So Columbia's kind of going back to a different home, so to speak.

John: All right. Could you talk about this shot right here? Actually of you beside Columbia. A picture of Mike standing next to Columbia.

Mike: Sure. There's a shot of me next to Columbia, that's towards the forward nose of the ship. And like I said, I got to spend about a month out there and it's a really different operation than we do here at Kennedy. It's a different atmosphere, kind of a little different way of doing business. And it was a great time because a lot of the folks out there were around when Columbia was originally built and when Enterprise and Challenger and the rest of the shuttles were also built. So I spent a lot of my free time talking to a lot of these older folks and getting a lot of historical information and learning an awful lot from their experiences out there. So it was a great time.

John: I bet. Let's go on to the next. This is in shuttle bay is it not? A picture of the shuttle payload bay.

Mike: Exactly, yeah.

John: How big is that exactly?

Mike: The payload bay is 60 feet long and it's 15 feet diameter and that shot there is taken from inside of space shuttle Columbia. The camera was in the back of the payload bay and it's shooting forward. So if you look down, you can see the bottom which looks a lot different. Everything's opened up. When you see a space shuttle in orbit, you'll see like a nice white liner at the bottom. Well underneath that liner there's a tremendous amount of plumbing, tanks, your fuel [inaudible], things for your fuel cells, you've got a tremendous amount of stuff down there. But everything's exposed here so you get to see some really neat things. Looking forward, you'll see that circle behind me, that's the actual air lock that the entrance from the payload bay into the crew module. And then right above, there are the payload bay doors which are now closed, the silver, shiny surface.

A picture of Mike sitting on the track pans in the bay showing the wiring and the plumbing.

John: This is more a close-up of the bay, is it not or are you still in the bay here or is this somewhere else?

Mike: Yep. Actually I'm-, what I did is I kind of crawled down in the belly of Columbia and what you can see here-, I'm sitting down actually on the track pans within the floor. So that's about as low as you can go in the payload bay of the ship. And I wanted to kind of show some of the wiring and plumbing. You can see some of the tubing and piping.

Actually right next to me there are two of the fuel cells. This is towards the front of the ship. You see the white boxes with the red stripes. I think that's the closest one of the fuel cells. A picture showing protective covers over the fuel cells. John: Is that part of it or no?

Mike: That's a different one.

John: Okay, let me go back.

Return to picture of Mike sitting on the track pans.

Mike: But what you have there are-, those actual white boxes are actually covers over the fuel cells to protect those. But it's kind of neat to show you how much stuff there really is in there. Underneath those white liners, what's tucked in there and how much plumbing and connections and wiring really goes [through the lock] [talkover] tremendous. And it kind of shows the difficulty of working in there too. Really limited space and you really have to be careful where you step, what you reach for.

John: So when was Columbia built? Back in the early-, or late-70s, right?

Mike: Mid-70s. J

ohn: Mid-70s?

Mike: Right.

John: So this is '75 or so technology or is it a little bit more advanced now?

Mike: You've got really a combination. You've got some components that originally came out of the late-60s, early-70s, mid-70s, that still are used. Of course a lot of these things have been going through upgrades. In the fuel cells, there's been enhancements to the fuel cells over the years. So the technology is constantly being upgraded in a methodical process.

A picture of the payload bay.

John: And anything else to the shot? A close up of some of the structure and support tubes in the payload bay.

Mike: And that's just another shot of-, they show even kind of deeper inside the belly, kind of looking up. And you can see more of-, some more of the structure. You've got different support tubes to hold up parts of it. And the reason I show that is because it shows the confines when you're in there. It's very, very-, even though the space shuttle is a very robust vehicle, it's very delicate. And when you're in there, even the support structures, the bore and tubes that provide structural support, if they're pressed kind of the wrong way, you can-, by just the fact of leaning on one, you can dent it.

John: Wow, it's that fragile?

Mike: Right. It's very fragile in some ways and very strong in others. So this kind of shows you that you really have to be careful what you do.

A picture of the payload bay looking aft.

Here's a shot taken from the floor of the payload bay looking aft. So that would be looking to the back with the payload doors closed up on top. And you can also see a lot of green area exposed and a lot of open areas. But it's kind of show you with-, and the structure you see on there, just work platforms, let you kind of crawl around and do your stuff.

A picture of the cockpit of Columbia.

John: Okay. And this is the cockpit, is it not?

Mike: Right.

John: How many actual-, there's a pilot and there's a co-pilot and then is there a navigator up there as well, or just those two?

Mike: When you're on [asset] to fly, when you're launching, you have typically you find four people on the flight deck. We have the commander who sits in the front left-hand seat, pilot sits on the front right and then you have behind them you have mission specialists one and two. And they provide support for switch positioning and other items.

John: So it's sort of like a 747, they have many people up there in the cockpit as well, probably about four or five?

Mike: Right, for a launch. And then of course you have the aft flight deck for other operations for arm operations and all that. So at different times, you're going to have different amounts of people on the flight deck. This shot here, what they're trying to show is as John has alluded to that Columbia was built in the mid-70s. Prior to this flight we had CRTs which are basically old-style televisions so to speak. We had three of those as displays for the astronauts to interact with the computers. Well as everybody knows on their home computers, everything is upgraded since the Ô70s, so we're also going through a process of upgrading the shuttle fleet. And now we have a series of nine multi-function displays. And so basically we did it during this maintenance period of Columbia, one of the major tasks was we took out a lot of the old gauges and meters and old-style stuff you might say, and we replaced it all with computer screens. So now the astronauts can call up displays on the computer screens, instead of using the old mechanical gauges and dials. It's much easier for them to use, it's much more-, they can get a much quicker and it's a safer system to fly.

