yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) (05/06/91)
MISSION CONTROL STATUS REPORT #19 11:30 a.m. CDT -- May 4, 1991 Crew members aboard Discovery successfully performed a two hour operation to bypass the experiment support structure tape recorders and send data directly to the White Sands, NM ground station in support of three secondary experiments mounted on the Air Force Program-675 payload in the payload bay. The procedure began just before 8 a.m. CDT and data was beginning to be received and recorded at White Sands at about 10:15. The procedure involved routing wires through a data tranfer cable under the command and monitor panel on the aft flight deck of Discovery and attaching a splice wire to the Ku-band antenna system for direct transmission of the data from several secondary payload experiments on the AFP-675. The experiment data recovered is from the Uniformly Redundant Array (URA) which studies sources of X-ray radiation; the Horizon Ultraviolet Program (HUP) which measures spatial and spectral characteristics of the Earth's horizon in the ultraviolet wavelength; and the Quadrupole Ion-Neutral Mass Spectrometer (QINMS) which collects data on the orbiter environment, specifically levels of hydrogen, oxygen, water vapor and other gases that may be present. Before, during and after the in-flight maintenance (IFM) procedure, data collection continued using the Infrared Background Signature Survey satellite by maneuvering it to various positions for observations of the Earth's horizon at night, dawn and during the daytime. IBSS also continued collecting data after being restowed in Discovery's payload bay. The IBSS also was used to observe three gas releases of Neon, Xenon, Carbon Dioxde and Nitrous Oxide from the Critcal Ionizaton Velocity experiment in the payload bay. After berthing the shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS), the robot arm was placed in its cradle and powered down for the remainder of the flight. All systems aboard Discovery continue to peform well with no significant problems being worked by flight controllers.