Mission Management Meeting Transcripts

LH: Okay, good morning and welcome uh I hope uh those who got a three-day weekend had a good weekend I know most people were uh here working though. Ah let's see let's start with a status from Phil Engelauf in MOD.

PE: Okay, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today I guess but the good news is the orbiter and crew are all doing real well. Right now our cryo margins have gone up to two (2) days four (4) hours and they are continuing to increase. We're working on uh projection for what we think that's going to look like at end of mission but at best we can forecast right now the cryo that we're going to have left over is going to actually put us above the orbiter down weight. By end of mission we think like it's going in the order of maybe 150 lbs Linda and if you think about a 230 thousand pound orbiter that's less than a 10th of a percent so we're proposing not to do anything right now with that other than just log it.

LH: The orbiter; you guys so you think it's going to be about 150 lbs above the 230 you may want to send a Chit to the MER let them evaluate (RE talking in the background, something about 233 limit) I guess you are already assuming that you get to burn the OMS down as far as you can ??? fading

PE: That's the first week you know short of powering up load to try to burn off some of this extra cryo and with the heat mode issues we have been wrestling with that doesn't sound like a good idea right now so uh (LH: Right) we would like to watch this for a while. See what else we can do (LH: Okay) Ah, we had previously had some problems with the ergometer uh with the crew not being able to adjust the load in the uh auto mode I guess, it turned out to be a switch position error that has been resolved (background noise)

LH: We had two of them right, one in the mid-deck and one (talking in the background...) Hab Ergometer (which one was it.....fading can't understand) (okay)

PE: Ah, the right RCS tank temperatures are running a little bit high they are about 2 degrees above the limit right now and we're discussing I guess switching heater strings to see if we can get that to control to the lower set (background noise) to uh, I, I honestly don't know if that is a combination of attitude and heater function or maybe we just have a thermostat that's controlling high.

MER/Don McCormack: My guys didn't tell me that ....I don't know if we are on the "B" heater or...anybody down at the MER...??: (MER:we are on the "A" heater) we are on the "A" heater series (MER:because of one warm starboard side attitude, so we can go to "B" if needed.)

LH: Okay, it's because of the warm attitude?

MER: Yes, less heater operation. That's the reason we have the high set point B heater.

DM: How's switching to the "B" heater going to help you here?

PE: Uh, because the high set point is what turns on the heater because right now the heater is off

LH: I thought you were violating the upper limit

MER: No, lower limit of 78 degrees

LH: Oh, okay

PE: I'm sorry, I mis... I guess I misinterpreted whatever ....

MER/Don McCormack: Okay so we dropped below the dot limit on the "A" heater and the environment is keeping the "A" heater from coming on and so we can go to "B" to get the heaters on

MER: That's correct

DM: Okay

LH: Okay, that makes more sense

PE: I apologize for ...

LH: Alright, thanks

PE: ....misunderstood for what I read

PE: Ah, everything else that I have to talk about is the water separator situation in the HAB

LH: Yeah why don't you go ahead...oh wait I think I had a question for you on the cyro. How much LiOH do we have?

PE: EOM plus three (3)

PE: Then you have three (3) extra cans that were earmarked no pun intended for the rats ah and uh (noise in the background) I guess you have a little margin to play with there if you wanted to

LH: So, they're not using it

PE: My understanding was that that was after you closed off the HAB. That was supposed to be allocated for ..(LH: right, for them)...for supporting them (LH:weather contingency)

PE: Uh, um....

:LH: That if we send...

PE: Right

LH: Is it a can a day or something?

Vanessa Ellerbe: Ah, ...I'm not sure if it is a can a day ...it's about...that's normally what they predict (someone speaking up in the background) one can a day (someone coughing in the background)

LH: Okay

VE: But it's in there for the extension

Noise can't be made out what is being said if anything.....

PE: Twenty-seven rat equivalent units, I think we have done this on another flight. .. laughing

LH: Okay...

PE: Uh, but but we can go look at some other options for maybe using uh residuals out of other cans to support the rats or something like that see if we maybe (LH: Yeah...) we can scheduled us another can or two (2) (LH: Okay) but uh

PE: Ah, okay then with the water separators uh I think since the last meeting, we the last MMT we had just to give a short history uh on flight day three (3) I believe it was we uh had a problem where we tried to do the condensate transfer to the CWC we weren't getting uh any flow uh we did an inspection they found water uh down in the bay under the floor and we concluded that the rotary separator which I guess is essentially the equivalent of the orbiter hum seps {humidity separator} same hardware functionally uh appeared to have a block output they thought perhaps it was the bellows on the collecting tank were stuck and not letting water go into the tank they mopped up uh an estimated two (2) quarts of water with towels and uh, uh switched to rotary separator two (2) which then appeared to work nominally?? and the water did go into the tank so we think we've absolved the bellows on the collection...collection tank

LH: What do we think was blocked.

PE: Ah, if you can, can visualize the system there are two (2) parallel pump seps or rotary separators (LH: background...thank you) uh run one at a time okay, uh they output into a check valve and then the output of the two systems is manifolded together into a single line that then goes into a collecting tank. Uh, rotary separator one (1) uh was flooding and put free water out on the floor so uh when they switched to rotary separator two (2) it went into the tank correctly so we believe that absolves the bellows on the tank and it...any... if you hypothesize blockage it would have to be in the output leg either at the check valve or somewhere in the plumbing prior to the common part of the line between the two

LH: Okay

PE: Uh, we run on rotary separator two (2) for uh another day or so and yesterday afternoon, I guess about 4:00 local time here or so we uh got a phase-to-phase short on the bus. uh That equipment uh stopped running and we opened circuit breakers on two (2) phases it appeared to be a B-to-C short to ground.

LH: Bus

PE: The uh Hab inverter bus if I'm...I think its correct

LH: Okay

PE: And uh we looked at a couple of possible theories of either residual free water from the flooding with rotary separator one (1) getting into some of the electronics down there uh the initial look at that, people have discounted that theory because of the boxes, the power generating boxes uh in trans...the power equipment down there uh is all in steel and conformally coated so they don't believe that there is any chance that water uh in the power system per say could have caused uh the signature that we saw...it is possible that uh water might have gotten on to the connector uh for the rotary separator two (background noise) and caused a short internal to the connector, if that theory is correct and we didn't damage the rotary separator it's possible that drying it out uh (coughing in the background) could, could uh show that box could still be ok or that rotary separator to be okay there's also every reason to believe that rotary separator one (1) is operable if we turn it back on but we do want to try to dry that out. And so we are developing....

LH: Why do you think it would work and not be clogged again?

PE: Ah, if you can unplug the clog but as far as the rotating equipment it should be okay.

LH: Right

PE: Ah, and I don't know if folks have looked at the possibly of swapping ducting between the two (2) so you can you can tape the output of rotary separator one (1) down the same path that rotary separator two (2) was pumping down. But the short term plan was to uh, we've got an IFM in work, I think there is a meeting at 10:00 here local time to go over the first draft on that to get under the boards under the floor boards remove the ducting that is required to get into these areas mop up any free water with towels use the DC vacuum cleaner to try to draw off any residual water. uh For rotary separator two (2) they were going to disconnect the connector and try to uh look at the terminals with the meter to try to verify there isn't any internal short within rotary separator if were to try to re-power that, uh and then once we think we have those boxes cleaned up and if we have ruled out any possibly of short then with the ducts removed go ahead and run the rotary separators for about an hour to try to, with-with no load on them, just to further dry them out, get air flow through them, uh and-and that process that IFM is still all in work, In the mean time the first reaction after the lost of the second rotary separator was to take the air by-pass valve uh to-to 100 percent by-pass to keep from flowing air over that uh interchanger, the payload heat exchanger, I'm sorry the cabin heat exchanger in the Hab uh in order to avoid condensing more water down in that volume with no way to get rid of it, the result of that is the HAB air temperatures in the cabin have gone up as well as the water loop temperatures because we have backed off on the flow through the loop. uh What we are trying to do to keep to the Hab temperature down and they've stabilized now at around 80 degrees I think they peak at about 84 degrees and we've gotten them back down to 80

VE: Right, they're pretty much around 76

PE: 76 now?...okay ah, what we have done uh is essentially we're shunting the heat load in the cabin air back into the orbiter by we took one of the flow proportioning valves back out to the interchanger to get the orbiter mid-deck air temperature cooler so that the air we send down to the Hab is cooler. Result of that is that the flight deck is pretty cool, I can't give you the temperature but subjectively the crew reported is pretty cool, the mid-deck is comfortable and the Hab is in the warm side, uh but the crew has said it's in an acceptable condition for the time being. Ah, we have gone back to flowing air over the cabin heat exchanger in the Hab. Basically we're running it pretty low uh dew point in the vehicle right now, we're down to 36 degrees I think, uh which is pretty good and what that allows you to do is still flow some air over the heat exchanger since we have gotten the water up above the dew point you can put air across there without getting condensation and the inspection we've done under the floor board uh a couple of hours ago in this shift I guess, has only shown us just a minimal few drops of collection down there so...

