Space Shuttle Discovery STS-85 - A Mission to study Planet Earth (1997)

Video transcript: [Amy, I gave up trying to get all the timestamps out of the text. This is good enough for database searching.] 0 the orbiter was backed out of the processing facility in early july just after the 4th of july holiday 0 the boosters and external tank were stacked in parallel in the vehicle assembly building while the work was going on in the 0 orbiter processing facility 0 the countdown demonstration test was the flight progress conducted just a few weeks ago and flight crew was certified in emergency 0 escape procedures this is the orbiter access arm as it was attached to the vehicle once discovery rolled to the pad last 0 month and the rotating service structure was then moved into position around the orbiter to allow the 0 installation of the payloads and also access to various parts of the vehicle for 1 the kennedy launch team 1 payloads were installed into the payload bay out of the launch pad in the vertical 1 1 position 1 during our countdown countdown began one time at the t-minus mark 1 at about 3 p. m on monday count has been going very smoothly which 1 leads us up to this morning 1 this traditional florida creature arrives several days before the launch 2 they go through 12 data file reviews and the commander and pilot practice approaches 2 and landings to the shuttle landing facility to hone their skills they practice in the 2 shuttle training aircraft crew also has medical exams while here 2 at ksc prior to launch and they perform fit checks of their flight crew equipment hello and welcome to future watch i'm donna kelly 2 as more and more pictures pour in from the surface of mars anticipation of a manned mission to the red planet is rising on tuesday the national research council 2 issued a report evaluating nasa's efforts to develop a life support system capable of keeping astronauts alive during a months long journey to mars 2 among the conclusions replenishing the food water and oxygen needed for the two year round trip would be economically unfeasible and 3 perhaps even impossible using today's technology the report also criticized nasa's life support research as lacking clear objectives 3 last summer we visited the johnson space center for a first-hand look at nasa's efforts to find ways to keep humans alive on extremely long space flights 3 as lori waffenschmidt reported the outlook a year ago was far rosier than the fairly bleak picture painted by the research 3 council's findings 3 3 imagine being shut away in a chamber like this for up to a year living in your own little world scientist nigel packham hopes it happens 3 to him sometime in the next decade last year packham a lockheed martin researcher spent more than two weeks cooped up in a chamber the size of a 3 jail cell at nasa's johnson space center he was all alone with only a bunch of plants for company i spent 15 days in a 100 square foot 3 area to demonstrate the plants can keep me alive by producing my oxygen for me and taking out my carbon dioxide 4 nasa scientist don henninger says the advanced life support program as it's called is a crucial part of preparing for long trips into space 4 we'll have to recycle the water in the air and then even in the cases of long-duration missions to the moon and mars we'll actually have to grow food 4 and recover resources from the solid waste nigel packham says the plants proved to be responsive roommates during his 15-day 4 mission to nowhere when i exercised they in fact responded within about to provide more oxygen and take up more carbon dioxide quite 4 remarkable and packham says there were psychological benefits too it also makes you feel a little bit like you're outside it 4 it smells very different it's like a breath of fresh air nasa is gearing up for another 15-day test this time with a crew of four in a 4 larger chamber anything that can be recycled will be everything from air to shower water to urine second level of 5 the chamber is where we have all of our air revitalization hardware so these systems remove carbon dioxide 5 from the atmosphere that's exhaled by the test subjects we take the carbon dioxide and split out the oxygen molecule from 5 the carbon dioxide for reuse and breathing this binary actor as i say takes all the waste water and removes all the organic material as 5 it goes up what you're seeing here are actually microbes or bacteria may look pretty nasty but in fact they're doing a wonderful job 5 microbiologically this is the water we actually end up with this is the clean water which is much much cleaner than you'll ever drink at home 5 a year from now nasa plans an even longer test one that will require four people to live in a larger multi-level chamber like this model 5 for up to three months it's almost equivalent to putting four people in a house and leaving him in there for 15 days or 30 days or 60 days 5 so i think the psychological aspects of how those folks interact is going to be one of the more interesting results of that test and when it comes time for the 6 ultimate test an experiment that'll last a whole year nigel packham says he hopes he's one of those chosen actually it it really wasn't as bad as 6 it looks once you get over the initial shock when the door is closed and as long as you're not claustrophobic i have a window that i can look out on 6 the outside wall and there's always someone out there so no i didn't feel lonely at all packham says 6 this research though complex is critical as america prepares for future space missions if i really didn't think we were going 6 to go back to uh to the moon or to mars i wouldn't be at my job every day and i think that's the only way we're going to get there is by actually 6 showing that we can keep people alive for periods of up to a year in chambers like them lori waffenschmidt 6 cnn reporting in february of this year a crew of four was sealed away in a chamber for a 60-day test of life support technologies 6 a nasa spokesperson deemed the experiment a success and on september 19th another crew of four will participate in a 90-day test 7 and we'll let you know how that turns out astronomer and geologist eugene shoemaker has died he was killed in a car accident while he was working in 7 australia shoemaker made a name for himself in this world because of something that he discovered from another cnn's joey chen explains why he will be 7 remembered because he gave it to a comet not just any comment but one of the most interesting ones in recent years in 7 march of 1993 eugene shoemaker his wife carolyn and a colleague david levy discovered a fragmented comet they named it 7 shoemaker levy 9. it was a remarkable discovery because the comet was heading straight for the planet jupiter giving scientists their first 7 opportunity to watch a comet as it hit a planet what also made this event interesting was the comet itself it was expected to fragment as it came 7 closer to jupiter which is exactly what it did breaking into 20 distinct pieces a newly repaired hubble space telescope was 8 brought into play and it captured these spectacular images as fragments from shoemaker levy 9 hit the planet 8 huge explosions were recorded throwing fireballs heat and dust hundreds of miles up into the atmosphere one fragment was described as 8 the size of a mountain and the crater left behind was visible from even earthbound telescopes shoemaker and his wife were in australia 8 to search for asteroid impact craters when the accident occurred he was 69 years old joey chen 8 cnn reporting for years scientists have tried to understand why there were major changes 8 in the earth's climate when life was forming here now some geologists say they may have discovered what happened 8 cnn's jennifer arthur has the story scientists at the california institute of technology have concluded that half a 8 billion years ago the earth shifted 90 degrees like a basketball spins on its way to a game-winning hoop 9 that 90-degree tilt is the biggest tilt ever theorized for the planet earth by the end of this 15 million year 9 sequence what used to be the poles are now at the equator australia has rotated 90 degrees and north america has gone from the 9 southern hemisphere up to the equator joe kershfink a paleomagnetic expert says the earth's tilt 9 moved cold continents into the tropics and previously tropical lands to the north and south poles for years researchers have theorized 9 that the cambrian explosion or big bang caused new life forms to emerge many multi-celled organisms with descendants 9 including human beings in total something like 40 different major groups of animals make their first appearance during this 9 time it's an incredible bloom this latest theory explains why such a major upheaval in the earth's climate occurred 9 this global reorganization from one supercontinent to another one may have been a fundamental rearrangement of planetary 10 mass they call the unique geological phenomenon the true polar wander their explanation puts the continental 10 shift at a rate 10 times faster than the tectonic plate shift now underway this new theory is not universally 10 accepted by all geologists joseph mertz a paleomagnetic expert at indiana state university says supercontinents moved relatively 10 quickly due to churning rocks beneath the surface chris ortiz of the university of texas in arlington says 10 evidence used to reach this new theory is scanty however while scientists at caltech concede their new theory 10 is radical they say it can be tested jennifer author cnn pasadena california 10 it's what we all expect of ourselves in the dark escape of the movies a willing suspension of disbelief for example 11 a tough hollywood star plays president say harrison ford in air force one so what do we do with this its implications are as far-reaching 11 and awe-inspiring as can be imagined the president plays the our president actually got to sit 11 down and talk about the possibility of there being life outside of our planet it happened i mean clinton did it true we did last summer when a bacteria 11 stained rock from mars was discovered today so director a letter calling the use of the 11 president's image fundamentally unfair you have manipulated images of the president's public statements 11 taken them out of context the question