A picture of Mike in his white bunny suit.

John: Here you are in your doctor's outfit?

Mike: Kind of. I guess it could be viewed as that. Actually it's kind of funny, we call it a bunny suit, and what we do with that is every time we go in the space shuttle, we have to worry about contamination because everything we leave inside the shuttle, on the ground it's probably not too big of a deal, might think of it as like maybe dirt on your living room floor, kind of annoying but you're not too concerned with it, it's kind of sitting down there and you don't think about it. Well the thing about putting your living room up in space, and as you're sitting in your couch watching TV, you're going to have dust and stuff floating, get in your eyes, and some of those nacho chips you dropped the night before. You kind of don't want all that stuff bothering you. And much like the shuttle, we don't want stuff bothering the astronauts when it's floating.

John: Is it comfortable to wear? Lightweight?

Mike: Yeah, it's very lightweight. It's a very lightweight garment. We got the head piece on for any hair coming off you. But it goes over your clothes. We also have booties that will go over your shoes and so we pretty much wrap ourselves up pretty tight. The reason I took this shot is kind of a funny shot in a way. And I'm actually standing in the bathroom of the space shuttle, so typically it's not a vacation shot you usually show is standing in your bathroom, but since this is a bathroom on a space ship, I thought I'd share that with you. This is actually where the astronauts would go to use the facilities and off to the right you can see-, I don't know if you can see much resolution on your computer screens at home, but you can see those little squares, and that's where you'd have your say gloves or wipies or little tissues. That's where all the things are stored and right behind me on the bottom would actually be where the space potty is installed.

John: Okay.

A picture of Mike coming out of the payload bay.

Mike: There's a shot of me coming out of the payload bay. And why I'm showing that is we-, when you enter the crew module, you go through the hatch, which everybody sees the astronauts getting in ready for a launch, they go through a circular hatch. Well in order to get into the payload bay, we go in through a different means. There's actually a doorway that's cut into the side of the space shuttle, just over the wing. And you have to kind of crawl through this small opening and then crawl down a ladder, and that's how you get in and out of the space shuttle. So I wanted to kind of show you how we do that.

John: Very interesting. It didn't show exactly, I'm glad you explained that.

Mike: Yeah, it's right forward of you and on the model I can show you in a few minutes I'll show you exactly where that door is located.

A picture of the shuttle on top of the 747 flying over Mikes office building.

John: Coming back, correct?

Mike: Exactly. Exactly, after about a year and a half or so we got Columbia home, which was great, and here's a shot of her flying just over the-, actually over my office building, past the ZAB on its way to the runway.

John: Is it hard to actually to fly the plane with the shuttle on its back? Do they really have to pay close attention to the detail?

Mike: Yeah, there's-, there are different dynamics and characteristics that you have to worry about when you're handling. Of course it's got 100 tons on its back, so it's going to act much differently. Of course your runway take off space is a lot longer because you have a lot more weight. But from what the pilots have said, it handles quite nicely. The 747 and shuttle landing on the runway.

John: Here's a landing. Actually-, now is there a lot of wear and tear on the vehicle itself, on the plane actually, when it lands? With all that weight pressing down onto the

Mike: It's not that bad.

John: Really?

Mike: As you'd think about. As you can imagine, he pretty much has kid gloves when he comes in to land it. And it's kind of funny when you see it, to actually see it landing at the runway. It actually looks smoother to me than a commercial jet as a touch down. The pilots are very, very good and actually it's kind of funny. My first landing I ever saw with a shuttle on top, I was actually a high school student down here on vacation. And this was back in 1984 and I saw a space shuttle Challenger come in on the 747. And I remember my grandfather remarking that he wishes his pilots were half as good as the pilot that flew the 747, because to see this monstrous two planes, a shuttle on top of a plane coming in, touching down just like it was a little Cessna.

John: That takes a lot of skill. Something like that.

Mike: It is. These are some of the best we have.

John: Now, when they land, where does the shuttle go? Where exactly? Would they de-mate it and then put it on a little truck or-, and then where does it go from there?

Mike: Okay, great question, John. What we'll do is we'll land there, we'll bring it over to the mate/de-mate device which actually for folks looking back at the landing and launch series, they see myself crawling around that structure seeing how it works. So it would be great if you guys go back and take a look at that. And it goes in there, we take it off, put it on a special transporter and bring it back to the OPF.

John and Mike shown on the screen.

John: Okay great, let's come back. Let's go to a chat room real quick.

Mike: Excellent.

John: A couple questions here. From Carlos: Mike, how do you feel about working as a test project engineer? Do you feel proud, do you feel good about it or?

Mike: Okay, Carlos. Well thank you. Glad to have you along today. I love it. To be honest with you. I've always wanted to work in the space program. When I first joined the space shuttle program back in '96, I worked as a fuel cell's engineer which was-, we saw the fuel cells a minute ago. We worked on that system. As a test project engineer, I get to see the overall picture. I get to interface with people involved in every system on board the orbiter, the external tank and the solid rocket boosters. So I get to see a much larger picture of it and I really enjoy it every day.

John: From Alexandra: When are you planning to launch the space shuttle for the Columbia mission?