LH: Orbiter heat exchanger...what was it in before?

PE: Both in Payload

LH: We swapped one back to Orbiter, so one's in Payload and one's in Orbiter...

PE: Interchanger, it puts more cooling in the Orbiter basically once you get colder air temps...

LH: In the Orbiter

PE: In the heat exchanger in the Orbiter

LH: And then we just exchange air and that's how we're getting the ....

PE: We're cooling the air in the Orbiter and shipping it back into the Spacehab rather than letting the Spacehab cool the air (someone coughing in the background) ....

LH: Okay

PE: Uh, there has been one impact to that because of the reduction in cooling back in the Hab, we do have one experiment, VCD I believe, is shutdown and we would like to recover that as soon as we can. There is a temporary fix uh in work or shorter quicker fix I should say in work to get under the floor boards and this was pre-flight approved IFM in the Spacehab to basically adjust some of their manual flow proportioning valves, there is a collection of valves down there that they can use to adjust the amount of water flow through the racks or across the heat exchanger and their going to go ahead and uh, uh I believe to try to adjust those valves to see if they can get enough cooling back to start VCD.

LH: And this is something that I was hearing we have done before!

VE: Right yep, that action has been on the books um basically the configuration we're in now is we're in the logistics double module configuration is where we are and fill in for Kelly, the Spacehab folks are caucusing in on this morning, but they feel they can stay in this config indefinitely throughout the mission and they are going to probably to bring that forward as the preferred scenario.

Kelly Beck: Right, that's what we were talking about to try to avoid the more complicated IFM if we can position these valves to get the experiment water loop the temperature that will support the VCD experiment then we can carry out all our operations and as Vanessa said our module temp's around 76/75 degrees or so, yesterday we when we started having to rise the temperature the crew didn't even notice when we went from 70's, low 70's to like 76/77 two out of three crew members didn't even know the temperature changed. One crewmember noticed it was a little warm but they didn't think it was too uncomfortable...

LH: When do we think we're going to do this?

KB: (conversation being carried on in background....I think the manual) They're looking at it now, I suspect that they're reviewing the procedures and we may be able to do it I would expect something on this shift but I haven't got a timetable from them.

LH: (several conversations start to take place) Is VCD the only one that's shutdown?

VE: Yes, VCD is the only one that's shutdown (conversation in the background...BCB) and their next activity was for flight day seven for tomorrow so...

LH: Oh! so...we got some time

KB: We got some time but it...like it's a published IFM the other IFM was not published so we had (someone coughing in the background) to go through all the rigors of developing the IFM, and reviewing procedures, now we just need to ....

LH: It's not only that, but if you go in there and your going to try to power something that you think shorted...it's probably

KB: Exactly, exactly....

LH: It's probably something that you really don't want to...

KB: We'd rather not....

PE: You have to exonerate that first and there's you know two possible branches out of that procedure that either you do or you don't and then by not....

LH: Okay

KB: So, we're hopeful that this is going to work and we won't have to do the more complicated IFM...

LH: Okay, so the adjusting manual flow proportioning valve we think we'll get done sometime between today and tomorrow which we don't even need it until we do the next VCD run which is scheduled for tomorrow, we all think it's going to work (someone coughing in the background ) we think the only thing we're going to need to do to keep the cooling and humidity at the right level.....

PE: We hope that's the case I guess...

KB: Right! and Linda, just so you, we may start it but what they're going to do it's pretty slow, one of the valves they're going to adjust only very slightly watch it, look at it, see what kind of response we get, so it could take awhile to get to the desired temp for the VCD, but we may be able to at least get it going and see how the response...

LH: What is the desired temp for VCD?

VE: Their water temp desired is 65 degrees

LH: And what is it now?

VE: Ah, um I think the water temp is in the 70's, about 5 to 10 degrees above what they want (talking in the background)

LH: Okay, I'm hearing about 5 to 10 degrees above what you wanted, alright, ah and back on on the more elaborate IFM for cleaning up uh the water uh first I wanted to ask you orbiter guys, did you see this on your data on the fuel cells?

DM: No, ???? I don't think we did, can anyone else down there answer that or Larry here ....

Larry: I looked at the...when I heard it over the loops looked at the mainly the AC on the orbiter and-and so forth and I saw ...I saw nothing there. (conversation in the background) I heard them talking about AC and just to be sure I pulled up just to look at the orbiter AC stuff and didn't see anything

PE: I believe the EGIL did see it in the hab data and verified that it was a short there-there was a short term theory that-that we either maybe got some flooding that slowed down the pump or something like that, but (coughing in the background, can't understand what is being said) we found traces that we think the electrical load exchange between the phases you-you confirmed that....

Larry: Right, right...and I did see some of the data they pulled and it definitely showed up in the hab phases (talking in the background...but it didn't show up)very significant uh signatures...(talking in the background...okay) it was definitely something going on.

PE (??): Is it 3 amp breakers that I guess that it popped

LH: Okay...

Larry: All the Orbiter breakers are 3 amps and those probably are too

Three people talking at once....oh yes....3 amps breakers...I can't....

LH: And you said two...two of the phases two circuit breakers popped...

PE: Box, B and C

LH: Okay...so... you are going to continue though to develop this IFM in case you need it in the future

PE: I think so...

LH: As planned...

KB: Yeh, I thing the folks are still looking at it, right now though I-I suspect the emphasis is on getting the loop in a position to support the VCD, but they are, we've got you know in addition to the hab team, we have the EGIL, ECOMM, MMACS, folks also helping since we got some experience with the Hum Seps in this kind of water collection so they're all doing their part looking at the different pieces of the IFM, but certainly right now the emphasis is trying to get the config to support VCD

LH: Okay... Yeh, I agree with you at a 100 percent, I don't really want to re-power something that we think may have shorted so, if we get around to coming to that piece before we go power it, I would like to have an MMT and make sure that everybody really wants to buy into trying something like that so...

PE: I understand ....I think that...

LH: It sound like we're not even going to need to have to address something like that but you never know

PE: I don't thing that IFM is supposed to be ready until at least the end of the day today and possibly later, but I'll probably recommend continuing to develop that just for whatever future requirement might show that your going to need that

LH: Okay and in the future if you think you're going to need it just give me a call and we will set up an MMT or something that might have shorted

PE Okay, that's all I had and my apologies to Spacehab if I misrepresented anything in their equipment.

LH: I have a question on uh another uh anomaly I saw on an anomaly report that happened even before this and that was just a water Spacehab water pump...one of the two had degraded flow...well

KB: Right, you know water pump two (2) was degraded flow and the concern there was that it was degraded it wasn't severe enough to really declare it failed but the concern was whether it could support both the water cooled experiments we brought them on line, they would have to do a real time analysis is what I understand, so we just swapped to the alternate pump and it's being working find ever since.

LH: So, if we had to swap back....

KB: If we had to swap back they would take a look at it to make sure it could support, really they..I don't think they got far enough along and maybe the Hab folks if they looked at it in more details, but I don't think they got far enough in the analysis before they got overcome by the rotary separator events.

LH: Right, uh but....

Kelly: We believe it's a good pump but we just don't know if it can support VCD and CM-2 simo {simultaneous} and after all this they may have more information now from what we have learned going back and looking at it more close. So we can go back and look

VE: : I don't want to speak to you guys, but basically right now they believe the water pump two (2) is..one (1) is still viable but you're right, they haven't had time to look at that, I mean...

LH: So, one (1) is the one with the degrade flow and two (2) is working now and....(someone in the background states: the other way around...talking in the background, 1...yeh...)

LH: one-one (1) and it's fine and two (2)is degraded

VE: Right

Silent

LH: Okay and just VCD would be the only thing you think would be impacted if we had a swapped back to the other loop...

LH: Okay...that poor thing, VCD ...okay, let's see, so Phil anything else

PE: That's all I got Linda

LH: Okay

LH: MER

Don M.: Okay, let's see, since we last met we met um we got three new items on our board down there and that's a problem with the 70 millimeter Hasselblad camera that was jamming uh also a suspect fuel cell monitoring system data cable in the crew that works trouble shooting procedures went to a spare cable and they were able to get the FCMS data and then also a failed DSR20 VTR and uh they got work around using a V10 and uh then the camcorder. uh Additionally what got brought up during at a meeting last Friday was 02 tank 7A heater uh wasn't working in the manual mode, it did work in the auto mode and uh the plan is to just use these nominal plan for tank usage now. Uh an update to the story I gave Friday on the AC2 phase B uh current. The guys have gone back to look at data, more data and uh they have seen more occurrences which uh they are calling miniature occurrences of this thing, uh they're a half to one an half seconds in duration and you see a drop of phase B of 0.2 to 0.3 amps and you see a corresponding increase in uh phases A & C uh they're occurring during periods of constant load just see these guys happen. Additionally they look back at uh, they've looked at some of the data and they looked at some data from January 13th on the pad where they had a vent door run and they also saw a vent doors 8 and 9 and you saw a signature that was very similar to what we saw uh pre-launch when we're re-positioning the vent doors. They also went back and looked at the STS-109 data and uh they're reviewed there it's not indicated it occurred during STS-109 so anyway it's obviously not impacting the mission in any way uh it's most likely it's in that inverter some problem in that inverter or the wiring uh to the panels and uh it's just something we're going to have to trouble shoot when we get back.

