Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Remembering the Flight of STS-81

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 18, 2015 at 9:21:47 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Remembering the Flight of STS-81

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
January 17th, 2015
Stepping Stones to Space Station: Remembering the Flight of STS-81 (Part 1)
By Ben Evans

Atlantis roars into the night on 12 January 1997, kicking off the shuttle program's fifth docking mission to Mir. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Almost two decades ago, America's shuttle program began living up to its billing as a vehicle for delivering experiments, equipment, and supplies to an Earth-circling space station. And in the small hours of 12 January 1997, Atlantis roared aloft on a mission to exchange long-duration U.S. astronauts aboard Russia's Mir orbital outpost and to transport upwards of 6,100 pounds (2,800 kg) of logistics in a pressurized Spacehab double module. During STS-81, astronaut Jerry Linenger was dropped off at Mir and John Blaha returned to Earth in his stead, whilst the "core" shuttle crew of Commander Mike Baker, Pilot Brent Jett, and Mission Specialists Jeff Wisoff, John Grunsfeld, and Marsha Ivins and the station's own crew of Russian cosmonauts Valeri Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri supported one of the most complex and ambitious joint flights ever attempted.
In fact, Blaha had spent a considerable period since Christmas 1996 preparing for his departure, by packing 15 bags with equipment to bring back to Earth. An additional illustration of the closeness of the U.S.-Russian partnership came on 10 January, when one of two cooling fans in a freezer for the myriad biological experiments failed. Although Blaha was able to remove the freezer door, attach a replacement, and effect a temporary repair—thereby keeping temperatures as cool as possible in the interim—he spoke to Flight Surgeon Pat McGinnis and engineer Matt Mueller on the ground, who managed to locate replacement fans and have them delivered to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and loaded aboard Atlantis, as the shuttle sat vertically on the launch pad.
Overall, STS-81 would bring 1,400 pounds (635 kg) of water, 1,140 pounds (516 kg) of U.S. research gear, 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of Russian equipment, and 265 pounds (120 kg) of "miscellaneous" materials to Mir, as well as ferrying almost 2,425 pounds (1,100 kg) of unneeded items back to the Home Planet. Among the items to be brought home by Atlantis' crew were wheat samples from Mir's Svet greenhouse—which would mark the first occasion in history that plants had completed a full growth cycle in space—whilst STS-81 would also deliver the Treadmill Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System (TVIS) for testing and evaluation in readiness for its role aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Jerry Linenger, pictured during STS-81 training with crewmate Marsha Ivins, was the fourth U.S. astronaut to spend a period of several months aboard Mir. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
In his 2000 memoir, Off the Planet, Jerry Linenger reflected upon the often wry sense of humor of John Grunsfeld, who was recently interviewed by AmericaSpace's Ken Kremer in a pair of articles: here and here. As an undergraduate, Grunsfeld had worked on his car in a self-help garage run by two Masschusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduates, who later started a popular radio program, called "Car Talk." Prior to the STS-81 launch, Grunsfeld arranged with the producers to play a prank on the show's hosts. Whilst in orbit, his telephone was patched through to the unsuspecting hosts.
Without identifying himself, Grunsfeld complained about his U.S. Government-issued vehicle, with its horrendous gas mileage and its habit of running extremely roughly for the first two minutes of operation, with lots of shaking. However, he added that after two minutes, it performed like a champ … at least, that is, until it reached eight minutes, when its engine died completely. The hosts were mystified. Did the vehicle achieve good acceleration, they asked?
"Oh, yeah," replied Grunsfeld. "About 17,500 miles an hour!"
The hosts realized they had been had. "Who is this?" they asked.
Only then did Grunsfeld identify himself as an astronaut aboard Shuttle Atlantis.
Originally scheduled for launch on 5 December 1996, a series of troubles with the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) throughout the summer pushed each of the shuttle-Mir flights back by approximately six weeks, with STS-79 moving from late July until mid-September and STS-81 correspondingly shifting to 12 January 1997. Atlantis' processing flow ran very smoothly, punctuated only by the need to replace a fuel cell, which had exhibited high pH levels, and the STS-81 crew and Linenger arrived at KSC on 8 January, ahead of the formal start of the 43-hour countdown. Launch on the 12th took place at 4:27:23 a.m. EST, at the opening of a short, 10-minute "window," and by the time the shuttle achieved orbit Mir was travelling over the Galapagos Islands, about 2,765 miles (4,450 km) to the southwest. About 25 minutes after liftoff, the Mir incumbent crew of Korzun, Kaleri, and Blaha were notified and watched a video uplink from Mission Control.
Embarking on a well-trodden, two-day rendezvous profile, Atlantis' crew set to work establishing laptops and laser ranging equipment and opening up the Spacehab double module in the payload bay. Wisoff, Grunsfeld, and Linenger worked on the assembly of the TVIS and tested its restraint system, motor, running surface stability, and effectiveness in reducing disturbances to the surrounding microgravity environment. Meanwhile, Ivins activated the European Space Agency's (ESA) Biorack facility and Jett and Grunsfeld installed the centreline camera into the Orbiter Docking System (ODS), ahead of docking. On 14 January, Mike Baker greeted Mission Control's wake-up call with a chirpy "Good morning, Houston, 500 miles to go!" Following the R-Bar rendezvous profile—and heading directly "up" from the center of Earth toward Mir—Baker performed a successful docking at the Docking Module (DM) on the space station's Kristall module at 10:55 p.m. EST.
Mir, as viewed from Atlantis on STS-81. The orange-colored Docking Module (DM), at the end of the Kristall module, is visible at the right of the image. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
The STS-81 crew had actually sighted Mir from a distance of about 40 miles (64 km), but from the station John Blaha did not spot Atlantis until just eight minutes or so before physical docking. Grunsfeld and Linenger then set to work on the process of equalizing pressure between the two spacecraft, ahead of opening the hatches. Through the porthole, inside Kristall, Linenger could see a jubilant Blaha and Korzun. As the hatches opened, in Linenger's recollection, the shuttle crew was greeted by "an uninhibited laugh" from Blaha. "Then bedlam erupted," he continued, "as the six of us blundered our way through the hatch and bumped heads with the much more graceful (being fully adapted to space) threesome of Mir occupants. The scene was one of hugs, shouts, mixed language and laughter, feet dangling in all directions. Nine spacefarers embracing and floating in every which way. After the chaos calmed, we all migrated, single file, heads closely following feet, into Mir." In a similar manner to previous flights, after the welcoming ceremony, Blaha and Linenger swapped their molded Soyuz-TM seat liners and rejoining their respective crews.
The shuttle crew gave Korzun and Kaleri new flashlights, because sections of Mir were being kept dark in order to converse electricity. (In fact, a master alarm sounded with a low-power warning, midway through the welcoming ceremony, much to Korzun's embarrassment.) It was a clear indication that, although "The Partnership" between the United States and Russia in shuttle-Mir was now in full flow, there remained many issues to overcome … and 1997 would prove one of the most hazardous and testing years endured by the joint relationship in its troubled, yet ultimately triumphant effort to develop the ISS.