Mike: Okay, Alexandra. That's a very timely question and that just changed actually. We had a week delay. Currently Columbia is scheduled to launch on February 28th and it'll be an early morning launch, so it'll be a nighttime type of experience. So if any of you are in Florida or on the east coast of the United States, I recommend you to look out your window in the early morning of the 28th and hopefully you'll see Columbia flying over your house.

John: That's exciting. So the main purpose for delaying these missions is probably security and whatnot or actual-, isn't it the main reason for doing that?

Mike: Actually, not really. We've actually had a-, and there was a lot of questions after what happened in September as far as security goes. And as I mentioned on our last Web cast about the STS 108 launch, we're being very attentive to security. And you can see that very visibly with very impressive air power and land systems. So shuttle is well guarded for launch and processing. Basically the reason is we're going up to see the Hubble space telescope and there's been-, there was a problem with the gyroscopes on board, direction wheels on board the Hubble space telescope which helps orientate it and keep its orientation and steering. And they had a problem with them and they decided hey, we're going up there to fix it, let's change out-, the components are acting kind of off nominal, so it takes a little time to get all the hardware down here to the cape, get it ready to be processed and put on board, as it was unexpected. And also they wanted to train the crew around Houston to do some tasks that they weren't planning on doing to make sure that they're ready to go when they get up there, that they know exactly what to do.

John: Okay. Well thank you, Mike for a very interesting tour of Columbia's maintenance down period. All right, let's go back and talk a little bit about the mission that's coming up now, which is the Hubble space telescope and what have you.

Mike: Okay.

John: Before we do that, do you have any-, you say you have a video clip of a processing?

Mike: Yeah.

John: Would you like to show that now or want to wait a few minutes for that?

Mike: We could show that now. What we have is a short clip and basically next Wednesday, like I alluded to before, we're going to take Columbia, we're going to roll her out of the OPF Bay 3. We're going to bring her to the [VAB] and then we've got a stack awaiting which is the boosters and the tank. And we're going to hook her up and take her to the launch pad and get her ready to go. So I've got a short video clip of

John: About two minutes or?

Mike: ...about two minutes long. This is actually of Discovery, but it's going to show you what's going to happen next Wednesday as we roll Columbia and get her ready to go.

John: Okay, before we continue with this, the STS Mission 109, we'll take a quick look at this video clip.

Video Clip playing on screen.

VAB OPERATIONS Ð Orbiter rollover.

Mike: Okay here's a great shot of the orbiter being rolled out and you can see we have a special transporter that we use now. And what that allows us to do is we use it to roll over the shuttles form the OPF to the VAB on their landing gear and then raise the landing gear in the VAB took a lot longer time between landing gear operations and tile. So now what we do is we do all that in the OPF, hook it up in special transporter, we have the gear raised, and door's locked and then bring her over. Saves us a lot of time. And there you can see the vehicle being escorted over. Not too far of a ride. Buildings are pretty close to each other, and there you can see going in the north side of the VAB, and there's a shot of it coming in. You notice a little notch on the top, that's pretty important. We put that in after the Apollo program to let the tail go through, which you see, so we don't scratch that up.

John: The VAB was meant for the Apollo missions?

Mike: Yeah, it was all designed for the Saturn V and Apollo, so we had to do some modification inside for shuttle.

Video Tape playing on screen.

VAB OPERATIONS Ð Horizontal to vertical in transfer aisle. And what we do is once the vehicle is inside, in this case Columbia next Wednesday, it stays in the transfer aisle which is the main passageway between the two sets of high bays on either side. We attach a sling system which you see the yellow bars. Sling's attached on the forward part of the space shuttle and the aft, and it makes you raise that up with a 250-ton crane, raise it up off the truck. Move the truck out of the way and then you'll see the shuttle being rotated so the nose goes vertical. And we have to raise it up a few hundred feet. What we have are off to the right of that picture are the integration cells, high bays one and three. And that is actually, behind there is where the booster and the tanks are waiting on top of the mobile launch platform. So what we need to do is we need to get the space shuttle almost to the top of the VAB and you can see there, in the vertical position now. And a very careful crane operator with a very delicate cargo is going to lift it up to the top of the VAB and then there's actually a little cut way through. You can see at the top and another reference to our [Leonid] launch series, in the VAB section you'll see us actually talking about that a little bit. And he kind of carries it up there, tweaks the wings to an angle and then cuts through the little passage way up at the top. And then once you're up at the top, you're in the integration cell. And then he'll basically, he's at that point now, he's going to cut through the opening and he's going to-, once inside there, he's going to level the wings out. And then slowly lower it down right next to the tank, so people can bolt it up, mate it up electrically and mechanically. Then just put on the collar and then send it out to the pad after that.

John: Right.

Mike: Car will come in, pick everything up and then take it for a ride. And there's a great shot of it-, it can be lowered down to be mated with the tanks. It's quite a process.

Video Tape playing on screen.

VAB OPERATIONS Ð Orbiter lowering into high bay. I've seen several of theses in the VAB and it's really amazing because you're standing there and the Discovery's so large and you're seeing it being gracefully lifted up and you look up and this 100-ton vehicle standing nearly above you. And it's quite impressive.

John: It looks very impressive, Mike.

Mike: And you can see it, it's being lowered, there's platforms that are specially made that service all of it, so you'll-, it actually slides down with very little room for error. You've got to slip the wings and the whole vehicle through these access platforms so they're-, you can see a gentleman up there watching. Gives you an idea of scale too, of size. As Discovery is being lowered down, making sure everything is where it should be, so we don't scratch anything up. And it's going to happen hopefully next Wednesday.

John and Mike shown on screen.

John: Well thank you very much for bringing that tape in. It helps out a lot, giving them something to look at. Actually, let's go on to the crew and explain who exactly are the crew that is going aboard the STS 109.

Mike: Okay. We've got a crew going up of seven and here's a picture of them. And they're pretty excited. I know they're getting ready to go, they waited quite some time to fly this mission.

A picture of the seven member space shuttle crew.

And we have our commander is Scott Altman. Our pilot will be Duane Carey, our payload commander will be John Grunsfield, our mission specialist, we're going to have four of them, we have Nancy Curry, James Newman, Richard Leninan, and Michael Meisnel. And they're training in Houston currently. They'll be down at the Cape later in January to do what we call a terminal countdown demonstration test where they'll practice emergency procedures plus also go through a mock countdown, which we'll do.

John and Mike shown on the screen.

And then I'll have the opportunity also later this month, one of my duties as a test project engineer is to brief the astronauts. And we have a briefing called an L minus 1 launch readiness briefing and I'll be able to conduct that in a couple of weeks. So I'll get to meet these folks and look forward to firsthand seeing how excited they are about flying.

John: Very good. Thank you. I believe this mission is somewhat different. It's pretty obvious that we're not going to the International Space Station this time around, we're going and servicing the Hubble space telescope. So let's go on to that and I actually have a couple of questions in the chat room.

Mike: Great.

John: Let's go to them first, how's that?

Mike: Okay, sounds good to me.

John: From Emily, what is the purpose of the Hubble space telescope? What exactly does it do in space?

Mike: Okay, Emily, glad to have you along today. Hubble space telescope has been an awesome tool for us. Basically it's dedicated to the mission of space science which is astronomical purposes and we've used in a whole host of ways in the last decade of its operation. We have a tremendous amount of discoveries, we've discovered planets, we've discovered different things about galaxies and stars and black holes. Just a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge and information about not only our solar system and our galaxy, but the entire universe. Stuff that we'd never have had the ability to do on Earth. On Earth as you know, there's an atmosphere. When you look through an atmosphere, it kind of clouds your vision with all the air. When it's in space, you pretty much have a clean shot, so you can see things much clearer, invisible light, infrared light, and different wavelengths, so Hubble is a great one for visible light.

John: Okay. We have another question from Albert. How far can the Hubble space telescope see? How far can it reach out?

Mike: Wow, okay Albert. We are constantly trying to define our distances, how far we can go out. And I don't think they have an actual exact measurement of how many light years. I know there's estimates of how many billions of light years it can go. We have looked farther and farther. The reason you probably wouldn't use the Hubble for maybe the most distant item you can see in the universe, is we see things in different wavelengths of light, different types of light. We have an X-ray telescope that looks at things emitting X-rays. We have infrared telescopes. Hubble works primarily in the visible light, so if you wanted to look further, you'd probably use other telescopes, but as far as resolution on the visible spectrum, hardly anything compares to Hubble.

John: Okay. Let's look at some pictures here.

Mike: Okay. John: Actually this is a picture of what?

A picture of the Hubble telescope.

Mike: There's a great shot of Hubble. And you can see Hubble right there and that point is attached to a support structure within the payload bay. And it's a really neat shot because you can see Hubble, the shuttle below, and then above you can see the rim of the Earth lit up. And that's a pretty shot.

John: And that's actually part of the servicing, right? You can see the arm coming across. Is that the shuttle arm? Mike: Right, exactly. You've got-, what we do is on a servicing mission what we do is we go up there, rendezvous with the telescope. We have very talented pilots who get us very close to the Hubble, and then we reach out with our 60-foot robot arm. We'll grab a hold of it and then we'll bring it in, actually attach it in the payload bay so it's a fixed-, inside. And then we'll have teams of astronauts going outside using the arm, changing components in and out.

John: Okay. And actually some pictures from Hubble I believe of a galaxy. A picture of space taken from the Hubble telescope.

Mike: Exactly. [Full] pictures that-, it's before the astronomers, astrophysicists, space scientists and physicists around the world just a treasure trove of information. Whereas a layman like myself when it comes to this, might see only pretty pictures, there's a tremendous amount of scientific data that comes within those pictures, and these folks that study this can tell you so much about physics and the physics of the universe and how everything works as far as a tremendous amount of information.

A picture of two galaxies taken from the Hubble.

John: Information, going through these pictures, they're about the same but they tell you a lot of information. Of course with us it is a pretty picture.

Mike: It is.

John: And those two, are those two galaxies?

Mike: It looks like two small galaxies, right. The technical name I'm sure somebody can give me a little better help on that one, but like I said, for a layman it's beautiful pictures and it shows you what, how incredible our universe is, and for scientists it teaches them an awful lot about science.

John: Okay.

Mike: And it's amazing. They've discovered stars being born, discovered planets, you discovered intensive black holes, they've discovered all types of tremendous discoveries.

A picture of the Hubble telescope in space.

John: And here's a picture of the Hubble space telescope. Do you know how large that would be? Or do you know any dimensions of that?

Mike: Hubble, off hand, I really don't. Hubble is a very large telescope and

John: It could fit into the bay, of course.