LH: Okay

MER: Uh, we'll be sending some guys to support this meeting at 10:00 this morning or ECLSS, EPDC and uh also safety guys will be supporting this meeting this morning at 10:00

LH: Right, and Scott you guys will have some flight people there

Scott Johnson/Safety: Right, sure it sounds like you guys have already addressed most of the concerns we had with the uh running the humidity separator two, but we'll have folks there supporting that.

DM : And we will look at this potential weight issue too...and uh...

LH: Yeah, we'd are try to think if there is anything smart to do to get rid of the weight

DM: And uh

LH: You're not powered down at all right to B or anything like that

KB: We are in group B

LH: Pardon me...

KB: We are group B...

LH: Why??

KB: For our original plan....

LH: I know, but...laughing....

KB: Actually they're working on that we got an updated power profile from Spacehab and there're taking a look at to see this time how much we have and we can talk about how to get rid of it.

LH: Right, you just don't want to get too much heat

PE: You don't want to dump heat load into the cabin maybe there if there are things we can do with external heaters that go directly into the freon they'll dump the heat into the Orbiter

LH: Right or maybe we could power off and I don't know FES some more to get rid of some of the water...laughing (PE: . . .we can look at it...laughing)

LH: Okay...

MER/Don McCormick: That's it's...

LH: Alright, I know you guys are looking at the debris

Don M.: Yeah, as everyone knows we took the hit on the somewhere on the left wing leading edge and the photo/TV guys are completed I think pretty much their work although I know I'm sure they're still reviewing their stuff and they have given us you know approximate size for the debris and approximate area for where it came from and approximately where it hit. So we are you know talking about doing some sort of parametric type analyses uh and also we're talking about looking at what you can do in event we really have some damage there but...

LH: Hey, just a comment, I was just thinking that our flight rationale at the FRR from tank and orbiter from STS-112 was that this...I'm not sure if the area is exactly the same where the foam came from that but the material properties and density of the foam wouldn't do any damage. So we ought to pull that along with 87 data where we had some damage, pull this data from 112 or (McCormick: right...) whatever flight it was and make sure that you know...I hope we had good flight rationale then...

Don M.: Yeah, we'll look at that, you mention 87 you know we saw some fairly significant damage area between RCC panels 8 and 9 and main landing gear door down at the bottom on STS-87 we did some analyses prior to the STS-89 so uh..

[1 The reference here to "significant damage area between RCC panels 8 and 9 and main landing gear door down at the bottom on STS-87" does not refer to damage to the RCC panels, but instead refers to damage to Shuttle tiles located on the underside of the wing in an area found on a line drawn from near the main landing gear door to a point located on or near RCC panels 8 and 9. Supporting diagram will be posted separately from this document. ]

LH: And really, I don't think there is much we can do, so you know it's not really a factor during the flight cause there isn't much we can do about it, but what I'm really interested in is making sure our flight rationale two flights ago was good, maybe this is foam from a different area I'm not sure and it may not be just ??? Can't maybe correlate it, but maybe try it and see maybe what we have

Don M.: Okay...

LH: Okay, Vanessa

Vanessa: Uh, Linda from the uh payloads perspective uh Spacehab payloads are operating anomaly all their planned experiments runs have been accomplished today they do have one payload "MSTRS " which is a mini satellite threat reporting uh system demonstration that is an Air Force payload that's being having some command and telemetry problems above that seen by everyone else uh the Spacehab guys are working with the Air Force to try to help them figure out what the problem it, it's the first flyer payload so, it could be just some learning curve going on there, but were trying to help them out uh also the CM2 payload uh did not complete two (2) of their runs I think on yesterday however uh the customer is very satisfied with the science with the inputs he has received thus far. They may not even ask to have uh that rescheduled. Uh, I will give a quote from the "Code U rep, he says they're quiet happy" Uh, then customers are responding well to the system anomalies uh VCD uh does understand that if they can't get their run today then they could reschedule for the next, for tomorrow then the next day, so uh they're are ok with what is going on there. With regards to the lost of the RDM data, uh just to brief over the weekend we did troubleshooting and several different uh areas basically uh is pointing to a "check sum" error in the EDS MU data and when it gets to the ground um it's being causing the "EDGA" to crash and they have disabled the check sum on that coming down however there're still having some crashes when they call from what the call LOS to AOS...

LH: Is it less often, though

Vanessa: It's less often though but they're not willing to basically say that you know...right now for the payload there's 8 of 30 that are impacted by this what happens is Spacehab does a call on their data loop that says, we're getting ready to have a crash so everybody be prepared...laugh...and everybody, they reboot the EDGA the payloads reboot and ...it's a new system to the customer but they are dealing with it...

LH: In all these years in of your payloads have they onboard recording or are we record the data on the ground so that post mission will still get the data

Vanessa: A little of both, CM2 the bigger uh their requirement does have onboard recording and then we do have the data recorded on the ground so if the customers do want it we can go and get it. They're losing about two (2) to three (3) minutes of data when they have...

LH: But..but it's all available, none of them have lost it permanently...

Vanessa: Correct

LH: Alright

Vanessa: Um, right now they are looking at a ground work around it they're going to try to do once get pass the " water separator" laugh... concern where they are going to try to take the Channel 2 data and route it to the backup EDGA and then have it go into the prime EDGA that will avoid crashes for Channel 3 and the forward link and PDI so, it would only be the Channel 2 data and then they will route it into the EDGA and they will get that.

Vanessa: So, right now they are coming up with something to minimize the overall impact but today everyone's living with it and they're Ok

Vanessa: The patch is suppose to be available maybe later on tonight

Vanessa: FreeStar is very happy uh they reported that for the first time they've gotten a visual image of an "ELF" in space and uh they're just excited about that uh that's from the MEIDEX payload uh is a visual emission from thunderstorms and yeah! yeah! apparently the dust storms they hadn't seen any of them yet because there is a cyclone or something ...

KB: Not yet we're hoping the clouds will clear and we will get to seek some dust but so far they have been getting excellent sprites and as Vanessa said they capture the "ELF"

someone making a comment, can't understand

LH: ???dust this time of year

KB: Well we're they are predicting some dust later in the week I want to say they said Wednesday (someone making comments....yeah, Wednesday,

VE: Tomorrow or the next day (several people making comments, hard to understand ... something about someone working in orbiter...laughing...And uh as Don mentioned the DSR20, they do have a work around for that, so uh they are getting the digital data down linked via the camcorder and they're pleased with that as well. So, overall they in terms of payload uh science and operations they are very happy with the mission.

LH: Alright, great...FCOD Bob

Bob Cabana/FCOD: No issues from the crew, Linda

LH: Okay, Space and Life Science

Space and Life Science: Nothing to add

LH: Is the crew getting uh good sleep

Space and Life Science: I think so..

LH: Feeling good

Space and Life Science: Yeah!

LH: Good

Silence

LH: Ah! Integration

Integration/Lambert Austin: Linda the uh... just a little bit more info to the community relative to the debris uh it is, it does...our first occurrence of visual evidence of the debris is later in the flight than the STS-112 occurrence. The quality of the film is not such that it's supports our definitive making a definitive decision on the source of course we will look at any hand held pictures once we get the crew back and that will help a lot the photo folks are off continuing to work, trying to improve the quality of the film that we do have and but for a quick look analyses in terms of damage assessment we are assuming that the "forward bipod" location as occurred on 112 and for the specific Mach number regime where we first see the debris and we are also assuming the STS-112 debris size from the bipod for damage assessment so that data is being made available to the orbiter and the degree or the locations of damage will uh I'm assuming report in an orbiter evaluation of whether or not there is anything unique we ought to attempt or consider for entry based on that kind of a worst case scenario based on the two assumptions, you know the bipod and the size being the same.

LH: And higher Machs is going to be worse

Integration: Yes, but that...you know the debris impact locations will be different so that's one of the reasons we have uh....basically like you said give a little bit of parametric set of data to the orbiter so they can decide what the worse case scenario might be.

LH: Okay

LA: That's all

LH: Okay, has ET being working this with you all also

LA: Well, ET is appraised of it uh ....in terms of this damage assessment there's not really anything ET would be doing

LH: Right, but they may be able, I don't know to help you on where they think it may have come from or ...

LA: Well if we get better quality uh you know film evidence and of course as in the past the ET would like to wait for it any hand held photos that we have from the crew

LH: Alright.

LA: That's all we have

LH: Alright thanks Lambert

Loren Shriver/USA: Nothing new other than Friday we mentioned that there may have been a forward skirt damage that turns out not to be the case after closer look uh it is the same area that was fixed from the previous damage and it's just like it was so, (LH: good news) there doesn't appear to be any damage. And with the sea state you would have wondered how that happened, things were very calm things doesn't get much calmer than what it was...