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
January 18th, 2015
Who Is This? Remembering the Flight of STS-81 (Part 2)
By Ben Evans

The combined shuttle and Mir crews, pictured during the STS-81 visiting mission in January 1997. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Almost two decades ago, America's shuttle program began living up to its billing as a vehicle for delivering experiments, equipment, and supplies to an Earth-circling space station. And in the small hours of 12 January 1997, Atlantis roared aloft on a mission to exchange long-duration U.S. astronauts aboard Russia's Mir orbital outpost and to transport upwards of 6,100 pounds (2,800 kg) of logistics in a pressurized Spacehab double module. During STS-81—as described in yesterday's AmericaSpace history article—astronaut Jerry Linenger was dropped off at Mir and John Blaha returned to Earth in his stead, whilst the "core" shuttle crew of Commander Mike Baker, Pilot Brent Jett, and Mission Specialists Jeff Wisoff, John Grunsfeld, and Marsha Ivins and the station's own crew of Russian cosmonauts Valeri Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri supported one of the most complex and ambitious joint flights ever attempted.
By this stage, Blaha had spent four months aboard Mir and had become acclimatized to living in the space environment. "We're truly in the space station business," Blaha said at one point, as he entered the final days of his long mission. He devoted a great deal of time to working with Linenger and readying him for his own lengthy stay. In the weeks preceding Linenger's arrival, Blaha had spent his free time tapping out emails to NASA colleagues on Earth and updating the handover for his successor. With Linenger now aboard Mir, Blaha spent several hours with him each evening. Their discussions varied from the technical to the mundane—but necessary—everyday tasks.
"During my fist few days on Mir," Linenger reflected in his 2000 memoir, Off the Planet, "John and I had many private conversations, tucked away in a corner of the station. We went through how the toilet works, how the treadmill works and he did his routine. He explained in detail how he cleaned himself after working out on the treadmill; there's a trick to it. Water is in short supply up there and therefore you need to use two or three thimblefuls, which you put on a little towel. He would cut the towel into about five or six sections to conserve towels, because there's no way to keep delivering new towels. He showed how you can make a couple of thimblefuls of water go a long way. Sanitation was not an easy task up there. During your treadmill sessions, you would definitely be sweating and our T-shirts would get soaked. Our supply of shirts and shorts was such that we could only change every two weeks!" Linenger added that Blaha's "unalloyed frankness" and "uncensored remarks" were invaluable in allowing him to fine-tune his own mindset for four months aboard Mir.
Jerry Linenger celebrated his 42nd birthday in space during STS-81, with an inflatable cake, courtesy of Marsha Ivins. He is pictured with crewmate Jeff Wisoff on Atlantis' middeck. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
In the meantime, transfers between the shuttle and the station continued, in addition to ongoing research work inside the Spacehab double module. The "loadmaster" was Marsha Ivins, whom Linenger described as having the daunting task of knowing where everything was stowed aboard the orbiter. "She ruled with an iron fist," wrote Linenger. "She demanded that every item be in its proper place." Yet Ivins was shocked by the clutter of Mir, and at one stage, floating through the station's Kvant-1 module in search of the Progress M-33 cargo craft at its aft end, she became lost in a maze of garbage bags and broken equipment. One of the greatest ironies in her mind was that Kvant-1 was originally designed as an astrophysics module; now, after 10 years in orbit, far from being filled with high-powered spectrometers and telescopes, it was a foul-smelling, engorged attic.