Mike: Yeah, it fits in the bay but not much room left over. It's a big, heavy telescope. It was one of our heaviest payloads early on. We launched Hubble in 1990, actually space shuttle Discovery did in 1990. And I remember that because I was there for that launch. And so Hubble's been up there for 11 years going on 12 years. It's been an incredible instrument. It's taught us so much and shown us so many things we never would have had the opportunity to do. And there's what it looks like today. Then it will look a little different after we do some work on it in a couple of months, but

John: So what exactly are they working on, Mike, do you know?

Mike: Okay yeah, Hubble-, one of the neat things about Hubble is it was designed with the space shuttle in mind. And by that I mean it was designed to be serviceable. It was designed to go up there every so many years, kind of tune it up, fix it up, and change components out. So it's very easy for the astronauts to do that. On this particular mission, our primary tasks are we're going to install a new advanced camera, the ACS system. And what this camera's going to do is give us twice the field of view and actually five times the resolution of the camera it's replacing. So you can think of it as you have basically 10 times more discovery ability to find stuff. So it's a much more powerful camera and hopefully we'll find some, have some even more incredible pictures coming from that system.

John and Mike shown on the screen.

We're also going to replace the solar rays. We've had some troubles in the past with solar rays, of course you want the more efficient better ones as technology develops. So we have solar rays that are actually 45% smaller than the current ones, but they'll give us 25% more power. So they're smaller and more powerful. So we're going to install those. We're going to replace some power control units. We're going to replace a cooling system with a more efficient cooling system. We're going to replace gyroscopes, which I mentioned earlier, which were going faulty. We're going to change those out so Hubble's got a good steering system so she can point where we want her to point for those pictures. And we're going to put new blankets on the outside, kind of dress it up a little bit with thermal protection. So we've got a few things to do on several space walks.

John: Okay. From Hubble, let's go off to the chat room again. Trevor is actually asking how-, can the space telescope see the planets? Probably off in other galaxies for instance or just our own galaxy?

Mike: Yeah, we have seen other planets. We have evidence of other planets. It's not like you can, most of our evidence of planets comes from say empirical evidence. In other words, they do-, they see motions of stars and motions of other bodies that have irregularities to them. And by that they say, "Okay, well if something's pulling on them, there's a planet." They can kind of get an idea how much of a mass is tugging and pulling. So a lot of it's blind science, I call it. Using mathematics to kind of get you there.

John: A lot like a black hole, for instance. You would notice the lack of light.

Mike: Right. And [Chandra] the X-ray observatory would be looking at that for X-ray emission and all for the black holes. And hopefully with Hubble's new camera it can maybe snap some pictures hopefully of some of those planets coming up.

John: I know we answered this before, but from Sarah, how long has the space telescope been orbiting the Earth?

Mike: Okay Sarah, actually Hubble flew I believe it was April of 1990. So it's been up there almost 12 years now. Been up there awhile. It's got a mission we expect to last probably another 10 years. Hubble was built really to keep changing components out, so we have upgraded several systems on board already, and hopefully, John: And this being the fourth mission, correct, or?

Mike: I believe it's the third mission to service Hubble. We have another one planned in a few years. I believe Columbia is going to be scheduled to go back up to take a look at it and fix it back up. But yes, and then possibly one day to bring it back home to Earth. There's talk of one day putting it in the Smithsonian when it's all done with its mission.

John: Really? Mike:

Yeah. John: Well that's interesting.

Mike: I will be really interesting. So maybe one day all you folks in Washington might be able to stop by and actually see Hubble on display. That's a few years from now, but if all goes according to plans, you'll be able to see it up close.

John: Okay, let's actually stay right on the Hubble topic here. From Faith, how many parts does the Hubble space telescope have?

Mike: That's a good question. Let's see, one, two three, I think I'd run out of hands and toes and everything else. Hubble's got a lot of parts. I really-, when it comes to the actual construction of the number of parts, I can't answer that. My ability is more in the space shuttle area. But I do know it's a very complicated instrument, it's got a very incredible mirror for gathering the light, as you know, the polishing. And it's a very complicated system on board that allows it to stay in space for that long. But the number of parts, I don't know.

John: That's fair enough. From Jason, is the light from the Big Bang going to be bright or dim on the space telescope?

Mike: Wow, okay Jason, wow we've got some future space scientists here.

John: Yes.

Mike: I like that. That is very good. Hopefully all of you will enter in math and science and maybe answer those questions for yourselves one day. You'd be able to do the research and find some new discoveries. As far as Hubble finding that, I'm not sure. There's always a constantly looking back in time and as we find more distant places in the universe, and light emitted longer, of course that's more distant to the light takes 186,000 miles per second it travels. So it takes a while to get here. The longer it takes to get here, the further away something is. So we keep finding the edge of the universe and it keeps being expanded. So, hopefully Hubble will play a part in that.

John: Maybe some day we can visit the places we see through the telescope, maybe some day.

Mike: That'd be awesome. I'll sign up for a ticket. Might be a little old by then.

John: What has the Hubble space telescope accomplished as of right now? I know we're putting new parts and we want to look further, but what has it accomplished so far?