LH: Okay, so no damage that's good news

Loren: That was the report yesterday any way...

LH: Okay, Shuttle Processing

Shuttle Processing: Nothing to report thank you

LH: Launch Integration?

Wayne Hale (??)/Launch Integration: We have nothing this morning Linda

LH: Okay, Marshall Projects

Dave Martin/Marshall Projects: We have nothing morning, Linda

LH: Ah, Safety

Scott Johnson/Safety: Nothing else, Linda

Silence

LH: Okay, Couldn't remember when the next MMT was going to be so, uh looks like things are humming along well here uh next MMT scheduled for Friday, 8:00 unless something comes up between now and then and um asking MOD and the folks to call me before they would implement this other IFM uh and we'll probably have the MMT meeting if we need to do that. Thanks....

Disconnecting...thank you for calling the digital reply service.

- end -

STS-107 Mission Management Team Telecon

Friday, January 24, 2003, 8 a.m. CST

Hosted by Ms. Linda Ham.

Do I have the MER Conference Room? We're here.

Ron Dittemore? Yes ma'am.

Weather Office? We're here.

OSF Action Center? Yes, we're here.

Alex McCool? We're here.

Col. Jim Halsell? We're here.

Scott Southwell? We're here.

Jack Keiphenheighn?

Here

John Hammell?

John Hammel's Here

EMSR?

We're here.

Linda Ham?

We're here.

MCI Operator: I would just like to inform all parties that today's call is being recorded. Thank you, you may begin.

Ham: Good morning and welcome to the MMT. Um we will start with MOD and before we do, I would like to say that two things I would like to talk about today end of mission down weight and what kind of analysis we would need to do for that and the second thing was the potential IFM's for the Spacehab because of the water separator failures. Okay Phil, give us a status of how we are doing.

Phil Engelauf: Okay, onboard operations are all going real well, and the crew is doing a real good job with the timeline and keeping up with the workload onboard the vehicle and to everything we know the crew is in great spirits and happy with the ground support and the way the mission is going. cryo as we previously reported, we are going to need a little bit of margin pretty much at the at the rate we gave you a couple of days ago we are up to about 2 days, 8 hours of margin right now and if we forecast the ongoing increase we will be at about 2 days, 16 hours by end of mission, some where in that range as much as we can tell. Of course we keep turning off rotating equipment and inverters and keep making more margin. But you know we keep getting further and further ahead so. We did however rearrange the LiOH cue card to protect EOM plus 4 on LiOH now so you have the option of, of using some of that cryo if we need to and still protect EOM plus 3.

Ham: Okay

Engelauf: From a landing capability standpoint. The temperatures in the module have uh more or less stabilized, we have watched over the last couple of days since we did the valve positioning, repositioning and it kind of crept up very, very slowly. We've had to watch over a couple of days to see the trend because there is more noise hour to hour variation based on crew workload and that sort of thing, but you can see a trend over the last couple of days of increasing about a degree a day or so but uh it looks like it may be over the last 24 hours has more less stabilized or the rate of increase is changing, and may be we are getting to a flatten out.

Ham: What temp are you at now?

Engelauf: We're running at about 79 degrees in the Hab, I believe, and 76 in the middeck. We got up to about 81 degrees yesterday, I think. And again we attribute that to the number of bodies in the module at the time and exercise equipment going on back there as part of one of the experiments.

Ham: Okay, and the rule is 80 degrees, but the Flight Surgeons, have they been in on this discussion.

Engelauf: Yes

Ham: And we can go above 80 if we need to?

Engelauf: We have a crew comfort zone plot that relates the humidity and temperature and all the related factors. And they're comfortable that we are within the acceptable area and the crew indicates that the conditions are acceptable.

Ham: Okay, and what about, Vanessa, the Hab folks and what they've got back there?

Ellerbe: Um, I have talked to the Code U folks with regards to the veterinarian and he is not giving a hard limit call, as long as we are maintaining the crew comfort zone----But he is available and we will keep him advised of the temperatures.

Engelauf: Okay, and I guess the crew volunteered at one point to take these mufflers covers off and I assume that you're talk about that.

Ellerbe: Right, the mufflers are off the AEM. They are getting as cool air as they can.

Engelauf: Um, other than that there is not a lot to report. I will say that the crew did send down a note last night asking if anybody was talking about an extension day - if we're going to go with that. And we sent up to the crew about 16 second video clip of the strike just so they are armed if they get any questions in the press conferences or that sort of thing. We made it very clear to them, no concerns.

Ham: When is the press conference? Is it today?

Engelauf: Later today.

Ham: They may get asked because the press is aware of it. I...

Engelauf: The press is aware of it I know folks have asked me because the press corp at the Cape has been asking. We wanted to make sure that they are properly....

Ham: Okay, next on the temperature. Did they see an increase when they exercised back there?

Engelauf: It is hard to distinguish because you have experiments being turned on and off and like a say datapoints from hour to hour to hour change and there is time lags in there from the time people do things until you see the effect they have on cabin temperature so we're just trying to extrapolate or trying to add up all the things that we know are going on that we know are contributing to the factors.

Ham: From your viewpoint, you do not think we are going to need to implement the IFM?

Engelauf: At this point we don't think we need it.

Ham: Okay, do you have any comments, Vanessa?

Ellerbe: No, just to say Spacehab is also tracking 79 plus or minus 1 degree.

Engelauf: Uh hunh.

Ellerbe: And where they are they are not asking to implement the IFM, because it will require the Hab fan to be turned off for 30 minutes and make the situation worse. Only if they had some___ major problems can ____ they are looking Linda to ask for a more extensive evaluation and clean up just to make sure there is no water left back there when we come down for landing.

Engelauf: We did have a little discussion yesterday, I do not have all the details, I tried to get a little more information, but apparently there was a little concern that cropped up temporarily yesterday that we may have been accumulating significant amounts of water under the Hab floor. I think that was based more on a thermal balance discussion than folks might been thinking about that's increasing the water rate and efficiencies of the transfer rates on heat exchangers and things like that. There was a meeting at 4:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon and I think everybody has put that to bed and the official outcome of that is that we believe that we are not accumulating any water and that more than likely we have evaporated almost anything that did accumulate at any time under there, however, we're still talking about just, just kind of make sure kind of at the entry.

Ham: So, no one wants to do. I saw two different IFM's; no one wants to do either of those because the cabin fan needs to be turned off for 30 minutes. If there is another one in work that leaves the cabin fan on then keep those folks working on it, for water cleanup only.

Engelauf: Yea, its is basically just taking the DC vac and there is a 1 inch access hole on the cover of the box down there we will just have them suck on the box for a little while try to get any water out of there that might have. Then put some tape over it to make sure nothing else comes out of there.

Ham: Okay

Engelauf: That's all I got.

Ham: Alright, Uh MER

MER-Don M.: Okay, good morning Linda, first of all, all the orbiter subsystems are in fantastic shape so we are looking good there. We have been looking at a couple of different things, over the last couple of days doing some analyses one is the landing weight limit exceedance and the other is assessing the uh impact of the damage that we might of sustained on the port wing. I'm just going to summarize some charts we got this morning at our meeting instead of going through all that but as far as where the landing weight exceedance uh the folks have gone off and looked at uh our capability to land with the, and the CHIT we've got to respond to shows that we are going to be in the 233,600-900 pound region and they've gone off to look at flight control thermal stress and landing gear and tire and for flight control they are not concerned about an exceedance of 500-1,000 pounds cause we're covered there by the abort certification. For thermal the MOD guys normally run their TSEP analysis for looking at the different entry trajectories and they've done some of that already and there are no violations indicated and unless there are violations indicated we are not concerned about thermal. We do not have to go off and do some other analysis or some more detailed work if violations were indicated there.

Ham: And which thermal are we talking about bond line temps? Or more than that?

MER-Don M.: I am talking bond line temps. Is Pam in here? I am thinking bond line temps primarily.

Ham: Yeah, the bond line temps were enveloped by plus or minus 3,000 pounds and 3 inches. According to the Flight Rule anyway.

Pam: We're just talking about overall vehicle certification limits. The TSEP looks at various body points all over the vehicle...will give you an indication as to whether you are in --certification limits that -- we are talking about.

Ham: That's then more than just bond line temps

Pam: Yes, it is.

Ham: And you saying that t-sep showed that we are within the limits, so you do not have to redo any of the analysis?

Pam: Yeah, we coordinated with MOD and they had looked at uh 2337 {233,700}, and they probably would want to go and look at your final number, when you get the final number, but 2337 for like the nominal rev and the max cross range cases----cases---all had no violations. And so with that we don't---need to----

Ham: -----on evaluation does both the thermal and thermal and stress---just as a result of this

Pam: They are related, thermal adds a component to the stress evaluation its uh thermal gradients and BTU--- Stress---

Ham: Which is worse? Wouldn't low cross range be worse? Because you turn more ------

Pam: Yea, I don't have those sensitivities. I don't recall and it kind of varies, I think. Uh the body point.

