Mission Control radioed that we had futures as comics if we got tired of space.
We communicated with Earth by radio, television, and E-mail. We did a televised news conference and a hookup with schoolkids from all over the country who asked better questions than the reporters. John Glenn High School in New Concord was one of the schools. Another was the Center of Science and Industry, a learning center in Columbus headed by Kathy Sullivan, a former astronaut and deep-sea explorer.
I found E-mail, which was still new to me, a fast and effective means of communicating. I E-mailed Annie and the family, who were staying in Houston during the flight, and then I decided to try for a different first. Steve Robinson was my tutor, and once while I was slowly pecking out a message he asked if I was sending another E-mail to Annie.
“Nope. To the president,” I said.
“What?”
“An E-mail’s probably never been sent to the president of the United States from space,” I said. “And he’d appreciate it, too.”
He did. He replied the next day, and described an eighty-three-year-old woman who had told him space was okay for a young fellow like me.
The importance of the cameras that waited at the ready on Velcro patches beside most of the shuttle’s windows came to the fore with Hurricane Mitch. It had made landfall in Honduras on the day before our launch, and hung over Honduras and Nicaragua for several days, dumping twenty-five inches of rain, causing mudslides that swept away entire villages, and killing over seven thousand people. A few days into our flight, mission control called for photographs of the devastated area.
One of the laptops on the flight deck was set up to track Discovery on its orbits around the world. By following the track on the screen, you could anticipate when you were approaching an area that needed to be photographed. You couldn’t wait until you recognized Honduras, for instance, because at 17,500 miles an hour – five miles per second – the photo angles you wanted would have slid by already. We got the shots we wanted.
In some cases, the higher orbit of Discovery meant more spectacular views than I had seen from Friendship 7. Coming over the Florida Keys at one point in the mission for example, I looked out toward the north and was startled that I could see Lake Erie. In fact, I could look beyond it right into Canada. The entire East Coast was visible – the hook of Cape Cod, Long Island, Cape Hatteras, down to the clear coral sands of the Bahamas and the Caribbean, south to Cuba, and beyond.
A night of thunderstorms over South Africa produced a view of a field of lightning flashes that must have stretched over eight hundred or a thousand miles, the flashes looking like bubbles of light breaking by the hundreds on the surface of a boiling pot.
All the while, our views of Earth were stolen from the time we gave the eighty-three experiments on board. Each member kept on his or her timeline, and as we neared the end of the mission all of the experiments were working and successful. This remained our primary mission, and we were confident that we were making real contributions to science.
As Discovery approached the end of the mission, the crew wrapped up the various experiments and began preparations for reentry. It was like spring cleaning in a house in which every wall and ceiling were just more floors on which things had been tossed. Although we had done a quite a good job of keeping the shuttle’s interior tidy as we went along, notes, copies of our timeline tasks, and flight-data files detailing our work on the experiments were stuck to Velcro and duct tape and behind bungeecords all around the mid-and flight decks, SpaceHab, and the tunnel leading back.
Once the cabins had been policed, Chiaki and I set up one of the seats for resuiting. We retrieved the helmets and suits, started with Curt, and then helped the rest of the crew get ready. Then we got the rest of the seats in place and suited up ourselves, while Curt and Steve Lindsey closed the pay-load bay doors and oriented Discovery for the de-orbit burn that would begin its descent into the atmosphere. We were all suited and strapped in before the burn.
Down at the Cape, chief astronaut Charlie Precourt was aloft in a Gulfstream testing the crosswinds at the shuttle’s three-mile landing strip. Crosswinds at the Cape put off the decision about starting the burn until the last minute. The big glider gets only one chance to land and conditions must be right; crosswind limits are set relatively low. The clock ticked down, and I worried that we might have to go around again and land at Edwards. But with only twenty seconds left, a voice from Mission Control came through the headphones: “Discovery, you have go for burn.”
The OMS engines fired over the Indian Ocean a little over an hour before landing. It wasn’t the dramatic kick I had felt in Friendship 7. It was smoother, though still definite. The slight dip in speed, from 24,950 feet per second to 24,479, was enough to take Discovery out of its orbital equilibrium and start it toward Earth. We flew over California at Mach 24 and an altitude of forty miles. The Gs never reached more than two.
As we descended, we gulped various high-salt concoctions that were supposed to help us adjust to gravity again. Reentry and return to gravity would reverse the fluid shift we had experienced. At the moment we didn’t need the fluid, but the high salt content was meant to fool our bodies into retaining it until we were on the ground when gravity would take over and increased fluid would be necessary. For reentry, under our pressure suits each wore G suits, the leggings and lower-torso wrappings that we would inflate to keep fluid from rushing to the lower body from the brain. All of this was supposed to keep us from getting light-headed and dizzy. when we were first back on Earth. The stuff I was drinking was lemon-lime flavored, and by the time I’d downed three of the five eight-ounce bags, it tasted awful.