some filmmakers have asked is so what it's a first amendment right and after all politicians especially the president 11 are public domain woody allen used filmmaking trickery to share scenes with public figures in zelic oliver stone visually altered historic 11 moments for jfk and with zemeckis's help jfk hammed up this scene with tom hanks 12 we spoke to zemeckis before the flat but they're already giant medias they're media stars and their images i mean i don't think a 12 day goes by when you don't see a television image of the president but observers say even the president should have some control over his image 12 it blows further the already almost invisible line between reality and entertainment you know the president is just another 12 prop just another figure uh for your fun and games movie the fact is the general public is becoming so much more accustomed to the 12 blurring of the lines between politics and entertainment these days one can not only find politicians inside the beltway 12 but all over hollywood in the past year alone viewers have watched senator ted kennedy in chicago hope former senator bob dolan suddenly sues 12 him the president even made a cameo on the cbs movie a child's wish perhaps this trends made it easier for filmmakers to take greater creative 13 license but what observes desire and fear is technology that will render digital replicas indistinguishable from the real thing 13 where you can have them say anything you want them to say that's where the real danger is only if it's not in the right hands michael okay cnn 13 entertainment news new york that science has ever seen and that's all for this american edition i'm elisa vasileva stay tuned now for world 13 business today 13 13 some aspiring young astronauts are already heading to mars with a little help from their imaginations and a lot of help from mom and dad greg 13 lamock reports on a mission not so impossible 13 13 these young men are about to boldly go where no man has gone before 14 they are willing to risk life and limb to travel to mars 14 a final check of all systems power pressure weather mission to mars is a go 14 the manned round trip mission will take three years or in this case maybe a little longer you guys 14 need things on surprise you're messing it up and after months in space 14 there is mankind's giant leap x-ray mission team you're very proud you should be very proud you just planted your flag on the surface of mars 14 maneuvering on the planet can be a bit tricky but the mission to retrieve soil samples is successful there's a forecast of high 14 martian winds however and the mission is cut short the brave souls must return to mother earth and uh you are go for 15 hatch opening 15 15 and what did these brave pioneers like most about their trip to mars getting out on the planet and what about you would you like collecting the 15 rocks and getting out of the planet wow what did you like to understand everything all right not too shabby for a group of 15 cub scouts and what an excellent job their parents did pulling it off a group of parents decided to make mars 15 the theme of a four-day scouting camp knew that there were plans for another mission to mars coming up and i thought it just clicked one night 15 okay destination mars a space camp for kids using the talents and connections of the parents the space camp was built on a 15 shoestring budget lots of donations and volunteerism it includes a mock spaceship spacesuits and helmets communication 15 devices a mission control and even a little bit of mars scientists say it'll be around the year 2016 before there's a real 16 human mission to mars and if you stop and think about that some of these youngsters really could be the first to step foot 16 on the red planet greg lamotte cnn los angeles national forest nasa scientists are getting a new look 16 at the sun complements of a space telescope called soho short for the solar and heliospheric observatory 16 nasa released new movies this week showing bubbles of gas exploding from the sun's surface fueled by electromagnetic forces generated deep 16 within the sun the soho spacecraft has been orbiting the sun since december 1995. 16 it gives a clear unobstructed view of the sun the research could help scientists understand the solar storms that can disrupt 16 satellites and power transmissions here on earth 17 17 it was august 7th 1997 the vehicle is all ready to go out on the pad it's a busy morning launch morning so we were all 17 had a little bite to eat got into the suit room got all suited up it takes quite a while to do that if you've seen a previous flight but everyone was in great spirits 17 everyone was excited to go got beam away from the breakfast table and steve's all excited and last but not 17 least bjarni got his suit all checked out and he was ready to go also vehicles out in the pad it was fully 17 loaded with propellant and fuel and it was a flawless countdown it was all ready to go we departed the operational checkout building the crew quarters where we stay 18 for our trip uh hopefully our only trip out to the pad for this flight and due to the great weather and the countdown it happened our first try 18 once in the white womb we get a little bit more equipment on our harnesses for our parachutes and oxygen bottles and now we're going to show you inside the cockpit climbing kind of doing a 18 chin up here to get into the the seats a little bit different view than you normally see joe tanner was our astronaut support 18 person to strap us in try to get comfortable and on the mid deck while that was happening steve was getting in the ms3 seat 18 kent's getting his helmet on jan's doing what she always does actually jan if you see on the left down 18 there is in the cockpit already and the last but not least was beamer or bob kerbin to get in ms2 seat our flight engineer for ascent 18 the mid deck is ready to go with steve and bjornie all strapped in with everyone aboard it's time to remove the white room it rotated back as you 19 can see at two minutes they give us a call to close our visors so we put our advisors down and turn our suit on 19 19 the following is cnn's coverage of a live event i'm michael holmes at the cnn center interrupting regular programming to 19 bring you this live event the coverage of the launch of the space shuttle discovery from the kennedy space center in florida ahead an 11-day mission for the 19 discovery what the mission commander told cnn last week was the most complicated space mission ever these pictures coming to you live from 19 the kennedy space center during their mission the astronauts will study the ozone layer they'll point a telescope at the comet hale bop 19 celebrity i'll also test the japanese robot arm which is intended for use on the planned international space station the launch 19 now just a minute or two away the telescope by the way is called krista it will look not at the stars but at earth examining the ozone layer and the 20 vegetative cover over our planet's jungles and wooded areas discoveries onboard computers 20 will have control of all vehicle functions as you can see there on the screen one minute to lift off at the kennedy space center 20 t-minus one minute all systems are go for launch of discovery 20 very busy minus trip ahead for these astronauts as the shuttle program manager tommy holloway told cnn 20 we have something for everyone let's listen into the countdown t-minus 40 s water will be dumped onto the launch 20 platform in a few seconds to help suppress the sound and shock with the thrust produced by the shuttle at launch t-minus 13 12 11 10 9. 21 we have a go for maintenance start five four three two one 21 booster ignition and liftoff of discovery on a mission to study planet 21 earth houston is now controlling the role 21 maneuver is complete and discovery is now in a heads down wings level position headed to a 160 nautical mile orbit 21 as always magnificent pictures of the liftoff of the space shuttle into discovery's eight and a half minute climb to orbit this morning 22 all three main engines now throttling down to 67 of rated thrust as the orbiter passes through the area of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle in the lower 22 regions of the earth's atmosphere telemetry indicates all three auxiliary power units and fuel cells continuing to perform well discovery now downrange from the kennedy 22 space center three and a half miles at an altitude of about seven miles 22 so discovery go ahead throttle up copy it one minute into the 22 flight discovery's three liquid fueled engines are now back at full throttle 104 percent of rated thrust discovery now traveling at a speed of 22 s1900 miles per hour at an altitude of 16 miles downrange from the kennedy space 23 center 13 miles 23 the next event will be the burnout and separation of discovery's twin solid rocket boosters again telemetry currently indicating all three main engines 23 auxiliary power units and fuel cells continuing to perform well discovery now at a speed of 2 800 miles per hour downrange from the kennedy space center 23 s27 miles 23 you can see those fuel rockets breaking away from the shuttle there another spectacular launch of a space 23 shuttle this time the shuttle discovery from the kennedy space center in florida this has been a cnn live event we'll 23 return you now to regular programming this has been a cnn live event 24 six and a half seconds there goes the main engines which is always a really a beautiful feeling inside the vehicle you can see 24 the tank kind of does a little twang and at t0 we're on our way and now we're going to show you what that looked like from inside the cockpit the same exact 24 sequence there's an engine start a lot of rumbling a lot of vibration you'll see the big jolt here for liftoff 24 boom there goes liftoff and we're on our way and if you watch the lighting condition as we cleared the tower we did a 24 a big roll maneuver to align ourselves for our ascent and you can see the lighting conditions change and the sun winds up right in jan's face for 24 pretty much the whole asset well as you know it doesn't take long to 24 get out of dodge here when the those engines get going and and start pushing and all that thrust gets going 24 so we were feeling acceleration about this time we're a high