Ham: Okay. Okay.

MER/Don McCormack: And also we looked at stress and determined that stress was acceptable for the higher landing weights by similarities, similarity to the heavier abort landing weights as long as the thermal conditions are within limits and then as far as landing gear and tire goes, that something that we typically do um protecting tire pressure and of course Harry and his guys will continue to make sure that

Ham: That's the tire piece, is there something you do in addition for landing gear?

MER: Well, that's really the tire piece.

Ham: Okay.

MER: Pam, Do you have any thing to add to that?

Pam: Well the landing gear is covered by abort certification so it's covered under the structural cert and so I think what Harry is looking for when he gets the final weight, he'll get the final tire temperature limits and he'll make adjustments if required to the attitude timeline requirements to protect those.

Ham: Okay

MER: I think that, Linda, kinda the bottom line answer is we think we will be able to live with the number they are likely to come up with for end of mission. On landing on this one.

Ham: Um, one more, the main engines nozzles.

MER: Um we don't look at those correct, Pam?

Pam: That's right. That is System Integration and I believe that they have evaluated heavier weights than the 2337

Don Noah: Yea, Linda we've gone and assessed down weight and uh it's not an impact to the interface loads both for the cargo and integration hardware.

Ham: Don you're real hard to hear, did you say we're okay?

Don Noah: Yes, in so many words.

Ham: Did we have any other analysis since we are covered by the aborts?

Don: No, the Structures Working Group actually preflight had, had looked a half full EDO pallet and so the interface loads that we are looking at for this nominal end of mission is within the loads that we had assessed prior to the mission.

Loren Shriver/USA: He is not answering your question; your question was the main engine nozzle---

Don Noah: The main engine nozzle, I thought it was cargo.

Pam: That's integration and, and this is SSME, so I can't really speak

Ham: So Don, you haven't looked at the engine nozzles?

Don Noah: I'd have to go back and check on that.

Ham: Okay, well we will leave that piece open for you to report back.

Don Noah: Okay.

MER: And the other item, Linda, that we are looking at is, you know we took the inputs that we got from system integration guys on the debris

Ham: Before we go on, back on the down weight thing, so the only open piece I believe is the engine nozzles? So we need for integration to work that. I see I have two pages from----yea before we go may be we should

???: ----We probably I think, we talked this morning and we will require a waiver against those things----what ever the final weight is if it is over 233K, so, just want to make sure you knew we were probably going to have to process paper.

Ham: Okay, then who will process that?

???: I assume it will be orbiter in that case, if it is an orbiter requirement or integration.

Pam: ----with it be a different flight elements it might be the Flight Manager, in the past that's who sponsored the CR for the waiver, but we'll-----

Ham: Okay, but we will probably get different pieces, one most the biggest piece probably from orbiter, but it sounds like we will have another piece from integration, we may even have a piece from the MOD folks, but we will get that piece in work and we will wait for Don to give us an answer on the nozzles and I imagine, Don we will wait for yours I think before and put that in the MER's response to that Chit.

Don Noah: Okay

Ham: that you are planning on responding

Don Noah: Are you going to respond that through the MER CHIT then?

Ham: Yea, we will include your response in the MER CHIT, so you will need to get it to me and Don McCormick, and whoever else the MER managers are incase it is not a CHIT.

Don Noah: Okay.

Linda: Okay

Safety/Scott Johnson: That's one question I am going to ask, so the issue here though were still within our certification limits and we're violating our requirements, is the disparity in the requirements that exists just a margin issue, is that the reason we've got the disparity in the cert?

Pam: Well we're not within certification, we've not done a full certification for the end of mission support. All conditions above 233K and thermal is the biggest driver there you know and aborts we do except limited hardware damage due to thermal effects and we don't do certification by increments so I can't really tell you where that comes in to play but it's something that we need to understand for a nominal end of mission------

Scott Johnson: Okay so there's, I mean, if you waive this, are we, does your analysis, include any additional turnaround type activities associated with potential damage, I guess we're giving up some margin here and I am just wondering

Pam: I believe it should preclude that you know, I don't know if Mike you have any comments.

{* Can't hear the speaker}

Ham: ----If we did, and that is why we are having this meeting, we would need to know about it, if there is going to be any kind of extra----actions we need we don't want to get in to that kind of situation where we try to get rid of the cryo and get under our 233K

Pam: That's right

Ham: If we are not within our 233K, which is our certification weight limit, they are doing this analysis or envelope by existing analysis of it we won't have any kind of damage or we won't need to add any kind of inspection

Okay, lets do the piece from Flight Design on the down weight

Richard: I am RichardJones, I am the Entry FIDO for STS-107, I was asked by LeRoy {Cain} to bring some data, I think a lot of the data has already been covered in the discussions that we've already had, so we will go to the second bullet really, as far a previous flight history I would like to just point out that 107 is a I think you can say it is within family of where we have been before STS-90 touched down just under233K no thermal analysis was required for that flight. STS-87 touched down roughly at 90 pounds over the 233K limit. With that flight basically no thermal analysis was required, however prior to deorbit we were predicting to be under 233K. Due to on-entry consumable usage we came a little bit over and that's what happened. And STS-83 was our big excursion, that was MDF, our early termination flight. We landed at 235,286 pounds so 107 is within that flight envelope and I think that the analysis is showing that we're well within where we have flow before so

Ham: For 83 we did not have to do an extra inspections or anything? We sent the CHIT during the flight. I don't think the rules allow us for early mission termination on these kinda heavy flights to be above 233.

Richard: I think the rules call for a chit to be issued, so that analysis can be done to clear that excursion.

Fred: There's no waiver that was written against anything for STS-83?

Ham: Unh unh.

Fred: Right

Ham: So I understand what you are saying, if you are within the rules, you would write the waiver which is different that the end of mission, okay.

Richard: Continuing, I don't have to go into what would have to be done on Page 2, as far as our recommendation we'll continue to evaluate the mass properties predications we'll keep looking at it every day and making sure that not only weight, there is no significant weight increases about what we are telling people right now as well as the CG {center of gravity} and make sure we are in the CG box and we are going to do everything that we can to minimize vehicle weight with our de-orbit burn. Take all the necessary precautions

Ham: All right.

Richard: That's all I really have.

Ham: Okay

MER - Don M: Richard, I guess I've got a question, is a redeliver a EI bond line temperature product to ECOMM, there may be some changes in bond line temp?

Richard: The only reason I put that there was that you know we are doing a lot of analysis right now anyways and one of the products that comes out is that EI bond line temperature. I really don't think the ECOM's require it. They told me that they are okay right now.

Ham: They shouldn't because it is enveloped, by the 3,000 pounds at 3 inches, we did that years ago because we were running in to this and having to do a bunch of real-time analysis. Let's see any other questions or comments? Don how long to you think it will be before you get your answer on the engine nozzles?

Don: Soon as I leave here I am going to go chase it down. I am hoping I have it today.

Ham: All right. It would be good if we could have that all wrapped up and the chit closed before Monday's MMT. By Monday's MMT, at least a verbal.

Don: Yes we will have it by then.

Ham: All righty. With that piece then we will close the chit and Vanessa will work on the words for the waiver. Okay. Anything else on the down weight? Okay go ahead Don.

MER/Don McCormack: Okay, and also we've received the data from the systems integration guys of the potential ranges of sizes and impact angles and where it might of hit and the guys have gone off an done an analysis, they've used a tool they refer to as "crater" which is there official evaluation tool to determine the potential size of the damage. They went off and done all that work and they've done thermal analysis of the areas of where there may be damaged tiles. The analysis is not complete there is one case yet they wish to run but were just kind of jumping to the conclusion of all that um they do show obviously there's potential for significant tile damage here but, but they do not indicate that the thermal analysis does not indicate that there is a potential for a burn through, there could be localized heating damage, obviously there is a lot of uncertainty in all this in terms of the size of the debris and where it hit and angle of incidence and so its difficult

Ham: No burn-through means, no catastrophic damage and localized heating damage would mean a tile replacement?

Don: It would mean possible impact to turnaround repairs and that sort of thing but we do not see any kind of safety of flight issue here yet in anything that we've looked at

Ham: No safety of flight and no issue for this mission nothing that we're going to do different, there may be a turn around?

Don: Right, Right, It could potentially hit the RCC and we don't indicate, other than possible coating damage or something, we don't see any issue if it hit the RCC so. Although we could again, although we could have some significant tile damage, we don't see a safety of flight issue.

Ham: What do you mean by that?

Don: Well it could be down to the, we could loose an entire tile, I mean and then the ramp into and out of that it could be a significant area of tile damage down to the SIP {strain isolation panel} perhaps um it could be a significant piece missing but

Ham: Would be a turn around issue only?

Don: Right...*Some discussion going on the background, mic did not pick it up clearly.

Ham: Right, okay, same thing that you told me about the other day in my office, we've seen pieces of this size before, haven't we?