Falling through the atmosphere in Discovery wasn’t the dire experience it had been in Friendship 7. This time there was no possibility I might burn up. The tiles on the under side fended off the heat, and they didn’t boil away like the Mercury capsule’s heat shield. A glow but no fireball enveloped us as we descended. Even if it had, it wouldn’t have been visible from the windowless mid-deck.
Curt took the orbiter through a series of banking maneuvers to reduce speed and altitude and bring Discovery onto its final glide path. He told Mission Control he had the runway in sight. Two minutes later, I felt the orbiter flare and then touch down on the long Cape Canaveral runway. The main gear hit first, and the nose wheel a few seconds later with a bang right under our feet on the mid-deck floor. The mission elapsed time was eight days, twenty-one hours, and forty minutes, and it was 12:04 pm Eastern Standard Time on Earth. We had made 134 orbits and travelled 3.6 million miles before we rolled to a stop.
Curt thought I should give a homecoming statement. “Houston, this is PS two, otherwise known as John,” I said. “One G and I feel fine.”
That wasn’t strictly true, however. My stomach was revolting against all that salt-loaded lemon-lime gunk. A fair number of astronauts get sick on landing whether they fluid-load or not; I might have been stricken anyway. The flight surgeon asked if I wanted to come out on a stretcher. Astronauts had done that before. It was perfectly legitimate. I said, “Absolutely not.” I made it from the orbiter to the crew transport vehicle with the rest of the crew, got unsuited, and then the stuff all came up. I had absorbed none of it, and my body was now demanding fluid in order to feed oxygen to my brain for equilibrium and balance. I was dizzy and shaky.
But I knew one thing. I was going to walk out of there onto the runway if it killed me. Annie, Lyn, and Dave and his family were waiting with the other families and the welcome delegations, the ground staff and the television cameras – and through those cameras an audience around the country and the world. Going back to space had defied the expectations for my age. I was going to defy them again by getting out of the transport vehicle onto the ground under my own power and joing my crewmates for the traditional walk-around under the orbiter. I drank some water and began to feel better.
Out on the runway, under a bright midday sun, Dan Goldin was saying nice things tha
t I heard about only later: that my flight had inspired the elderly, changed the way grandchildren look at their grandparents, and made future flights safer for future astronauts.
Almost two hours after landing, I gripped the handrails of the vehicle stairs and climbed down to the un-flooded runway. I needed to keep my feet wide apart for balance. The crew stayed close, Curt especially. It was that same mutual concern and camaraderie that make NASA and the space program so special.
Curt said a few words. He thanked the launch and ground crews at the Cape, Mission Control in Houston, the payload teams who organized the experiments, and the rest of the supporting players. We did the walk around, but kept it short. Dan and Charlie Precourt walked next to me as I made my duck steps. I noticed vaguely that Curt had put Dis-covery’s nose wheel right on the runway’s center line. Then I encountered a six-inch hose carrying air into the shuttle. I wanted to jump over it – jump for joy. I had gone back into space again; I had completed my checklist. Now I was home. Annie was waiting so I stepped over it instead. I was being forced to act my age, but only for a moment.
The crew of STS-95 were feted at a big parade in New York City, before touring Europe and Japan in January.
The results of Glenn’s tests suggested that there is no reason why older astronauts cannot continue to go into space as active mission participants and research subjects.
The Senate was in recess when he returned from space, but he continued in office until his term ended on 3 January 1999.
The end of Mir
The last crew left the station on 28 August 1999 – since 1986 Mir had been host to 27 expeditions, with almost continuous occupation.
On 23 March 2001, the Mir Space Station was de-orbited into the Pacific Ocean.
Following the plan made by the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) and RKK Energia (Mir’s operator), a Progress M1-5 cargo ship with increased fuel capacity was launched to Mir, taking four days to reach it – twice as long as a conventional cargo flight to the outpost. The longer trip was designed to conserve the cargo ship’s fuel for the robotic de-orbiting procedure, which required a large amount of propellant.
The Progress M1-5 used its smaller engines for approach and orientation. The ship was docked to Kvant and Mir’s gyrodynes were turned off so they would no longer control the station’s attitude.
The Progress fired three pulses designed to brake the station’s orbital velocity. The first two pulses decreased Mir’s speed by 23 feet (7 meters) per second each, while the third one decreased the speed by 46 feet (14 meters) per second.
The Progress generated the final “killing pulse” which decreased Mir’s speed by 56.8 feet (17.3 meters) per second, slow enough for it to drop out of orbit. It plunged into the Pacific Ocean later that day.
Assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) began in 1998. The European Space Agency, Japan, Canada and Brazil have also contributed to the project. The first crew launched on 31 October 2000 for a five-month test flight although completion of the additional modules was delayed by the grounding of the Shuttle fleet early in 2003. In the meanwhile, the station was supplied by remote-controlled Russian Progress vehicles. Additional modules are scheduled to be added until 2006, for example, a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) is currently scheduled for January 2006.