inclination flight going up the eastern seaboard 57 degree inclination going up 25 to about 160 nautical miles the launch was in kind of a hazy 25 conditions but we could see srv set so two minutes after launch we got rid of the srbs and now we're going to show you what that looks like inside the cockpit the big flash so you'll have an 25 idea of what we see at srb set so it definitely gets your attention you know the boosters are now separated 25 we can put our visors up at that time and ride the uh the three shuttle main engines to the orbital speed and orbital altitude 25 for the the rest of the ascent after we get off the tank the tank re-enters the atmosphere that gives you some idea of our speed this is real time this is not sped up 25 four three two one booster ignition and liftoff of discovery on a mission to study planet 25 earth just a few hours earlier the u. s space shuttle discovery blasted off for an 11-day mission the six astronauts on 26 board have scheduled packed with projects topping the list is the study of the earth's ozone layer which scientists say will help them 26 better understand ozone depletion they'll also test a robotic arm designed to perform chores on nasa's future 26 international space station 26 ignition and liftoff of discovery discovery 27 space shuttle discovery is now in orbit 160 miles above the earth the liftoff was spectacular three 27 two one booster ignition and liftoff of discovery on a mission to study planet earth 27 the crew of six astronauts is certainly excited about this mission as it got suited up for launch and the crew members made their way to the launch pad 28 they had to temper their excitement with the fact this is one of the most jam-packed missions in space shuttle history for the next 11 days the astronauts will 28 launch a satellite called christus spas which will look at the earth's atmosphere and do a check of the planet's protective ozone layer in addition the crew members 28 will test some space station hardware including a japanese built hand for the robot arm which will be able to open doors and 28 pull equipment from the outside of the new international station once it gets to orbit next year mission managers on the ground are happy 28 the shuttle is in orbit and some of them are now turning their attention to the mir space station right now in space the shuttle crew is 28 about to launch a satellite from the cargo bay into its own orbit about a hundred kilometers away from discovery that launch is supposed to take place over the next or 28 so this christa spa satellite vanilla was built by germany with equipment from several other countries it'll spend a week looking at us down 29 here on earth with an eye towards solving the problem of ozone depletion on our planet it didn't occur without a slight hitch 29 but glitches are not new on mir two fresh cosmonauts joined the crew of three aboard the troubled russian space station 29 after a docking procedure that almost went according to plan meanwhile aboard the united states space shuttle discovery there is 29 also a slight problem cnn's john holloman joins us now from atlanta for the latest onboard the russian and the u. s 29 spacecrafts john hi judy right now we were expecting to show you pictures of the space shuttle discovery launching a satellite into space but 29 there's been a short delay a communications problem between the shuttle and its main payload which you see the gray looking thing just to the left of the sea and inside on your 29 screen a german-built science palette called christus spas basically the crew was trying to talk to 29 the satellite before sending it off into space but satellite wasn't listening after a series of tests the astronauts decided christus spas had finally picked up the 30 phone so now the release is set for about 6 30 eastern time about from now we hope to bring it to you live and 30 while the crew aboard discovery was solving that problem aboard the space station mir it was time for a small celebration 30 the shuttle is flying about 160 miles above the earth while russia's mere space station is about 80 miles further from the planet's surface 30 a soyuz cruise ship was supposed to automatically dock with mir but at the last second the space station's automatic docking system failed 30 and the docking had to be conducted manually the two cosmonauts on soyuz manually pulled their spaceship back a few meters then forward again hooking 30 up with the russian space station's docking port mir's first u. s resident norm thagart says the manual docking 30 was a first for soyuz to my knowledge it's always been done automatically it certainly was automatic on our flight but again the crews always 31 train as a backup to do it manually and they're ready to take over at any moment during that process after an hour of checks the hatch between the two ships was opened 31 and the long-suffering crew of mir including astronaut mike foale were able to hug the newly arrived cosmonauts in the midst of this russian ground 31 controllers joked with the mirror crew about the grainy pictures the cosmonaut commander responded that he made a special color mixture 31 just for this ceremony the five mere dwellers will be together sometime next week when the outgoing mere crew departs for earth 31 so judy as you say a couple of a couple of glitches a one on mirror one on the shuttle shuttle one seems a little bit more minor at this point but that satellite 31 is still stuck in the cargo bay it hadn't been released by the robot arm on on the discovery space shuttle and we'll keep watching that and the mirror 31 problems very closely this is a very busy flight with over 40 different payloads some of which are you see here in the 32 payload bay in the middle of the payload bay is the crista spas one of our primary payloads which was a scientific satellite looking 32 at chemicals in the ozone layer on the very first day we had to deploy crystal spas to give it as much time as we could on orbit 32 and here stephen are in the af flight deck getting ready for those robotic operations with the shuttle remote manipulator system the canadian 32 robot arm on the shuttle and here i am maneuvering the canadian rms to the crysta spas grapple fixture so 32 that we can grapple the crysta spas as you see here and lift it up out of the payload bay and take it over the payload bay 32 and get it ready for deploy and here it is just before we release it we're activating all of the experiments and 32 instrumentation on the christa spa satellite which was controlled by the germans from kennedy space center payload operations 32 center here's a release of the rms from the grapple fixture that's on the christa spas 33 and we send it on its way to a nine-day scientific mission and we retrieve the crystal spas on the tenth day of the mission 33 to separate away from the crystal spas we maneuvered actually romwe maneuvered the orbiter with some separation burns to get us 33 away from the crystal spas and you can see the crystal spas as it is separated from the orbiter by moving 33 the orbiter away from it they were able to get a lot of data in 33 those nine days as you can see here it does now fully separated from the orbiter 33 the americana discovery at kotzner starts in fashion satellite crystal 34 space shuttle discovery are resting now after a busy and productive day the crew deployed a scientific satellite into orbit about 34 eight hours after discovery blasted off thursday from florida's kennedy space center the release of the satellite which is 34 designed to observe the earth's ozone layer was delayed half an hour because of a communications glitch during the 11 day mission the crew is 34 also scheduled to test a new robotic arm developed for the planned international space station it has been a busy day for space 34 programs there was a perfect launch for western europe's 98th ariane rocket liftoff occurred early this morning in french guyana 35 the rocket's main mission is to place a communication satellite into orbit the u. s space shuttle discovery 35 astronauts are testing a new robot arm only eight hours after liftoff thursday the shuttle crew achieved the main goal of releasing a photon 35 satellite to study the earth's ozone layer and russia's fledgling space program is getting a boost from president boris yeltsin 35 mr yeltsin directed the government to borrow nearly one hundred million dollars from banks outside russia for the 35 country's national space agency the astronomy discovery happened in 35 deutschen foreign 35 the shuttle discovery lifted off precisely on schedule for an 11 day mission to planet earth 3 2 1. booster ignition 36 and liftoff of discovery on a mission to study planet earth the shuttle's main job launching the krista observatory for more than a week 36 of looking not at the stars but at earth the satellite has telescopes on board which will examine the earth's ozone layer 36 and also check on earth vegetation which might affect the planet's ability to protect itself from harmful radiation from the sun the 36 shuttle is flying about 160 miles above the earth while russia's mere space station is about 80 miles further from the planet's surface 36 a soyuz cruise ship was supposed to automatically dock with mir but at the last second the space station's automatic docking system 36 failed and the docking had to be conducted manually the two cosmonauts on soyuz manually pulled their spaceship back a few meters then forward again 36 hooking up with the russian space station's docking port the five mere dwellers will be together until sometime next week 37 when the outgoing near crew departs for earth john holloman cnn atlanta although crystal was our main payload our payload 37 bay was very uh full as you can see here forward in the orbiter is to your left and the first payload you see there is the japanese robotic arm 37 or the mfd the manipulator flight demonstration then the next bridge you see there is the technology and 37 applications and science experiment which had a bunch of engineering models to be tested in zero g and also scientific experiments 37 in the aft and we'll get a close-up of that soon you'll see another hitchhiker bridge and that was the international extreme uv 37 hitchhiker and it had a multitude of payloads looking in the ultraviolet at stars