Mike Leinbach: Hey, Linda, we are missing part of that conversation.

Ham: Right

(Man's voice): Linda we can't hear the speaker.

Ham: He was just reiterating, it was Calvin {Schomburg}, that he doesn't believe that there is any uh burn throughs so no safety of flight kind of issue, it's more of a turnaround issue similar to what we have had on other flights. That's it? All right, any questions on that? Okay, Vanessa?

Ellerbe: Okay Linda, for the Spacehab as still mentioned the temperature has been hovering around 79 plus or minus 1. They have powered down the Spacehab subsystems that were not necessarily needed to help with the cooling, they have done 4 adjustment of that water flow control valve to get the water temp up in the flow experiment water loop uh, it's gotten up to about 61 degrees it's still within VCD's desired limit. VCD has another run today and they finish at 4 o'clock once they are done with the VCD run then they are going to try and crank up that temperature a little bit more so that----in that area, and the intent is to reduce the module temp as much as they can, with that in addition there is a Chit number 10 that's going to go into the system requesting that we, the orbiter increase the air flow. Right now the way we are configured we are getting like 53 cubic feet per minute and they are going to look at trying to take an orifice and open it up and to increase it to 100 cubit feet per minute. The chit's been out there, as a chit 7, now it's now going back in as chit 10, uh to be reviewed today. That they believe would bring the temperature down 2-3 degrees which is feasible

Don Mc: And, we did not get a chance to talk that much at our 7 o'clock this morning, but uh I did talk to the guys some and they've uh they are working that and they have assessed and I believe that we are okay with removing that orifice to increase the airflow to the Hab.

Ellerbe: That would be great that would bring the temperature down.

Engelauf: We don't believe that's going to----air from---cabin atmosphere.

Don Mc: It will divert some cabin air, but we don't see don't see it as a cooling, it's not a cooling issue for the orbiter middeck so uh.

Ham: Would we reconfigure before entry? Back to normal?

Don Mc: I'll have to get that answer for you.

Ham: We need to look at that too.

Carmella: Hey, Don this is Carmella ???? at the MER down stairs, and uh uh the diversion of that extra 50 CFM to Spacehab will not pose any crew comfort issues for us on orbit.

Ham: How about entry?

Carmell: Entry we would probably need to redivert back some of that airflow back to the orbiter, that's something we'd have to take a look separately

Ham: Okay, we will look at that also, but that would be a smart thing to do.

Vanessa: Okay

Vanessa: We will continue moving forward with that.

Ellerbe: Uh, with regards to the data and command issues that was reported on, the patch has been put in place whereby the PI Ku Channel 3, Ku Channel 1 are going to the------prime EDGA unit and Channel 2 is going to the backup EDGA basically separates out the piece that has errors on it-----of-----and they are still having crashes on the Channel 2 side however you are not taking down all of the telemetry capability um they are managing it the same way just annunciating that a crash is going to come and everybody reboots-----so with that and the temperature of the Spacehab science operations are going well uh we did have a couple of little SNAFUs over night between the FMT(??). Code U has one experiment called Microbial Physiological Flight Experiment they believe one of the two experiments were significantly impacted by visual error, they will look at it more post flight and determine the impact. ESA, the Biopack unit itself did a thermal shutdown they believe there is a filter that got blocked, but it did not cause the circuit breaker to do anything it's just internal controls that caused it to shut down---they are going to try and unclog that filter some time today if possible, if they can get the system to come back up. Right now it operates both a refrigerator/freezer and an incubator. If they are not able to get the system back up during-----???-----and that will help them salvage three of their experiments they did loose two experiments on yesterday-----they were able to salvage one of them and the commercial payloads we're still having command and telemetry issues with the MSTRS payload------FREESTAR gave up one of there runs in order for MSTRS to run. They still had some issues during that run itself, but they are doing better just based on their not all the way there. FREESTAR is operating very well they are capturing great data in terms of the MEDIX experiment. They are still getting sprite observations. They are very happy about they are looking at getting a potential dust storm on flight day 10, but right now they still have the cyclone over the area so they are not getting any dust. And just ending on a positive note, so that everyone understands we are getting great science on this mission, there is a payload called CM2 SOFBALL has had two firsts on this flight. They have a flame that is twice as long as they have seen previous on the previous flight and they are very excited about that and according to them they have the smallest flame ever produced in the free world and at 0.5 watts which is compared to a birthday candle which is at 50 watts so they are pretty excited about that. That's it.

Ham: Okay, Flight Crew.

FCOD/Bob Cabana: No issues Linda.

Ham: Okay, Sam

Sam: Nothing to add.

Ham: Integration

Don N: Let's see, I think I already report that uh down weight issue was not an impact to cargo loads or was acceptable and I still owe you the answer on the main engine impact from the down weight uh and we also participated in the discussion on increasing the airflow to 50 cfm back to Spacehab and from an internal cargo standpoint we are in concurrence with that. And that's all I got. And I will try to get you an answer on that engine as soon as possible.

Ham: Okay, thanks.

Loren: Nothing to add to what's already been stated.

Ham: Shuttle Processing

Unidentified speaker: Nothing to report, thank you.

Ham: Launch Integration

Randy: Linda we don't have anything here, I don't know if Wayne is on the loop.

Ham: He's behind me, he has nothing also. Marshall Projects.

Unidentified speaker: Nothing to add

Ham: Safety

Safety/Scott Johnson: Nothing else, Linda

Ham: All right, thanks for your support an excellent job so far, so keep up the good work over the weekend we will meet again Monday at uh 8 o'clock. Have a good weekend. Thanks,

Dictation Completed By: Cynthia D. Meza, February 3, 2003

STS-107 Mission Management Team Telecon

January 27, 2003, 8 a.m. CST

Good morning and thank you all for holding. I'd like to begin with roll call.

Question (Q): Do I have the MER Conference Room?

Answer (A): The MER is here.

Q: Ron Dittemore? Mr. Dittemore?

A: We're in one of the rooms here in the............

Q: Thanks you, sir. The Weather Office?

A: NT Weather's here

Q: OSF Action Center?

A: Good morning, we're here.

Q: Alex McCool?

A: Yes, we're here.

Q: Colonel Jim Halsell?

A: We're here.

Q: LCC?

A: LCC is here.

Q: EMSR?

A: Good morning, we're on.

Q: Mike Keith?

A: We're here.

Q: Mike Leinbach?

A: We're here.

Q: John Cowart? Do you have Mr. Cowart's location?

A: Here.

Q: Mr. Fuller?

A: We're here.

Q: Scott Southwell?

A: We're here.

Q: Jack Keifenheim?

A: I'm here.

Q: And Ms. Ham's location?

A: We're here.

Thank you. I would like to remind all parties that the call is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, please disconnect at this time. Thank you.

Ham: Okay, and good morning. Um..we're going to start again with MOD and Phil can give us an update. Since our last MMT was Friday you'll have to go over stuff that happened over the weekend.

Phil: Okay. Just a (cough) excuse me. Going down the list, sort of summarize; the vehicle and the crew are still in great shape, doing well. It was a fairly quiet weekend. We're running prop margins about 500 lbs forward, 900 lbs aft. Our cryo margins uh. We were showing about 2 days 10 hours, we've revised that back to 2 days 7 hours based on in the end of mission attitude timeline that has now been stabilized to both the tire thermal issue and the heaters that go along with that factored back into the cryo plan. We're going to call it 2 days 7 hours.

Ham: Still got a good 4 days beyond the end of mission?

Phil: Still have plenty of margin. Um.. you know LiOH like I said before is protected plus 4 and cryo will easily still do that. Over the weekend we finished pulling together three potential IFM's for the cooling system. The three consisted of the removal of the orifice in the duct, uh the simple water cleanup which is just to take the, the ...get under the floorboard and use the vacuum to draw water out of the WSA without taking the cover off, and then the somewhat more invasive version, taking the cover off which requires shutting down the air flow. We've got all three of those completed, but at this time the temperatures in the vehicle are all supporting the cabin temperatures have come back down since we shut VCD down since they've finished and we're back down in the 74 degree range in the Hab as well as in the middeck. The crew has reiterated that they're very comfortable and don't think we need to do anything for temperatures, so MOD is recommending no action on any of those IFM's at this point. We also don't believe that there is any significant amount of water under the floor, but...and the crew has reported that they've inspected and don't see any water inside the cover looking through the holes or anything like that. But we are prepared to do any of those IFM's if it becomes required.

Ham: Okay, so in on the first IFM, Vanessa, the CSR okay with all that?

Vanessa: Yeah.

Ham: Not implementing?

Vanessa: Right, the only window that Spacehab still wants to do is just the inspection, I guess the day before landing (Phil: mhmm) and if there is any water, to clean up and do the gray taping, but none of the more intrusive IFM's at all.

Ham: You say that was the one that the crew thinks they have the water all cleaned up? What were they looking in?

Phil: There are some like 1-inch diameter holes in the WSA cover that they can look through and kind peer around in there, and they haven't seen any water.

Vanessa: and Spacehab is aware that the crew is, that they don't think there's any water in there. They just wanted them to look.

Ham: In the WSA?

Phil: Yes

Vanessa: Yes...

Ham: How long does that take?

Phil: 15 minutes.

Ham: Okay. You do that? Alright.

Phil: You want us to put that in the plan?

Ham: Yeah.

Phil: Okay.

Ham: You know if it's overcome by other events then I would make it a low priority, but if you've got the 15 minutes then go ahead and put it in.

Phil: Okay, um....just one other piece of data....you remember early in the mission we shut down the subsystem water loop pump 1 and switched to 2 because the delta P had fallen off. Uh, loop 2 delta P is also slowly decreasing, has been steadily since we turned it on again for about a half a psi per day. At that rate, it will get down to where loop 1 was when we shut it off about flight day 22 so we think we're in good shape, margin-wise, but just for your comfort level, we also think loop 1 is still usable, it was just degrading and we switched to the better loop at the time, so we still think that we have redundancy even if we to the point where -----

Ham: You think it's some kind of contamination or blockage? . . . Is that what the Hab people are thinking? Yeah? Okay?

Phil: Like I said, we have an end-of-mission thermal ATL {attitude timeline} that satisfies everybody for water and tire temperatures and all of that sort of stuff and that's now been factored into the plan. We are working an orbit adjust plan. We said we have Edwards 2-2-1 ending up through end of mission plus 2 and if we get down to past end of mission plus 1, we can get KSC EOM plus 4. We can get a second attempt if we go ahead and do an orbit adjust burn. So your choices are you could try to bring in a second Edwards on EOM plus 2 or we can bias and try and go the other direction and get a KSC on plus 4, but we don't really need to anything until post-EOM plus 1 or so and we can decide then which way we think we want to go.

Ham: Okay. We don't need to do any orbit adjust until after end-of-mission plus 1 did you say?

Phil: Correct. After the attempts on plus 1...

Ham: Alright.

Phil: And so what I'm telling you is that the FDO's {flight dynamic officers} are kind of bored and they are working on the EOM's plus 4 landing opportunities right now.

(many chuckles in the background)

Ham: Okay, good.

Phil: We did get a little bit of delay...you know, email activity over the weekend due to the big virus deal. I think we had some delays in the crew email getting onboard because we couldn't get email into the Center and it shut down our ability to do email with some of the other centers but we managed with faxes and telephones just fine.

Ham: We're all right now, our Center's back up and getting email, right?

Phil: Yes.

Ham: I believe KSC is still down.

Phil: All right, okay. Uh, let's see.....Rad Deploy Plan....we've stowed the radiator and it was in the plan to go ahead and redeploy the radiator. It was going to be a dual rad deploy. We're down to thinking we can get by with just one and that's scheduled for 11 days 3 hours and we restow that one on 14 days 18 hours, a day before entry. Let's see if there's anything else in here. I think that's basically all I've got to report, Linda.

Ham: What time again?

Phil: 14 days, 18.

Ham: 14, 18...okay.

Phil: We do have a ship-to-ship PAO comm. event today, orbiter to the station......

Ham: Oh

Phil: A little after noon this afternoon, 12:40 local.

Ham: Okay. Thanks. From the MER.

MER/Don McCormack: Yeah, Linda, on Friday I mentioned the thermal analysis that we're looking at and I had stated that we had looked at five of six areas. Just wanted to let you know that we looked at the sixth location which was an area on the main landing gear door. The Integration folks think this is a low probability area as far as, you know, maybe sustaining a hit there but we went ahead and looked at it. We looked at..............

Ham: Are you talking debris?

MER: Yeah. Debris.

Ham: Okay.

MER: We looked at an area about the size of 30 inches by 7 inches, and, of course, you know, sloped, cratered out area, and our results there were similar to what we got elsewhere and that is, although local degradation of the door structure is likely if we were to have sustained a hit there, there is no predicted burn-through and no safety of flight issue.

Ham: A turn-around issue?

MER: Yeah, possibly

Ham: If it were hit there....

MER: If it were hit there, it's a critical area there on the door, but also the Integration guys had indicated that they thought it was a low probability location but it was still one that we went off and looked at.

Ham: Okay.

MER: So, that completes the thermal analysis from.. uh ..from the debris hit and with that, that's all I've got.

Ham: Vanessa

Vanessa: Okay, um, Phil's covered all of the Spacehab systems. The only thing else is that the AEM {animal enclosure modules} mufflers are on, they are back on cause the temperatures are low enough. The acoustics should be in an acceptable range and data and command there's been no change we're still operating as of Friday MMT. Spacehab payloads are operating nominally, they're getting great science. I've previously reported on the Biopack payload, the one that lost the refrigerator, the incubator, and the freezer. They did do an IFM to try to unclog a filter. There's no joy in terms of returning that full facility back up. They do have capability to do ambient processing and that's what they're doing with their samples. Expect to have very good science. Their PI's are working in that configuration and they're very pleased. Um...Also reported on MSTRS which is a DoD payload. They sent a software patch up on yesterday, and they have gotten a successful run, so things are looking up for them as well. CM2 continues to do great science and new and wonderful things. They completed 15 of their SOFBALL runs and the crew has been naming them all. They all have names, so . . . I'm not sure exactly why they're being name, but anyway they all have one. They've all been duly identified as space children. Uh, FREESTAR, they did get a dust storm on yesterday, and the weather conditions may be favorable for another one today . . . um ...There are some cyclones in the area but they are looking for more dust. I think there's another one coming up quickly. And we also did get real-time digital downlink via DTV one of the things we worked for flight. We've gotten all of the technical accomplishments done that we on this flight as well. And that's all I have to report. I guess . . . Well, one other thing to report is that I am working up the waiver for the down weight and we're waiting on responses and they are coming in so I expect to have that put to bed before the next MMT.

Ham: All right. And on that issue, do we all know what weight we're working to here and what weight we're gonna analyze? I heard different numbers and what I . . . you got, the MER, you guys went to what weight, in analysis? two three three seven (2337)?

MER/Don McCormack: Yeah, for what we report on Friday, we'd run TSEP had been run for two thirty three seven (2337). It's my understanding that TSEP has now been run for two thirty-four eight (2348) and that all looked good.

Ham: I believe it's not quite signed off yet, but if it's signed off then do you need to do any kind of analysis....

MER/Don McCormack: No, we talked about that this morning. We're good if the results of TSEP are good, we're good to two thirty-four eight (2348).

Ham: Got it, and let's see, Don are you on?

Integration/Don Noah: Yes, and we did, Friday we did two thirty-three seven (2337) and we stayed within cert boundary for the SSME bluing. Um...we haven't done anything on two thirty-four eight (2348) and I'm not sure we really need to. Um, you know, you're going to get what you're going to get as far as the bluing, I mean, we've had analysis where we didn't predict the bluing and we got it. So, I'm not sure there's anything to be gained for us to go redo our analysis at two thirty-four eight (2348).

Ham: Okay. Yeah, I don't think you need to go redo an analysis so I don't know if you, Don did you guys already respond to the chit?

Don McCormack: Yeah, we responded to the chit. Of course, the chit showed two thirty-three six (2336) and some changes expected and two thirty-three nine (2339) is the worst case...

Ham: Right

Don McCormack: ....so we really responded to the chit as a, really a 234. um, But, you know, if there's something else we need to respond to for two thirty-four eight (2348) if that's where folks think we're going to be....

Ham: Well, I don't know, you know, I think it's MOD that does the TSEP's and they got the two thirty-four eight (2348) and say it's okay.

Engelauf: Yeah, I frankly don't know where two thirty-four eight (2348) came from. The FDO's that did the run were not in this morning so I wasn't able to get clarification on that, but, as far as what we're projecting for the actual vehicle weight, we think we're going to be a lot closer to two thirty-three seven (233 7) than than than above two thirty-four (234).

Ham: We should probably have MOD just put a one-liner in in response to the chit, if you respond to your own chit. However you do your paperwork, it said that we did TSEP out to two thirty-four eight (234 8) and we're okay up to that point. And now we'll let Integration put their number in there and when we...oh....we've got Rod Jones here whose....Richard, sorry....

Richard Jones: I um have to clarify on the two thirty-four eight (234 8). That basically fell out of our SIM {simulation}, I think. We initialized our data at a high enough number, targeting for two thirty-four five (234 5)...um, and we just got a little bit higher weight...

Ham: Yes...

Richard: ...and as far as why we ran two thirty-four five (234 5), um, I was in some discussions with the MER yesterday and it seemed to be a high priority, so.....we obliged.

Ham: All right, whatever we did run, we'll just document it in the chit and say we're okay up to that weight and if the SSME nozzles are only whatever number they did, two thirty-three seven (233 7) that's fine too. We can just document it in the waiver.

Vanessa: Okay, so we'll do the waiver at two thirty-seven (233 7) and just document that we can go as high as two thirty-four eight (234 8) for TSEP purposes.-------

Ham: Alrighty. Anything else on the down weight? I think we're done analyzing. Okay. Let's see, is there anything else from the MER?