Mike: It's revolutionized the field of astronomy, planetary astronomy, astrophysics. We've learned the mechanics of galaxy formation, of stellar formation, of stars. We've learned so much about how infant stars become stars. How solar systems start to form. We're seeing evidence of other, much like our solar system formed, the way we're seeing evidence of other solar systems that are forming now. So we're watching a kind of a live perspective of what goes on and kind of tells us how ours formed. I also would like to definitely reference everyone that's interested in the specifics of Hubble, on the Internet, NASA has a couple of Hubble sites. The Space Telescope Institute folks also have a wonderful site right off the Internet, HFT, and I was on there the other day looking through it, and it's got a treasure trove of achievements, scientific achievements that Hubble's made. It's got a big gallery of pictures and photographs with explanations of what you're looking at. So I really invite anybody that really wants to get deep in the meat and potatoes of the space science end of it, to look at those and you'll see basically as deep as you want to go of discoveries and hopefully potential discoveries.

John: Okay. A question from Johnny. When the shuttle meets the Hubble for servicing, will they be near the ISS?

Mike: Okay Johnny. That's a good question, because they're going to bump into it. Actually it won't be. Hubble orbits at a very high altitude. Of course you want it up there quite a ways up so it doesn't have any effects of the atmosphere impairing its vision. So Hubble's orbiting approximately 360 miles up, which is quite high. It'll actually be the highest flight of Columbia so far. Columbia hasn't flown that high yet. So it'll be a unique high-flying flight for her. And astronauts always love the high orbital flights because they get to see a different picture of Earth. They get to see more of a perspective where they see more of curvature and they see unusual perspectives, so they're kind of excited by that opportunity. Space station is operating about 100-140 miles below Hubble.

John: So that's quite a ways.

Mike: Right. So it's almost twice as high as the space station-, well I shouldn't say twice as high, it's about 100-140 miles below Hubble and also they have different inclinations. And by that I mean they follow different ground tracks over the Earth. Hubble kind of goes mostly in an east-west pattern. Space station goes-, has a little more northerly and southerly components to it. So they're not really lining up. They're quite far from each other.

John: So is Hubble traveling a larger distance or is it going faster than the space station, do you know?

Mike: Actually, you're-, well if you

John: If you're farther away.

Mike: If you had your circumference, if you had your whole distance of your orbit, if you had like an odometer on the Hubble and as you were going around, it actually would cover more distance.

John: Right.

Mike: It would cover more distance, being further away. It's not a tremendous amount more, but it is more. And maybe some of our high school students and, or some of our geometry students out there can actually tell what that is. And they can do the circumference of the circle, which I believe is 2pr and so that goes back a little.

John: That goes back a little, yeah.

Mike: And I'll pass it off to the younger generation so they can work on that and the brain can handle that at this point.

John: Now your 2or is your radius of your, the distance to Hubble

Mike: Distance to ISS and you'll find exactly how much further. So a little math homework there.

John: There you go.

Mike: Sorry about that, guys.

John: From Maria, how long will the Hubble space telescope stay in space? I think you mentioned that before. Could you read.

Mike: Sure Maria. Hopefully as long as we can. Hubble's a great asset and as long as it's providing great scientific gain, we may expect about another 10 years or so. It all depends of course on funding and what follow-ons to Hubble we have in the works. But right now we're looking at approximately eight to 10 years.

John: All right, let's go back and actually talk about this processing a little bit. Grant wants to know, do you-, do shuttle refurbishings and upgrades also take place at Palmdale, or are they done here at Kennedy Space Center?

Mike: Okay Grant, that's an excellent question. And the answer to your question is yes. All throughout the program's history we've gone to Palmdale, and we've sent the shuttles out there where they were built. It was a good facility to do work on them and do modifications and enhancements. We also, from time to time, do work here at Kennedy. Every time we do a modification we're not able to send the space shuttle off to California and we have a tremendous array of talented folks, technicians and engineers out here, that are quite capable. So we do do a lot of modifications and enhancements here at the Space Center. So we can do them both places.

John: Okay. From Trevor, is there a telescope that we can use to see all planets? I think he's talking from here on Earth.

Mike: Okay. Trevor, that's a really good question. Planets are very hard to see. And the reason they are, is think of them as there's no light on them. If I go drove down your neighborhood and there's no light in the house, it's kind of hard to see the house when you're going by it. And of course stars emit light and galaxies emit a lot of light, so we can pick up those in a visible area. Planets are dark. There's no light source like the Earth. If the sun wasn't here, we'd pretty much be dark. So without any light source, it's very, very difficult to see visually these planets. That's why we have to use other means, such as I mentioned, using mathematics of forces and pull and tug on other bodies next to them, so something's pulling over here, something is pulling. And so we kind of use those methods at this current point to [talkover]

John: [talkover] telescopes actually here on Earth can see something? That'll come close to a Hubble?

Mike: Right.

John: We do have large telescopes.

Mike: We do have very large telescopes. And a lot of our Earth-based ones that are effective are radio telescopes. But when you go visible or infrared, which measures heat, or X-ray, you'd really want those in space without any messing up of the atmosphere.

John: Okay. From Kevin, who is benefiting from this project? I think he's probably talking about the Hubble project.

Mike: Okay. That's a good question, Kevin, because when it comes to our missions, we want to make sure we have scientific gain and getting our money's worth. Basically there's a Space Telescope Institute which is in charge of operating the telescope. As far as operating the telescope, you're getting time on it, researchers across the world can apply for time. And so top universities in the United States and also the world with top researchers and also college students, can propose to do research and get it approved through the Hubble folks and then actually be able to carry out their mission. Maybe they want to look at a certain quasar or a certain star. So the scientific knowledge across the world by these folks has been greatly increased. And that trickles back to a better understanding of physics, and so when you apply all that, people on Earth become smarter as far as our Earth applications, understanding science better.