Blaha and Linenger stowed the crop of wheat from the Svet greenhouse aboard the orbiter to be returned to Earth, marking the first time that plants had completed an entire growth and life cycle in space. They also planted a fresh crop for Linenger's expedition. On 17 January, Baker and Jett pulsed Atlantis' thrusters to gather acceleration and vibration data for future International Space Station (ISS) operations and to support the Mir Structural Dynamics Experiment (MiSDE) and Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS). They also began powering down several non-essential orbiter systems, in the hope of squeezing an additional day onto their 10-day mission. The additional day, if approved, would be added to the post-undocking phase of the flight and was requested following problems with the storage of data from the Treadmill Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System (TVIS) onto a faulty laptop computer. The Mission Management Team (MMT) convened on the 18th to consider the extra day, but deferred their decision until the 20th, until it was known if the data collection could be completed within the framework of the existing flight plan.
Living and working aboard Mir was a joyful experience, aside from the hard work. John Grunsfeld likened it to "exploring a cave," and Jerry Linenger compared it to something not unlike an old, musty wine cellar, with its warren of cluttered passageways. For his part, Brent Jett remembered some advice from Alexander Kaleri: he should follow a line which ran through Kristall and offered a translation aid to "swim" through bowels of the narrow module. "The Kristall is kind of like their attic," Jett said later. "They put a lot of extra equipment there, but then, once you got into the [multiple docking adaptor] and then into the base block, it's a lot more like what you would expect for a station." At times, the two crews would assemble for joint meals, as remembered by Jeff Wisoff. "It's customary when the shuttle docks that the crews have a big meal together," he explained in a Smithsonian interview, years later, "and when our STS-81 crew arrived, the cosmonauts had recently had a supply ship come up. They had a big round ball of cheese and they had a fresh salami, or summer sausage. They had an axe and they were chopping this thing up and tossing out pieces to us. It was like being in a space deli." Jerry Linenger celebrated his 42nd birthday on 16 January, and Marsha Ivins had brought up an inflatable cake, along with edible delicacies from Atlantis' pantry: dehydrated shrimp cocktails, red beans, and rice. "That was a very fun occasion," said Wisoff.
Mir, as viewed from Atlantis on STS-81. The orange-colored Docking Module (DM), at the end of the Kristall module, is visible at the right of the image. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
After five days of joint activities, the hatches between Atlantis and Mir were closed at 7:46 a.m. EST on 19 January 1997. Following depressurization and a good night's sleep, the shuttle undocked from the station at 9:15 p.m. EST. Now in independent flight, the crew reassembled TVIS in the middeck and the treadmill was used by Baker, Jett, and Blaha, acquiring the required data to render it a success. The additional day was therefore declared unnecessary, and Atlantis remained on track to land at the Kennedy Space Center's (KSC) Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) on the 22nd, after 10 days in orbit. In their final days, the astronauts wrapped up the remainder of their scientific research aboard the Spacehab double module and tested a medical restraint system, which might someday be used aboard the ISS to move a sick or injured crew member from one module to another. An enormously successful mission ended with an enormously successful landing, albeit one orbit later than planned, due to dynamic weather activity, on Runway 33 at 9:23 a.m. EST on 22 January. John Blaha had completed 128 days in space, establishing himself as the most experienced U.S. male spacefarer to date and the second most experienced U.S. spacefarer of all time, after Shannon Lucid.
Mir was again returned to its normal, three-man strength, with Korzun, Kaleri, and Linenger now settling into their own routine aboard the station. The Soyuz TM-25 crew of Vasili Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin, together with German astronaut Reinhold Ewald, were scheduled to arrive in mid-February 1997, three weeks hence. For Linenger, the departure of the shuttle carried with it a pang of loneliness, as he realised that his lengthy stay on Russia's space station had officially begun. "It was now just two Russian cosmonauts and myself," he wrote, "left to fend for ourselves, far removed from home and Earth." It was the start of a troubled year and a trying time for the new partners.

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved