markf%Nosc@usiiden.UUCP (06/19/85)
From: <crash!usiiden!markf@Nosc>
NASA News Conference 6/18 -> Principal participant Milt
Heflin - Flight Director - good evening and thanks for
braving the weather.. I understand its been raining all
day. First of all, about Arab Sat, things are going very
very well, with Arab Sat. We expect the perigee kick motor
firing to occur around 1:45, our time this morning. Things
are going just fine, the spacecraft is in a position right
now, in which the partial deployed (I use the word
partially deployed for the solar panel) although its
exactly where it should be; the two first rings of the
solar panel are where they should be, receiving power and
doing the job that they're supposed to be doing. Other
activities today, the biggest activity that we had this
afternoon, occurred with the system waste water dumps..
those of you that may not be very familiar with that
system, we have water tanks on board in which we carry
pottable water .. drinking water .. water we also use in a
flash activated latrine. and we have a system to collect
the waste water. and we have only so much space in the tank
so periodically we need to dump some of that water. In
previous flights, we have had some experiencing of an
icing, an ice build up around these nozzles. This was the
first flight with a nominal configuration. And today we
performed a waste water dump, first of all a supply water
dump and looked at these dumps with the interceptor camera
on the mechanical arm. We're very very pleased with what we
saw. Both of those dumps went as expected and we think that
we're taking our first step towards putting the water dump
into a category where we can go on a flight and not worry
about that. Later in the flight we will look at the
beginning of water dumps at different nozzle temperatures.
Today we did it at a temperature that is at a high level
and a warm situation on the spacecraft to give us the best
chance of taking a look at it. We dumped about 53 lbs of
water from the supply system and also from the waste
system. Today on the down link t.v. we did see that Patrick
was convecting the French experiment in the mid deck. In
addition today, Shanon (Shanon Lucid) was doing the French
ecocardiograph experiment on herself. And today, also
Sultan (Prince Sultan Salman Al Saud) did the first of the
phase separation experiment, in which a very simple device
on board with oil and water mixed together, that from that
simple device you might get some better idea of the mixing
of the oil and the water in zero gravity. And hopefully
from that you can understand more about that mechanism that
goes on. At the end of the shift the first printout of the
animated directional solidification furnace (AVSF) was
begun and what this is is a materials processing
experiment. It one where particular metals that we're
looking at right now are byzmuth, manganese byzmuth, its
two metals that you're looking at the process of melting
these materials and then seeing how they resolidify in zero
gravity and as I understand it, this particular experiment
is looking specifically at magnetic properties and trying
to determine if we can find some way of making the magnets
more suseptable to becoming demagnetized. And that is the
activities that went on today. Questions Arab T.V. - the
Arab astronaut, did he make any comments after the
deployment of Arab Sat? He did make some comments on air to
ground. They're transcribed down here, I heard them I can't
repeat for you directly what he said but he did make a
comment about observing the deployment of the Arab Sat. Are
there any more details about how its functioning, I know
its functioning very well but...Well the tracking and
functional certainly were and what will do is hopefully at
each change of shift briefing we will be getting immediate
updates of it. The apogee kick motor firing is going to
occur at around 1:45 in the morning and we'll have that
information for you in the morning. Univ of Arabia ->
Besides the water oil mix experiment and the French
experiment what else did Prince Sultan do today. Well
today, his activities as I mentioned earlier, the French
Packet experiment .. he was a subject for that experiment.
..other than that..don't know whether he had a chance to
take some photographs of some of the reaction control
systems firing, which is something he is going to do during
the flight, I don't know whether he's done it yet or not.
We're there any reactions on how those experiments went?
No, I did not hear any reaction from him. AP -> When the
Sultan will be taking pictures of the Arabian Penninsula..
he's supposed to do that on a couple of passes. Yes he is.
Do you happen to have a weather forcast for that area? How
the visibility will be? In the next few days of the
mission. No sir, I don't but I'm sure we can get that for
you. French New Agency -> Can you tell us what difference
there are between the old water nozzles and the new ones.
And what difference does that make for the operation. Sure-
the nozzle itself has been changed..the old nozzle allowed
the water to come out in a spray pattern, the new one comes
out more like a pencil, you might say a pencil stream of
fluid instead of a spray. The spray was basically what was
causing the problem before. That's the biggest difference.
Aviation Week -> Were you able to get the Arab Sat PAM burn
on film, on tape? No sir, we were not. Why was that? The
interceptor camera was not configured for it.. on the arm.
French News -> Do you have to take into account the
modification of atitude to the orbiter of some 63 lbs of
water exuding from the nozzle? Or is that just .. it really
just annoying. And we were expecting some type of downlink
from Patrick Baudry giving how the experiments went..what
happened to it? When I left the control center, we got the
information that the payload specialist report was
performed and on the recorder one of the flight controllers
in the control center .. the information on that is that
the French experiment ..my suggestion would be if the PI of
the French experiment wished to have that released those
arrangements can be made. ..Could you explain simply what
exactly the high precision tracking experiment is and what
will take place tommorrow. Later in the day, around day 2,
the MET (mission elapse time for day two) 6 1/2 HRS CST,
what will happen is the .. we're looking at the ability for
a low powered laser about 4 watts wavelength of blue color
laser and see how well it can .. tracking a range and a
range rate divised. Its an airforce experiment. The
transmitter for that experiment is on the isle of Maui in
Hawaii, that's an airforce site there. The orbitters going
to act basically like a mirror. We're going to attatch to
the side hinge on the port side of the orbitter .. inside,
we will attatch an electroreflective mirror and simply come
over the tracking site at Hawaii and point the window
towards the station. And allow the station there to
transmit the beam to the orbitter. We will not have any
feedback immediately on how that went. It will all be done,
as far as how well it goes, will be known down there on the
island of Maui. They said this morning the Arab Sat was
being tracked from San Palo will they continue to track the
satellite on this burn and once apogee burn has occurred
who will be tracking it from there and at what point will
Saudi Arabia be expected to pick it up? There are a number
of tracking sites. I don't have them in front of me, I know
that on the way to geosynch orbit that the Intelsat network
and the tracking sites will be performing that function. At
some point in time, the tracking and the house keeping of
the satellite will go to the ground site there in, I
believe, Saudi Arabia and I'm not sure just where it is.
**********************
More general information -> Two of the satellites are now
deployed and they are in nominal orbit. The Telesat will be
deployed in the morning. The French experiment is being put
on a tape recorder and its up to the French to release it.
The circularization burn on Arab Sat will take place about
1:45 tommorrow. Spartan -> National Physics Experiment, low
cost experiments to capitalize on the success of the NASA
sounding rocket experiment. Spartan 1 - the high energy
payload consists of a naval research laboratory instrument
containing two large X-ray counters equipped with
colimeters to define the direction of the incoming X-ray
source - this type of instrument has previously provided
brief snap shots of X-ray sources with in the sounding
rocket program. Data is stored in a paper program aboard
Spartan and by film can provide atitude accuracy. Spartan
will point the instrument with its stellar atitude control
systems allowing instruments to systemmatically scan the
surface of X-ray and construct a two dimensional picture of
X-ray emmissions. Clusters will be mapped and data will be
gathered on the temperature of the intracluster gas and the
galactic evolutions. Spartan will be sent out then
retrieved. It will also be part of the testing for the
projected black hole in the Milky Way. There will be 35 hrs
of observing time in the Milky Way. There are also smaller
experiments on board.. Get Away Specials on the flight ..
Capillary exp, space ultraviolet radiation exp. , Texas
school has a series of student experiments. .. growth of
seeds.. dynamic liquid propellent for the tank experiment.
Also there is the furnace for combining metals .. testing
magnetism .. fundamental studies in magnetism. Producing
metals with better magnetic properties.
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