the earth's atmosphere any interaction 37 of the shuttle with the upper atmosphere a lot of these facilities had optical systems and so we had a lot of hitchhiker doors 37 as these are called which closed to protect them from debris during some of the more sensitive times of flight 38 we also had some mid deck experiments and this is me taking a media sample out of the bioreactor demonstration system 38 what i was doing i was growing colon cancer cells to much larger aggregates than we could do in a 1g environment both for colon cancer 38 research and cell research and there you see the aggregates and they grew to about three or four times larger than you would see in 1g 38 just continuing on with some of the midtech experiments this is a kendra mature rommel as we call him uh getting ready to assert 38 the solid surface combustion experiment and this is an experiment that has flown on a number of shuttle missions and builds up the knowledge of how 38 materials burn in the 0g environment of space in this case we're burning a plexiglass a type of plexiglass and there you see 38 the ignition of that plexiglass and we filmed the burn for about before the flame this little blue flame finally 39 extinguished this is the swiss telescope used to have a look at the hail bob comet through the side hash window and 39 it reviews the comet in the ultraviolet which gives us a better signature some of the uh ions and elements coming off the comet 39 that give off light in the uv steve spent a fair bit of his time during the mission uh doing this experiment and that little bright spot 39 there just to the left of center is the actual comet you can't see it very well pieces of long distance from the earth but by summing up a lot of these images 39 the scientists can pull out some of the structure in the comet itself there's jan and myself just preparing 39 the microgravity vibration isolation mount for one of the experiments we're doing on it this system isolates experiments fluid dynamics and material science 39 experiments from the vibrations of the shuttle and we'll see in the next shot that not 39 only can we isolate but we can actually shake an experiment with very well controlled acceleration profiles to look at the sensitivity of 40 experiments typically the kind that we're going to be doing a space station to the vibrations and here's a little student experiment we used mim to do where we can visualize 40 the motion of rather large looking molecules that would behave the same as molecules in the air around us here today 40 another robot arm on the space shuttle on this flight is the japanese manipulator flight demonstration it's a small robotic arm about five feet 40 long as you see here in the payload bay we're taking steve and i were the operators of this we're taking it from the stowed position 40 to the operational position where we can maneuver it around this is the real time speed of it it's a very precise instrument 40 so it's therefore very slow but it's very functional we can use it on the space station to take 40 experiments off of a pallet put them inside of a scientific airlock or to do very fine tasks that we'll need to do 41 on the space station one of the things that we did on our flight to demonstrate this capability was we took this arm which has a grapple 41 fixture at the end of it attached it to the box you see there we call it orbital replacement unit we attach it to the box and unscrew some 41 of the bolts that are attaching that box to its plate and we actually moving this around to test the 41 performance of the arm and test its capability with a load on the end of the arm so we move this orbital replacement unit around 41 and that's a similar type of activity we'll be doing with this arm which is on the end of a very long arm on the space station so we just tested 41 the small fine arm portion of what will fly on space station 41 another thing we did with this arm was we attached the arm to this door and actually unlocked the door 41 and we used the arm to open up the door we did this with a program mode we also did a lot of operations with 42 some control from the ground not just with the crew on the flight deck operating the arm so this demonstrated a lot of 42 capability for the future and it performed very well this is sped up a little bit this 42 function in the last scene you saw we celebrated the success of this arm by eating some japanese curry rice you notice the chopsticks and rice and curry 42 which was just delicious we also had a little free time later in 42 the flight when we got an extra day and one of the things our folks did was some fluid experiments 42 fluids tend to form a ball because of the surface tension they form a sphere and here we're trying to join the red sphere and the water 42 together and we were successful after a few tries another typical middeck activity is exercise 42 when you're in space your cardiovascular system doesn't have to work as hard so we have to exercise to make sure it works fine 43 we stayed busy on the flight deck as well throughout the flight along with a lot of the payloads came pointing constraints pointed at various planets stars 43 the sun and back at the earth so kurt and i both stayed busy putting in digital autopilot inputs to point at the 43 different payloads at that also on the flight deck you're usually busy with earth ops and just to give you an idea we bring 43 back more than 3 000 photos of the earth and uh here's some of the earth going by over 17 000 miles an hour 43 and uh the earth observation scientists as well as oceanographers meteorologists particularly interested 43 in this view this is super typhoon winning and we were fortunate enough to pass right over the eye of it it's a very distinct eye you could see 43 the blue water through the eye and also the super typhoon is hundreds of miles across this is probably three to four hundred miles across 44 that you're looking at and the way we get these photos that was video that you saw but the stills that we're going to show you later are from several different sources we 44 use a hasselblad camera it's a 70 millimeter format and that does the majority of our earth ops work and we've just seen beamer with one of those cameras 44 we also though carried a linhof camera which just brings back gorgeous photos and that's because the negative on that is a four inch by five inch shot 44 and a lot of times we're busy doing other payloads such as this somebody floats up to the window and says hey look at this target going by what is this 44 and so we kind of scramble for the cameras in this case it happened to be the aurora the video here is black and white it doesn't really do it justice 44 and we've got slides later on to show you but it was a gorgeous green color that's down the south of australia the southern lights 44 i'd like to transition now into the rendezvous day here we are on rendezvous morning getting ready on flight day 10 to go pick up crystal spas 44 and it really is a team effort the uh it takes everybody in the crew was involved from curt doing the manual flying me doing some flying up front 45 uh steve running a handheld laser here we are approaching on crystal spas and hours before we get this close to it we're doing a set of burns 45 to go ahead and phase ourselves in and close in on krista from the time we're uh within about a thousand feet it's manual 45 flying and kurt at the app station has it positioned here at the arm if we were only going to grapple krista we would have done it at that point 45 but along on our flight we had a detailed test objective which was to go ahead and simulate a docking on a future space station mission coming 45 up where a curt flew crystal right into the payload bay at a very precise rate and now once it was just broke the mold line of the payload 45 bay backed back out and to me it's always amazing that here you've got a seven thousand pound satellite and we have a probably a two hundred 45 fifty thousand pound at this point orbiter and we can control that orbiter to a point one foot per second plus or minus 0.03 and 46 very precisely fly it into the grapple well as you can see kurt did a great job flying the orbiter right up around 46 krista and he offered just to birth it for us without using the arm at all and we politely declined that offer and uh so jan took control of the arm and uh 46 this is uh jan flying in to grapple the crystal spa satellite and it's a very gentle maneuver and here here it is ready to get put back into 46 the payload bay your eyeballs are essential tools up there in orbit especially when you're doing robotics 46 operations like we did a lot of in flight here's dan looking out out the overhead window and this is kind of an unusual view where we've got a camera up on the arm 46 looking back down at our crew compartment this teeny little spot up there in the heavens and i don't know if you can see jan looking out the window there 46 but it's a it's a really important part of doing accurate uh robotics operations in the future however we're going to have to learn 46 to rely on other sensors other knives we won't always be able to see out of the space station to see our arms you see targets on the arm here and also targets 47 on our payload crystal spas here these are for a canadian developed uh synthetic vision system that gives you a computer representation of where 47 the payload is in relative to the payload bay we brought the crysta spas right down over the crew cabin on the arm 47 in order to test this this system that used these uh spots as tracking targets you can see them here on the telescope at the crystal spa is just 47 about five feet over our head very dramatic view we let the sun go down and we kept lights on it and you can see it even in the dark we're able to track the targets 47 and speaking of the sun going down as a first time flyer i found that to be one of the really spectacular sights in orbit and 47 it comes out even well on video we'll have the latest on the space mission in 47 pictures when we return 48 it may not look like much but this is a rare glimpse of the hail bop comet courtesy of the shuttle discovery crew they beam down the pictures from a 48 s500 000 ultraviolet telescope making its maiden voyage and speaking of pictures from space byron miranda has been studying