John: Okay, thanks

Mike. Okay, from Stephanie, who came up with the idea of the, for the ISS?

Mike: Okay Stephanie wow. Well that's a hard question to answer because it's got its genesis in may different areas. Actually back as far as the Ô60s, both the United States and Russia were thinking of what to do next in space after the first [Leonid] had been launched. And the Soviets in the Ô70s went with their [Halma] program, their space station programs. The United States went with the Sky Lab. So we've already had a space station up there called Sky Lab, had some experience, and then that idea evolved in the mid-80s for a concept called Space Station Freedom, which was proposed by President Reagan. And he got the initial kickoff so to speak and the initial congressional support to start studying getting NASA to funds to start studying space station concepts. So President Reagan really is kind of a political guy who started the recent generation. Of course then in the early Ô90s it went through different formulations. We brought international partners in, instead of just American enterprise, and it turned into an international project, International Space Station, and it's kind of gone from there.

John: Thank you Mike. From Jessica, has the space telescope found out anything new about planets at all?

Mike: As far as planets, Jessica, not really from what I'm aware of. It's very-, and that's an exciting topic. I know for myself too, we get a lot of questions from people that want to know about planets. Stars are neat but planets are cool because possible people or aliens or somebody out there could be living on a planet. So there's a great level of interest. And as I mentioned, it's hard to see those planets, they're just dark. So we have to use other means. Hopefully with upgrading Hubble and with some follow-on telescopes that we have in the works, much more powerful, that can see in different types of light and different-, can measure different things like X-rays and gamma rays and we can get more information and actually start seeing what's on those planets.

John: Okay. From Johnson, are you going to make a bigger telescope, eventually, besides Hubble?

Mike: Well Johnson, I hope we are. A lot of this unfortunately relies on budget issues. Of course the telescopes are very high end and they do cost something to build. So it's all going to be dependent upon that. Fortunately we're able right now quite nicely to-, as computers get more fancy, and our systems get better cooling systems and power generation, we're able to upgrade Hubble and make it, kind of soup up the engine so to speak. And make it a better performing telescope. Hopefully, there'll be a follow-on with Hubble. That hasn't been an essential program yet, so we haven't gone that step. But hopefully we will.

John: Okay, similar question. We're talking about the International Space Station. From Diamond, once the station is complete, how long will it be functional?

Mike: Wow. Hello, Diamond. Hopefully for a very long time. And the reason I can't give you an exact number is we hope Space Station will go 20 years, hopefully it will go longer than that. But there's considerations of, of course when you have a facility up there, you have to do maintenance on it. You have to change out components. You have a lot of work to do and it's going to be all driven also budgetarily, and what we can afford to do and what we want to do. So hopefully Space Station will be up there for a good couple of decades, and hopefully our space shuttle will be around for which plan to be a couple more decades, and we can get up there and service it and work on it, and hopefully expand it. And keep it building and gRauing and doing research that will change our lives on Earth.

John: Thank you Mike. Okay from John, how large is the mirror on the Hubble space telescope?

Mike: That's a good question. To be honest with you, I've seen the numbers and I don't have them offhand. It is the largest polished, ground mirror to ever fly in space. I don't have the actual numbers. I remember that it's close to 10 or 12 feet. That's just a guess. I really haven't seen that number in a long time.

John: From Stephanie, how many men and women did you have building the Hubble and when?

Mike: The Hubble team has gone, 1000 people involved in Hubble projects for many years. Hubble was actually-, I guess back in the '70 program decisions were being made and all that, and Hubble was going to fly a little sooner. Unfortunately we had the Challenger accident and that kind of delayed several different programs, Hubble being one. So Hubble, when we got back on track, one of our first couple of flights, we flew Hubble. So Hubble's been in the works for a long time. It sat on the ground for a while waiting to fly. And now it's flown and we'll fly we hope for another decade.

John: FromCarlos: Mike, working as a test project engineer, was that your dream and why?

Mike: Yes. The reason I say that is working in the space program was my dream. And being involved in all aspects of the space shuttle was, and being as a test project engineer allows me to do so many different things, that I get to see all the aspects of the space shuttle program. And that is, every day it fascinates me. I learn something new and so it has been a dream come true.

John: How many more?

Mike: Hopefully we'll get a few more lightning-round questions in here.

John: I believe that's all we have for today. One second, we may have one more.

Mike: While John's talking a look, I'll just give you a real brief overview of the next couple of flights. We have space shuttle Columbia flying February 28th on its mission for Hubble. Following on the heels of Columbia, we have station shuttle Atlantis, which is being readied for its flight on April 4th to the space station. That's getting ready to go. And then soon on the heels of that in May, we have space shuttle Endeavor ready to fly and that's another mission to the space station. So we're done with Hubble, we're going to kick back in the space station. As far as space shuttle Discovery goes, just to let you know where everybody's at this point. Discovery is currently starting its OMDP, or Maintenance Down Period, so you won't see Discovery fly for a couple of years while she goes through her modification period.

John: Okay, thank you Mike. I guess we found one more question. I was looking at the top and we've got one from Carlos. Last one here.

Mike: Hey Carlos.

John: Mike would you ever like to go out in space? Why or why not?