Michael Foale returned to space as commander of ISS Expedition 8, launched on 18 October 2003. On 26 March 2004 Foale and engineer Alexander Kaleri were scheduled to spend a further six months in orbit.
While in orbit, Foale noticed a huge smoke plume over Northern Iraq, which he reported during a video conference with some schoolchildren from Sheffield, England. He said, “There is a huge fire burning in Iraq at the moment. I haven’t seen anything about it on the news.”
Several hours later the fire was confirmed.
First hearing on the Shuttle Columbia accident
On 1 February 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in flames over Texas whilst making a hypersonic re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Its altitude and velocity were much higher than those flown by conventional aircraft.
Audrey T. Leath from the American Institute of Physics reported on the first Hearing on Shuttle Columbia Accident:
On February 12, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the House Science Committee came together for the first of many hearings on the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy and its ramifications. “Today we are focusing on the Columbia,” Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) noted. “At subsequent hearings, we will address the role of manned and unmanned space exploration, the costs and benefits of continuing the shuttle program and our investment in the International Space Station, and the effectiveness of NASA management. More fundamentally, we must examine the goals of our space program. We also must examine the extent to which Congress and the Administration may have neglected the shuttle safety program,” McCain acknowledged. “I view this hearing as the start of a very long conversation we will all be having about the Columbia incident and its ramifications,” added House Science Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY).
Many House and Senate Members questioned NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe during the four-hour joint hearing. As the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, headed by retired Navy Admiral Hal Gehman, had just begun its work, the primary focus of the hearing was not on the cause of the Columbia accident. Instead, many of the questions addressed the composition and independence of the Accident Investigation Board. “I’ve become convinced that the Board’s charter must be rewritten,” Boehlert stated, expressing a concern that was echoed by other Members throughout the hearing. “The words of the charter simply do not guarantee the independence and latitude that both the Administrator and the Admiral have sincerely promised.” O’Keefe explained that a description of the investigation panel had been written into the accident contingency plan developed by NASA following the Challenger incident, but he expressed willingness to modify the Board’s charter and responsibilities to mollify Members’ concerns about its objectivity. “You have our assurance that this distinguished Board will be able to act with genuine independence,” he declared. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) asked whether there was an independent scientist on the panel to provide “that Feynman voice” – a reference to the role played by physicist Richard Feynman during the Challenger accident probe. O’Keefe replied that Gehman was considering several scientists for addition to the Board.
Other major lines of questioning revolved around the age and role of the shuttle fleet, the impact of grounding the fleet on the space station, the amount of science performed on the shuttle and station, and the value of manned versus unmanned space flight. Addressing questions about whether the shuttle’s age was a factor in the accident, O’Keefe admitted that Columbia was “the oldest of the four orbiters,” but said it had recently been upgraded with new technologies, and that NASA had done everything possible “to ensure that age was not a factor.”
O’Keefe also pointed out that NASA had proposed an Integrated Space Transportation Plan that was intended to address the concerns of using the shuttle for both crew transport and cargo capacity. The plan, he said, would focus near-term investments on extending the shuttle’s operational life and providing new crew transfer capability as soon as possible, and, for the long term, would develop next-generation reusable launch vehicle technology.
Regarding impacts on the space station, O’Keefe reported that, since the Columbia tragedy, a Russian unmanned Progress resupply vehicle had delivered supplies to the crew as planned, and additional Progress and Soyuz flights would take place as scheduled. This would allow normal station operations, including research, to continue through June. While the station had sufficient propellant to maintain its orbit for at least a year without shuttle support, if the shuttle fleet was not operating again by June, he said, additional resupply flights might be needed to provide the crew with enough water. He also indicated that it would not be feasible for an autonomous
resupply vehicle like Progress to bring up the next scheduled science experiments, so an extended grounding of the shuttle fleet would result in a “diminution of the science” being performed aboard the station.
Declaring that “we want science to be done in space,” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) inquired whether the shuttle had been used less for science missions than as a delivery vehicle, “a UPS truck” for the space station. The shuttle’s cargo has included both portions of the station for assembly and scientific experiments, O’Keefe responded. He said most of the “groceries” were sent up on unmanned resupply vehicles, which could not be used to transport the science experiments. Members repeatedly expressed their support for a strong science program in space; O’Keefe cited the various kinds of research being conducted aboard Columbia at the time of the tragedy, and on the space station, including human physiology, genetics, biology, fire suppression, earthquake resistance, and Earth observations. To Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) question, “Can we justify decades of repetitive shuttle flights to a space station that’s not met expectations?” O’Keefe responded, “In contrast to your characterization, we are spending a lot of time on science, as we transition from the engineering phase to science.” He indicated support for going beyond the planned US core complete station configuration as he continued, “It does take at least two folks to maintain [the station], but as we are able to expand the crew, and reach the configuration that enables full use of the station’s capacity, I think you will see comparable scientific results to those from the Hubble Space Telescope.”
The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster Page 46