them and 48 has cooked up a weather forecast byron what's the latest i thought you were going to say i was lost in space gene whoa 48 astronauts on board the space shuttle discovery are taking close-up pictures of the hale bop comet it is still visible from space 48 as is evidence that there's more to the earth's atmosphere than most of us imagined cnn's john holliman has the latest 49 on what the astronauts are doing discover houston as space shuttle discovery circles the earth there's amazing news about the earth's atmosphere coming from the 49 christus spas satellite probing this planet the big news from the german-built satellite is that there's lots more water in the earth's 49 upper atmosphere in the northern part of the planet than people expected one explanation is that the earth is getting hit daily by 49 thousands of comets some the size of a house which would vaporize into water when they hit the planet's atmosphere 49 astronaut bob kerbeam is on his first shuttle trip and reports there's a whole lot more going on 150 miles above the earth most experiments are going quite well 49 actually steve we have um like you said quite a few experiments the robotic arm we did some work on that this morning steve and jan 49 were quite pleased with how that went and we also have a a bunch of other experiments looking at hail bop atomic 49 and various solar system you know celestial objects and arguments in the solar system and all those are going well as well 50 the main mission of this flight is to test the new japanese robot arm that arm experiment is being operated by payload commander jan davis who says 50 it's been working well despite some problems on startup we think uh just the force torque sensor which tries to take out the forces and torques 50 that were applied to the arm may have been reacting overreacting a little bit so we're going to just turn that on at the very last 50 minute when we grapple the uh the box that we're trying to take out of its bracket and uh we think it'll work just fine 50 today we're going to give it another try davis and her arm operating partner steve robinson are putting the arm through its spaces and will continue to do that for the 50 next couple of days john holloman cnn reporting the crew of the u. s space shuttle discovery is getting on with their mission 50 they're conducting 24 major scientific experiments and taking new pictures of the hail bop comet a short time ago 51 cnn's john holliman asked one of the discovery's crew members exactly how they're getting those pictures 51 we have a small telescope that we that is mounted not outside uh our crew cabin here back in the payload bay but right right in here right in this area about 51 s10 feet to my right there's a window looking out the side hatch this is the hatch that we climbed in the shuttle with and this is a telescope with uh about a 51 seven inch uh diameter mirror uh or lens that is and it attaches to the side hatch and looks out the window the telescope's about two and a half 51 feet long and just about the diameter of the window we point the whole shuttle we don't point just the telescope we point the whole shuttle of the 51 comet and then it has a very uh highly intensified uh ccd camera that's that's a digital 51 camera on the back of it and it's enabled to look at the comet in the ultraviolet spectrum and that is something we cannot do from 51 earth because the atmosphere protects us earthlings and everything on the earth from the ultraviolet rays of the sun 52 but it also keeps us from learning about the ultraviolet spectrum of astronomical bodies like the comet hail bob 52 the discovery crew is halfway through an 11 day mission well news from washington will be right back in just a moment with all the other news of the day stay with 52 us meanwhile the space shuttle discovery is sending home a flood of information from space including new evidence that earth's 52 atmosphere is constantly bombarded by comets some scientists have argued for years that thousands of icy comets hit the atmosphere every day 52 the comet theory is controversial but now data is coming in from the shuttle showing a huge amount of water about 50 miles above the earth 52 more than anyone expected comet believers say the water could come from icy comets as big as houses that break up and melt when they 52 hit the upper atmosphere solar storms don't happen very often but when they do they can knock out a satellite in orbit 53 or cause a power blackout on earth now nasa is launching a new spacecraft that should give us a heads up when a 53 storm on the sun could affect our lives it may soon get a lot easier to forecast the impact of solar storms on earth 53 thanks to a new spacecraft called the advanced composition explorer or ace the main thing that we're after here the number one thing 53 is to be able to tell ahead of time when major geomagnetic storms we won't tell all activity but the major ones is what we're after 53 solar storms occur when bubbles of gas explode from the sun's surface the eruption sends huge waves of electromagnetic energy 53 washing out toward earth such solar storms can destroy sensitive electronics on orbiting satellites and disrupt power 53 transmission on earth up till now scientists have been able to observe these solar storms as they develop on the sun but have not 53 been able to tell how strong they are or how they will affect the earth the new spacecraft ace should change that 54 the space environment center run by noaa plans to send out regular space weather bulletins to power companies satellite operators and others 54 essentially giving them one hour to prepare for a damaging solar storm headed this way not much time but a little notice is 54 better than none at all needless to say they would love to know a day or two ahead of time in this particular case an hour is a useful quantity for 54 for that particular customer nasa plans to launch the advanced composition explorer spacecraft from cape canaveral in florida 54 august 24th the crew of the u. s space shuttle discovery has an extra day to relax and enjoy the view from orbit 54 concerns of possible fog at the landing site prevented a plan returned to earth on monday they'll try again tuesday with touchdowns scheduled for 708 a. m 54 eastern cnn will bring you the landing live when it happens the u. s space shuttle discovery is returning to earth after 12 days in 54 orbit these are live pictures you're seeing from the kennedy space center in florida where discovery is making its final approach 55 the six-member crew was originally scheduled to return on monday but weather concerns prompted officials with 55 the u. s space agency nassau to postpone that landing although the weather did clear up so they could have landed yesterday 55 now nassau says despite a few glitches the crew did accomplish all of its goals now let's listen to the 55 nasa commentators 55 main gear touchdown 55 and nosegear touchdown discoveries rolling out on runway 3-3 at the kennedy space center completing 189 orbits of the earth 55 while traveling 4.7 million miles sts-85 is the 23rd mission of discovery in the 86th 56 in the shuttle program's history 56 and another smooth landing for discovery at the kennedy space center in florida after one day of delay so that was a total of 56 s12 days on their journey in space and they did accomplish a great deal of tasks while up there for 56 the 12 days most notably they discovered that the earth is being bombarded by snowballs constantly 56 well unfortunately after uh 11 days and it was time to put the orbiter back on the ground bring it back home 56 both the crew and the vehicle back home to the kennedy space center we started our entry well on the other side of the earth around 56 uh south of india australia time frame or position we slowed the orbiter down from its uh just over 17 000 miles an hour 57 as you see here we had an early morning landing and the glow of the early morning sun through the the atmosphere was quite impressive 57 approaching overhead we started a big right hand turn about 280 degrees to align the orbiter up on final for landing at kennedy space center runway 57 s3-3 we actually did a uh a new kind of technique on the landing we use short field speed brake which is a technique to help control our energy in case we 57 have tailwinds and we were the first landing ever to use that and it was it worked exactly as planned 57 the order was my first chance to fly the orbiter it flew very nicely just like some of the training that we get here at kennedy or at jsc and at 57 white sands and kennedy space center rolling out on final approaching the 300 foot point can't put the gear down 57 we crossed the threshold around 230 knots looking for a touchdown around 195 knots right now kent's telling me all the 58 right things to do trying to make sure i got it get it right the first time and we touched down about three thousand foot down the runway 58 drag shoe came out right away and just a little bit of different view here as we look down the runway 58 again the drag shoots out and the speed breaks on the vertical shell turn opening up to slow us down as a drag shoe comes out it disc reese opens up fully to cushion the nose 58 touchdown and now we roll safely safely down the runway at kennedy space center after going uh something 58 over 4.7 million miles 58 main gear touchdown they're back after a one-day extension in orbit caused by worry about the weather in florida space shuttle discovery and its crew 58 is back on earth and nosegear touched down as shuttle discovery left the earth we got to see just what a bumpy ride it is 59 to get into orbit one booster ignition and liftoff of discovery on a mission to study planet 59 earth once they'd had a few hours to get used to weightlessness the crew got right down to business 59 grabbing the christa spas science satellite in the cargo bay and gently lifting it into space for nine days of science research 59 astronaut jan davis was at the controls this is the workstation where we operated the robotic arm which is a japanese robotic arm which will be 59 part of the japanese arm on the space station these are the two hand controllers we have a computer here which also controls 59 the arm as well as some switches when that was done the scientist astronaut started their next big job testing a japanese robot arm that will 59 eventually fly on the international space station jan davis and steve robinson got to operate the robot arm of the future this is the uh the prototype for this small fine arm as it's called it will go on the end of a long arm that will go on the japanese experiment module when the international space station is put together up to that point so this is in a few years from now and this is the flight test it's a small fine arm so it's quite dexterous in other words it could do a lot of things with with its uh joints it's fairly small it's only about a meter and a half to two meters long depending on how you stretch it out but it has uh six degrees of freedom in the joints in other words you can move it around just about like your arm it's almost hard to talk about the arm without taking your arm out moving it around because that's just about what you do with the hand controller robinson also got to take a look at the hail bop comet using an infrared telescope which he pointed out the window on the shuttle's only door at the end of their stay the astronauts practice new maneuvers which is supposed to make it easier to build the international space station starting next year they grabbed the satellite bringing its science data and returned it back to earth to tell the stories of their fabulous voyage through millions of miles of space space shuttle atlantis the next u. s ship to launch was just rolled out to the pad in florida it will lift off september 25th with astronaut david wolf on board he's going to replace mike foale on the russian space station mir john holloman cnn atlanta we've decided to scrub the launch today this is due to a shrimp boat that is offshore yes it was a shrimp boat officials scrubbed the launch of a 205 million dollar delta rocket after a pair of fishing boats drifted into the offshore danger zone coast guard helicopters tried to shoo the boats away but they couldn't before the rocket's 25 minute long launch window closed they'll have to give it another try come monday that is if the shrimp fishermen are done advanced composition explorer looking to study the solar wind coming up on groundwater burning out nasa rocket blasts into space carrying scientific instruments to study the sun on-board cameras provided a spectacular view as the unmanned delta rocket rose over the atlantic ocean the launch was postponed on sunday after the crew of a fishing boat failed to clear the area shrimp fishermen often work all night and sleep in the day they may have slept through orders to pull anchor and move one ignition and liftoff of nasa's advanced composition explorer they should be burning up to be no sign of recontact hello and welcome i'm martin savage and kellen is on vacation would it surprise you to learn that huge rivers flow under the surface of the sun they're not made of water but electrically charged gas and as dick wilson reports new findings about the sun could shed light on some problems on earth look at the sun and what do you see a churning swirling ball of gas now new data from the orbiting space telescope soho suggests rivers of gases inside the sun may help scientists better predict solar weather this is going to enable us to have a much deeper understanding of the dynamics of the sun and is going to herald i believe the new era of solar meteorology the new data from soho indicates the sun experiences complex weather patterns not unlike weather here on earth scientists say rivers of hot electrically charged gases deep inside the sun flow around its equator closer to the surface scientists say the entire outer layer of the sun flows slowly from the equator towards the polar regions at the poles researchers found a totally unexpected swirl of gas similar to the jet stream on earth and migrating from the poles toward the equator are bands of gases the scientists liken to trade winds sunspots appear to form at the edges of these bands in areas where wind shear seems to be taking place where the shear you stretch out magnetic fields and you augment those magnetic fields and produce greater magnetic field intensity greater magnetic activity that is where the sun spots first form sunspots are areas of intense solar activity this is where solar storms brew only a few days ago soho spotted an enormous eruption of gas and energy from the sun in this case pointed away from the earth such solar events called coronal mass ejections sent huge waves of electromagnetic energy washing out into the solar system if they hit earth such solar storms can destroy sensitive electronics on satellites and disrupt power transmission on earth scientists hope better understanding of the flow of gases inside the sun will help them predict solar storms more accurately any sort of penetration we could do under the surface to look and see when things are going to emerge might give us more lead time earlier this week nasa launched a spacecraft called the advanced composition explorer or ace that'll join soho in orbit around the sun ace will study the composition of the particles that erupt from the sun and should give scientists a better idea about how damaging a solar storm will be once it reaches earth dick wilson cnn reporting after we take a break we'll meet yet another space traveler and find out where on earth you go to practice for a mission to the moon nasa's sojourner rover has been in the limelight this summer but there's another planetary rover waiting in the wings the vehicle called nomad is practicing its moves in a landscape chosen because of its resemblance to the moon and kellen has more a moonwalk on earth that's what the robot nomad is getting in the rocky desert in atacama chile nomad is a prototype of the robots that will explore the surface of the moon and other planets of the solar system in the near future for now it's rolling on the sandy south american landscape showing off its technological prowess nomad carries state-of-the-art equipment from mobility imaging and space communications nomad is controlled from carnegie mellon university in pittsburgh pennsylvania more than 5 000 miles away engineers at mission control guide it with the help of a 360 degree panoramic view taken by the nomads camera what is now an intercontinental remote control will become an interplanetary one in the future alex fossil and eight other specialists from carnegie mellon came to the atacama desert to test nomad's ability to share its experiences the images are compressed and sent through satellite links in this case to santiago and people can explore the terrain and feel like they are practically in the middle of the desert this is what we are trying to test basically the sensation of being in the place even if you are in a remote location and nomad can take care of itself in hostile environments engineers have given the robot something akin to an immune system it allows nomad to ignore human commands that threaten its safety mark malmo designed the system nomad has many cameras on it and six of the cameras on them that are used by a navigation system so these cameras work they take a new picture each second and this computer inside nomad that processes it and the images are processed and nobody can see where there are obstacles in front of it and it will automatically steer around the obstacle besides being smart nomad is heavy duty our baseline for with this uh type of robot is uh something like one or two year mission uh what we'd like to do is have it on the moon and visit all the different sites that apollo has landed on the moon and uh see what we can find there that sort of sort of a tour of the moon eric rollins designed the mechanical systems for the nomad when he turns 31 he'll be able to see the robot in action on the moon that's about three years away a great birthday present he'll share with millions on earth anne callan cnn reporting it's sleek and stealthy and aviation experts say it's the shape of things to come we are beginning to show what the fighter aircraft of the future will look like this is the x-36 a tailless research aircraft developed by nasa ames research center and mcdonnell douglas researchers designed it without a tail to increase agility and to help the craft avoid detection by radar it helps with survivability and that's at least that's the terminology that we use when the pilots go out and do the mission and they come back home they get shot down less usually a tail gives a plane what engineers call directional stability but the x-36 has no tail instead the x-36 has aerodynamic control surface on the trailing edge of the wing that we call split ailerons that are used for directional control it also has a vectoring nozzle that's used for directional control it's a nozzle that can point the thrust of the engine in different directions up and down and left and right as needed to provide stability or control for the airplane researchers expect the x-36 to be more maneuverable and more agile than today's fighters the tailless design reduces weight and drag the x-36 is remotely controlled by a pilot on the ground there's a video camera in the nose of the aircraft a pilot steers from a virtual cockpit and he has a stick and he has rotor pedals just like he was sitting in the cockpit of the airplane and if he pulls the stick back the airplane goes up he pushes it forward it goes down if he pulls a stick to the right it rolls to the right just like any other aircraft rod bailey says unmanned flights will become more and more important to the military the big thing is is what is on the horizon today is unmanned aircraft that's where the big interest is going and it allows you to do a lot of things with an aircraft that you can't do with a pilot in there the x-36 made its first flight this summer at nasa's dryden flight research center nice take off good performance handling was great and the landing was also very nice and just like we had simulated and practiced more tests are underway for the prototype a scaled down version about 18 feet long three feet high and 10 feet wide from wingtip to wingtip the x-36 final design could be a lot bigger oh it would depend upon whether it was a piloted aircraft or not and what the mission was the size of an aircraft is determined by its mission how far it has to fly and what it has to