Mike: Wow, Carlos, that's a great question, thank you. I would love to. If we ever get an extra seat aboard a space shuttle, I think I'd be one of the first guys raising their hand to go. So I'm sure most anybody out in the audience would also. And I would love to go out there from talking to the astronauts. I've been fortunate to meet a lot of them. And they just describe an atmosphere that you just can't believe. They said as pretty as the prettiest pictures on Earth are-, it's much more impressive seeing it live in space.

John: Well Michael sorry, but we found some more questions.

Mike: Oh no, that's good.

John: [inaudible]

Mike: That's okay, this is my favorite part of the whole Web cast.

John: From Dustin, how large is the space station supposed to be?

Mike: Hi Dustin. Well hopefully we'll get to the completion of its construction phase, which is undergoing political discussions right now. But it'll be over a football field in length. It will be about over 300 feet in length when it gets completed. It's going to be a very large structure. There's actually just as an off-side real quick I'll say there's some Web sites if you look on the Internet, and maybe next time I can have it for you, there's some Web sites that will show you, you can actually plug in where you live in the United States and it'll tell you when the space station is passing over or close to your home. And space station is so large you can actually see it at night. So I encourage you to do a little research and actually find out when it's going to pass near your home town and look up at night. And you'll actually see it flying overhead.

John: That's an impressive site.

Mike: It is. John: Have you personally seen it?

Mike: I've seen it, yes. I saw it John: How big would that be as far as Mike: It looks like a bright star. I looks like a bright star you might see like Venus or Jupiter on a bright night. And you'll see it racing across the sky. You can tell it's a space craft because it's moving pretty quick. It doesn't blink like an aircraft, but it looks almost like a-, think of it as a shooting star that just goes slower and lasts all the way across the sky. Very impressive.

John: From Kasha, how is the space station powered? Are there batteries?

Mike: Okay Kasha, that's a great question. Power is very important in space. We use solar power. We have a set of solar rays up there right now. Subsequent flights are going to be adding more solar rays and then what we do is-, if you remember, space station's in daylight half the time and night time, darkness half the time. So what we do is we have a lot of batteries on board. So you are correct. We store up a lot of electricity, store it in the batteries, and then we're on the night side of the path, we have batteries to run off of. Excellent question.

John: Very efficient, sounds like.

Mike: Yes. John: Okay from Tommy, what kinds of experiments are being done in space on the space station?

Mike: Okay Tommy. That is the key question you asked because that's the reason we're up there, for research. Making life better on Earth in space. And we have medical experiments going on. There's a whole host of pharmaceutical drug companies and drug research being done on how to pull up new drugs for say cancer drugs, diabetes drugs. Different research on that, how to apply those, to actually manufacture them in space, which can't be done on Earth and bring them to Earth. So there's research on the medical aspect, life sciences aspect. There is going to be some astrophysical, astronomical research going on with stars. There's also manufacturing processes such as computer chips and different alloys and metals. Again using the zero G environment to build stuff and do stuff we can't do on Earth. So as the space station ramps up and we get more components built, we're going to do more and more research in these areas.

John: Well thank you very much. From Zachary, I was wondering how do you build the space station without the pieces floating away. And how do they eat on the space station

Mike: Okay. Zach, that's a good question. As you can imagine, we go through all the work building this sucker and then we have parts that are floating away on you, that would be kind of-, wouldn't be very good, would it? So what we do is as soon as we get a piece up there, we attach it right away. As we bring pieces up on the shuttle, the shuttle is firmly attached to the station, get the robot arm, hook it up and actually physically attach it, which we call a 180 docking of each component. So everything is locked up pretty tight up there. And you're right, you don't want to lose a piece of it.

John: A lot of Velcro?

Mike: Yes, a lot of Velcro and duct tape. And boy they don't want me saying that won't they? But it is all structurally put together tight. And how do they eat? They-, I think pretty good now. Back in the old days you remember John Glen squeezing toothpaste tubes and all that. Well man, they're eating shrimp cocktail and steak and all types of good stuff. And banana pudding and so I think you can-, it's like a four-star restaurant up there. They have mostly, it's dehydrated foods which we also use on the shuttle, and they have a system where you actually put a needle into the packet, inject water. That will make it moist again so that it actually looks like food, and then you have a heater on board, so you can actually heat it up. So they have nice warm meals and they also have refrigeration type units.

John: Okay so our last question?

Mike: Sure.

John: From Tasha. How many laboratories will the space station have after completion?

Mike: A very good question. Currently there's one. Hopefully we have another one or two on its way, and the reason I say that is because there's been some budgetary concerns. And we are not quite sure if we're going to get all the components up on the space station. We do want-, we have the United States lab and the Japanese also want to add some components. So hopefully at the point of having one and hopefully we're going to add a couple more. But for the near term, it's just going to be one lab and hopefully we'll get great public support and great congressional support and we'll add some more labs to it and do some world-class research on board.

John: Okay. Thank you very much, Mike.

Mike: Thank you, John.

John: I believe that's all the time we have for today. But before we go, I'd like to thank Mike for taking time out of his busy schedule. Thanks a lot Mike.

Mike: Well thank you very much. Good to be here and once again a whole host of great questions and just a great future of this country right here on the Internet.

John: And I also would like to thank Kennedy Space Center and NASA Quest as well, but most importantly I'd like to thank you, the viewer, for participating in today's event. Be sure and join us next time on January 24th at 10 AM Pacific Daylight Time and for more information on our next Web cast, go to the calendar page. Once again, my name is John Rau, have a great day.