carry but experts expect big things from the x-36 this tailless technology will have many applications and certainly in military arenas and also we expect there to be spin-offs for commercial applications i think when you saw this airplane lift off you saw the shape of airplanes to come probably 20 25 years from now this will be standard military technology for this kind of aircraft to be highly maneuverable agile and have low signature the plane's designers say rapid prototyping kept costs down on the x-36 the price tag to design build and test two of the aircraft 17 million dollars less than half the cost of just one of the pentagon's new f-22 fighters david george cnn future watch he's not a hollywood stunt man or a human crash test dummy so why is this man tied to a treadmill walking sideways he's part of a team at penn state university trying to simulate the weightlessness of space we call it a zero gravity simulator to suspend the important parts of the body by chords which offer a load equal and opposite to the weight so when you are lying there on this on this device you don't sense the weight of any of your major body segments and also as you move the limbs the device moves with you so that you can feel that you're actually moving in weightlessness one key goal for the team is to learn how much exercise is enough for the astronauts to keep their bones from losing too much calcium during extended space flights studies of returning astronauts show a loss of bone material after just a few days in space scientists have found that exercise slows down the rate of calcium loss and keeps bones strong treadmills like this are a great source of exercise here on earth they help keep both muscles and bones in good shape but the problem in space is weightlessness one solution is to build an exercise device that holds the feet to the treadmill and this harness that we're putting on him now is used to tether him to the treadmill and this is what the astronauts would wear once the subject is strapped in and suspended researchers monitor his reactions while running on the vertical treadmill i think it's after a while you get used to it but at the beginning it feels really strange the penn state research helped nasa astronauts test the latest version of the world's most expensive treadmill it literally floats in the cabin they mounted it in the mid-deck and then all three of them exercised on the treadmill while we were measuring to see whether indeed you could walk and run on this floating structure which has never been done before back on earth there are important applications for the lessons learned on this mini gym in space once we understand why people lose bone in space it's going to give us a very interesting perspective on why you lose bone on earth and as we know for both men and women the loss of bone mineral which makes bones more brittle in older age is a very very significant health health problem one and a critical health problem for space travelers now that the shuttle treadmill tests are over the next stop is to test it on the international space station its longer missions will make bone preservation an important issue for the astronauts and exercise a must dick wilson cnn state college pennsylvania the weightless treadmill idea in itself is not new cosmonauts and astronauts living aboard the russian space station mir exercise for several hours every day using a treadmill and stationary bicycle united states air force is grounding all combat jets on monday to conduct safety inspections friday an air force b-1b bomber went down in the u. s state of montana killing all four crew members it is the sixth u. s military plane to crash in the past week alone well in spite of the accidents the navy is putting on one of its largest air shows at virginia beach virginia luis schiavone is at the neptune festival air show she joins us now louise well this is a classic example of how the show must go on this is called the neptune festival air show it's the 39th of its kind they happen every year at this time it's a huge festival thousands of people come here there are 20 acts and this is the home base for all of the f-14 jets in the navy now behind me you can see an air force b-1 this b-1 is not going to be flying and we have heard that although a b-2 bomber was supposed to be flying during the show it is not going to be flying we're going to be able to firm that up for you in a little while but right now there is some doubt as to whether or not any of the b1 or b2 bombers are going to fly all of the squadrons here at some point in the coming week are going to comply with the order from the secretary of defense that there be a stand down they're going to take to review every facet of operating uh the planes here they say that safety is paramount every day that's their motto in fact lloyd's of london has ranked the deck of an air force of a navy carrier the most dangerous four and a half acres in the world we spoke with the commanding officer of nas oceana here in virginia beach virginia captain eric benson he says yes of course they are concerned about safety there are no exceptions there are no excuses but let's face it this is a dangerous business well this is an inherently dangerous business but we have established procedures that have enabled us to maintain an accident-free air show here at oceana there are hundreds of air shows annually and while the crashes are very tragic certainly and and spectacular they're relatively infrequent flying here today are not just navy planes but also u. s air force planes and uh planes from the canadian air force this has been going on all weekend and so far it's a very festive occasion a real sort of carnival atmosphere very interesting maneuvers aerobatics and a very enthusiastic crowd to the point in the crashes louise the u. s military has complained and complained in public at times that they're being asked to do more with less they've had to face like many other government departments a cut back in funding is anyone publicly linking these crashes to such cutbacks no you know it's very interesting there really hasn't been any complaining about the kind of money that they're given to operate what they are doing is boasting about what they consider to be a very safe year last year there were 21 accidents involving navy planes this year there have been only 14. the year ends at the end of what they call the fiscal year which ends at the end of september so they have actually been having a very good and safe year of course there's been this cluster of accidents but overall in fact in the military all of the planes have had a very good year well as we look at the air show that b1 or b2 behind you and having seen those fa-18 hornets in the sky what's the advantage the real purpose if you will of having these kinds of military air shows well the purpose of the air show is first of all to demonstrate the spectacular capability of these planes to demonstrate that the united states does have military pilots who can control these plants who can use these to their maximum potential back to you luis giovoni reporting to us there from virginia beach virginia yet another air show as the u. s military struggles to come to grips with a series of deadly accidents involving is the signs of el nino continue to build along the coast of california big waves have been spawned by former hurricane linda which experts say was strengthened by el nino the fact that it got so far north before beginning to lose energy is definitely influenced by the warm water from the el nino spanish for the boy child el nino is a warming of the pacific off peru and ecuador the latest satellite images from the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena california show a very strong el nino is firmly in place we saw this as early as may it's persisted through june july and into august actually intensified based on the comparisons with the past data this is potentially the event of the century the information is significant because el nino can affect weather worldwide the condition in 1982 and 83 was a strong one and produced big winter storms like this which did tremendous damage along the west coast of the u. s now advanced computers and satellite monitoring allowed scientists to begin forecasting the current el nino and a stormy winter much earlier the warnings are taken seriously los angeles county created these large berms along many beaches to prepare for hurricane linda and other storms forecast for the winter it's done so before but not this early the weather predictions based on el nino are not a sure thing mother nature has fooled the forecasters before but one thing appears to be certain el nino is rapidly becoming one of the most studied weather patterns ever jim hill cnn pasadena california palestine started foreign indulgent up these images of the chesapeake bay were taken by a sensor named sea whips from a satellite that orbits earth every sea with penetrates the earth's atmosphere to get images of microscopic plant life several feet under water that's never been possible before so for the first time scientists are getting a global view of ocean life i really believe it's going to revolutionize the way that we observe the earth not just the oceans but the land and the combination of the two essentially life on earth as a whole in these images bright red indicates areas where oceans are rich with microscopic plants called phytoplankton and the blue and green areas have less phytoplankton since phytoplanktons are considered the grasses of the ocean scientists say they're a good barometer for the health of marine life in general astronaut mary cleave joined the sea whiffs project after observing earth from the space shuttle in the four years between her first and second mission the changes she noticed scared her as when i looked down at the earth i could really easily see the changes that human activity were making and that really concerned me sea whiffs is designed to monitor those changes this is what the coast of africa looks like now scientists want to know how the colors may change if pollution will have an effect on sea life or intense weather like el nino one of the things that we hope to be able to do over the next few months as this el nino develops is to actually monitor how el nino and the physical processes in the ocean affect the biology el nino has major impacts on fisheries fisheries collapse off the coast of peru fisheries have gone from 10 million metric tons to 1 million metric tons a year as a result of el nino according to feldman sea whiffs will help scientists pinpoint areas conducive to the spread of water-bearing diseases like cholera or typhoid as well as understand conditions that breed fish eating organisms like fisteria the possibilities he says are endless and seawiff's images are now available on the world wide web for all of us to see according to nasa we'll be able to access those images within minutes of them being processed in space and fed to earth ann callan cnn atlanta and this helps these from messerschmitt belka bloom and wikileaking astrospheres platform sun in aston villa for the astronauts position aerospace foreign the discovery um foreign s900 kilometers is continuing to go well out at the launch pad the final inspection team is uh making their way up and down the launch tower looking for any uh loose items or any ice or frost formation that we they do wear the bright orange suits so that we can keep track of the crew as they wander around the launch pad and we have live pictures at the flight crew of crew quarters we've got commander kirk brown who's just uh walked into the pseudo room following the weather briefing this is his fourth flight and he has overall responsibility for commanding flight this will be his first flight as commander he served as pilot of three previous missions on sts s92 in 1992 94-96 kent romender as pilot he will assist brown at the front controls this will be his third flight and uh his birthday today he's 41 years old he will also be assisting a commander during the rendezvous and retrieval of the crystal spots payload and will also be involved in several payloads including the solid surface combustion experiment we have canadian astronaut bjarni trivison making his first flight on the shuttle today across the room we have the mission specialists we've got jan davis she's making her third flight today she's the payload commander with overall responsibility of servicing tasks she will operate the robot arm to deploy and retrieve the german crystal spas payload and we have mission specialist robert kirby making his first flight today on the shuttle he serves as flight engineer and will assist the commander and pilot with asset and reentry checklists and in monitoring all vehicle systems and we have mission specialist stephen robinson this will be his first flight he is the prime mission specialist for the crystal space payload and he will work with dan davis on with the robot arm activity and we'll operate several experiments there's uh some fog in the ksc area and that is expected to burn away as the sun continues to rise here in florida and looking for favorable weather conditions for our launch at discovery today all countdown events are going well we expect the crew to arrive at the launch pad's white room at about 8 a. m got a lot of well-wishers standing by ready to wish the crew well before their journey into space crews getting ready for a 10-day mission we have the views now in the crew cabin and we have guest commentator march ivan's here to help explain what we're what's going on what you see here is uh the commander kirk brown getting into the commander's seat on the left joe tanner who is the astronaut support person he asked helping him it's a little difficult to climb up in the vertical position and to get in the seat so joe is holding on to his parachute while kurt gets into the seat now he's going to ask him to as he holds the parachute pull himself all the way down into the seat to get a good fit in there so they can get the harnesses on him at the same time the commander is being strapped in we have ms3 steve robinson being strapped in by carlos who is our awesome suitec on the on the mid deck this goes on in parallel so that all the crew can get in in a timely fashion the same as as joe was helping on the flight deck carlos holds on to the parachute steve's got a strap connected to the locker you can see him holding on to now like a chinning strap that allows him to position himself correctly on the parachute as he gets in now we see the birthday boy getting into his seat the pilot he's only gone to uh to two handrails one in the center of the uh near the windows and one on his right side and then as they hold his parachute he pulls himself down into the seat the arnie is now in in the ps1 seat you can see his chinning strap that he's he's got to get himself positioned in the seat and carlos will be connecting his cooling water last crew member in bob kervin in the ms2 seat well i've got you here i'll give you a step uh 570 work for the clock if you want for the performance on channel the launch team indicating that they are ready to continue on with launch today standing by now for jim harrington the launch director to conduct his poll of the management team uh looks like everybody's ready to go you guys have a great mission and we'll see you back here uh at the conclusion of the mission and npd you are clearly launched sir thank you attention all stations countdown clock will pick up at t minus nine minutes and two minutes and twenty seconds t-minus five minutes start tlt otc perform apu start inward and cdr reconfigure heater the vent hood is situated at the top of the external tank that will be retracted away in the next few seconds and the external tank is being pressurized for flight plt otp cleared the cautionary memory verify no unexpected errors good morning memories good luck with your mission and ramo happy birthday we're about to light your candles thanks for that birthday wish will be the two best candles i ever had to water will be copyright onto the launch platform in a few seconds to help suppress the sound and shock and the thrust produced by the shuttle at match t minus 13 12 11 10 9. booster ignition and liftoff of discovery on a mission to study planet earth houston is now controlling the role maneuver is complete and discovery is now in a heads down wings level position all three main engines now throttling down to 67 of rated thrust as the orbiter passes through the area of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle in the lower regions of the earth's atmosphere telemetry indicates all three auxiliary power units and fuel cells continuing to perform well we can tell you we're looking at the engines now as they uh throttle back so about 67 on all three of the main engines and looking for mach 1 right now making sure the tapes match on both sides and they did and we continued on up and right about now is when the engines start throttling again throttling up to 104 one minute into the flight discovery's three liquid fueled engines are now back at full throttle 104 percent of rated thrust discovery now traveling at a speed of s1900 miles per hour i just called the tail off for the srbs and we should see seth right about now and there was a big flash of light and now we've uh rode to the next and now we're just on the main engines and uh got about uh five five and a half more minutes to orbit again telemetry currently indicating all three main engines auxiliary power units and fuel cells continuing to perform well discovery now at a speed of 2800 miles per hour downrange from the kennedy space center 27 miles discovery now at an altitude of 367. downrange from the kennedy space center 370 miles now eight minutes into the fight the booster officer here in mission control has confirmed an on-time main engine cutoff discover houston we show a nominal miko homes one is not required you have a go for the et photo dto happy nominal is discovery we're in the low heavyweight position and would like to maneuver to the spa's release position we have a good release zoe we'll be back with you at seven hours nine minutes copy allen seven hours nine minutes number three three niner four one two five number four four zero or zero zero number five or zero three zero carb loss error now when i try to do cold reboots on the system i get as far as starting on track and then i get a better hierarchy and that's where i've been ending for ernie discovery with pdf data when you're ready to copy we're ready go ahead yeah on the flight plan ellen uh dp flex troubleshooting part b would you like to get into that this is the workstation where we operated the robotic arm which is a japanese robotic arm which will be part of the japanese arm on the space station these are the two hand controllers we have a computer here which also controls the arm as well as some switches they used to discover which one of them yeah before we exceeded the mid temperature we got to six percent uh are you all happy with that you want me to dump that last percent up now you're just fine where you are recovery five four three two one swiss hillbob and houston you should be getting video now we have a good picture and houston discovery good handheld laser mark and it agrees with radar copy easter discovery with urban status check didn't talk to you at and before you go just you probably see this but for about 125 feet closing at 0.25 i used to discover dto complete we're backing out now great job discovery congratulations on a very smooth run of him grapples okay you can go ahead and put the act in work uh okay we copy that met nine days one hour five six minutes four zero seconds discovery energy ground track and never go latest touchdown prediction is 2600 feet at 195. copy energy contract navigo and 2600 at 195. long-range cameras capturing discovery uh at 103 000 feet altitude traveling 2500 miles per hour and commander uh kurt brown and now flying uh discovery as the twin sonic booms announced the arrival of the orbiter in the landing site area time to touch down three minutes and seconds discovery on energy at the 180. copy discovery's altitude is 2 400 feet traveling 375 miles per hour and the landing gear is down and locked main gear touchdown and nose gear touchdown discoveries rolling out on runway 3-3 at the kennedy space center completing 189 orbits of the earth while traveling 4.7 million miles sts-85 is the 23rd mission of discovery in the 86th in the shuttle program's history so we're looking at the doors