MER/Don McCormack: No

Ham: Okay. Oh yeah, we did Vanessa. Vanessa did you have anything else?

Vanessa: No, nothing else from me.

Ham: Okay, FCOD?

FCOD/Bob Cabana: I have no issues, Linda. Obviously, if there's any talk of extensions, the crew said that they would be more than happy to oblige. They're in good spirits and happy to stay longer.

Ham: Okay. The only reason we do that is for weather.

FCOD: I understand.

Ham: Okay. Um, Sam?

Sam: Crew is in good shape and working no issues.

Ham: Good. Integration?

Integration/Don Noah: Yeah, we're ah don't have anything else to report and we're done with down weight analysis.

Ham: Good. Thanks. Um, Loren?

Loren: Nothing else this morning, Linda.

Ham: Vehicle Processing?

Vehicle Processing: Nothing to report, thank you.

Ham: Marshall Projects?

MSFC Projects: We have nothing, thank you.

Ham: Launch Integration? Nothin'?

Unidentified: Nothing here.

Ham: Okay, and Safety?

Safety/Scott Johnson: Nothing.

Ham: Okay, uh, our next MMT will go over the entry briefing and it will be Thursday, 8 o'clock. Thanks for your support.

- end -

STS-107 Mission Management Team Telecon

January 30, 2003, 8 a.m. CST

Weather Office is here.

Voice 1: OSF Action Center?

Yes, we're on thank you.

Voice 1: Alex McCool?

A. McCool: Right here.

Voice 1: Colonel Jim Halsell

Col. J. Halsell: We're here.

Voice 1: LCC?

LCC: LCC's here.

Voice 1: EMSR?

EMSR: We're on.

Voice 1: Mike Keys?

M. Keys: Mike Keys here.

Voice 1: Jon Cowart? Do we have Jon Cowart on line? We are showing that line connected. We will check that line.

Mike Fuller?

M. Fuller: Loud and clear.

Voice 1: Scott Southwell...we are still receiving his emails.

Jack Keifenheim

J. Keifenheim: Here.

Voice 1: Chris Hassellbreen?

C. Hassellbreen: Loud and clear.

Voice 1: Joe d'Agostino?

J. d'Agostino: Dryden's on.

Voice 1: Thank you and Linda Ham?

L. Ham: Yeah, we're here.

Voice 1: Thank you. I'd just like to inform all parties that today's call is being recorded at the request of NASA. Thank you and you may now begin.

L. Ham: Good morning and welcome to the last 107 MMT. We'll go through the normal standard briefing and then we'll do the weather and entry briefing. Phil, how are doing?

Phil: Alright. Crew still is doing well on the timeline...I think we are keeping up with all the science which Vanessa will go back and recap shortly. The last couple of things we were working before the end of mission ATL {attitude time line} for the thermal, for the tires, and the water and everything up to end of mission we've got that all squared away. Everybody's happy. We got a couple of +XVV sessions scheduled in there to get everybody happy with thermal. We've scheduled the minimum Hab water clean-up IFM with the vacuum cleaners as you requested. I think that is about noon today local time or so.

L. Ham: Alright. And really what they are going to do, right, is...stacked...if nothing they're done...if there's something, they vacuum?

Phil: I think they are going to go ahead and stick the vacuum down there in one of the holes and try draw anything out that they might not be able to see...

L. Ham: Okay.

Phil: But we're not taking any covers other than getting under floor, we're not taking the cover off...

L. Ham: Alright, I believe the cabin fans are back there by that box so could look under the floor. It'd be good to make sure there's no water anywhere.

Phil: The crew has been doing periodic inspections back there and hasn't seen any accumulation of water.

L. Ham: Under the floor?

Phil: Yes.

L. Ham: Alright. Okay. Good.

Phil: Couple of things...I guess...the prop margins have pretty much held steady with what we were reporting before about 500 in the forward and about 900 pounds in the aft. Cryo margins running about 2 days 13 hours at nominal mission usage or 2 days 23 for wave off days in group C.

L. Ham: Okay

Phil: They are working the post wave off ATL {attitude time line} still to try to make sure that we balance water and thermal and cabin temperatures and all that sort of thing. There's a meeting at 3:00 this afternoon in the MER to hash out some details on that.

L. Ham: Alrighty, so we got through Wednesday for sure EOM +4

Phil: ...I think it's just a question of balancing how many attempts you got or whether we can make enough water to add another attempt to Leroy's list but he'll go through all of that part and like I said, __he's balancing cabin temperatures against that sort of thing. End of mission down weight, just to give you an update since I know you want to talk about the waiver here...our best estimate right now is 234,011.

L. Ham: ...that waiver signed, signed it yesterday.

Phil: Okay, then I guess we're done.

L. Ham: Up to the limits everyone evaluated. Alright we're done. What's that number again?

Vanessa Elerbe: 234,011..

Phil: 234,011, we're barely of 234. Probably...we're probably not smart enough to be that accurate....to within 11 pounds.

L. Ham: So that's even more heavy.

Vanessa: Right.

Phil: We came out slightly heavier, again this goes back to the as we started turning off more and more rotating equipment, I think the Cryo margins kind of increased and you've seen this go up now here 2 days 13 hours (?).

Vanessa: Okay. So, what we'll have to do is get Systems Integration to look at the Cargo Integration process because they went to 233.7 and ...no 234.

Phil: They went to 234.

Vanessa: Just 11 pounds over but we just need the nozzle Guy, but they already said....

L Ham: Well, the Navguy we don't need to worry about because at the post mission inspection we're going to get whatever we get.

Vanessa: Exactly.

Vanessa: Cargo Integration piece ... that's just 11 pounds over.

Vanessa: Right

Phil: The nozzle guys went to 234.8.

L. Ham: Yeah, everyone else went...so...Don are you on?

Dave: This is Dave and we got the action.

L. Ham: Yeah, but you're probably okay with 11 pounds over what/where you looked at.

Dave: Yeah, I assume we are, but I need to ask a question.

L. Ham: Let's just turn something on. I'm serious.

Phil: That's one of the answers to the water thing making more opportunity. You got 19 or 20 or 23 hours of Cryo above the +2 +2, then there's 19 hours of Cryo that you can turn into water to make more landing opportunities or less weight or whatever you want to do . . . see if we can get rid of 11 pounds.

L. Ham: Okay.

Phil: That's all I've got except Leroy's stuff.

L. Ham: Okay, MER?

MER/Don McCormack: Linda, earlier in the mission we got a problem with ICOM B and we had the crew go back and check that again and apparently it worked fine. Apparently it is a configuration problem we think earlier. Like Phil mentioned our guys are working with the MOD guys working for the end-of-mission attitude extension attitude for water production for main landing gear tires. Other than that we're in great shape; we're not working anything else.

L. Ham: Good. Vanessa.

Vanessa: Okay, Linda, for the Spacehab subsystems...they are tracking the water pump package has been showing a little bit more degradation as we've been going along here. What they are now looking at now is the flow rate for the pump, nominal it should be 500 pounds per hour and currently it's at 390. The delta P has been degrading a little more faster than we predicted or said on Monday. So what they are going to do is keep monitoring the flow rate. There's a flight rule currently on the books that says that if we go below 140 that we consider the system failed however, the Spacehab guys are reporting that the transducer on that system is biased by about 60 pounds so that if it's 140 what it's showing is actually at 200. So we are going to put a CHiT into the system to identify that we do have an error.

L. Ham: More than one flow meter? Or is there only one?

Vanessa: There's two.

? ____

L. Ham: Are they both biased?

Vanessa: Just the total flow is biased.

L. Ham: Okay. So you probably know what you have based on the other one too. Okay. Alright.

Unidentified Voice: What was the answer to that?

L. Ham: There are two; one is total flow and one is payload heat exchanger...

Vanessa: Payload heat exchanger

L. Ham: Payload heat exchange and only one is biased-the total flow.

Vanessa: But the flow that we are looking at per this flight rule also what they are looking at is the total flow.

L. Ham: Right, but they will still have a good handle on how much flow they are really getting because they do have another ducer {transducer} and they also think that this one is biased since pre-launch.

Vanessa: Right and the flight rule is also written for a higher heat load than we actually running at in the module so we'll just put a CHiT into the system to explain the instrumentation error and also to look at the heat load in terms of declaring that system to be failed.

L. Ham: Okay, so we think the limit will be lower than 140 pounds per hour before we declare it failed and Spacehab is going to document it through the CSR and the CHiT and MOD folks. That way we can update the rule or whatever we need to do. We said nominal flow is 500 pounds an hour, this flow is 390.

Vanessa: It's at 390.

L. Ham: Okay, loop 1 that we switched the other day, the one that was degraged is at 320.

Vanessa: Right.

L. Ham: So they are both degraded.

Vanessa: Right. So, right now we have 3 days to go, think we are going to be good, but we'll make sure, we'll stay on top of it and make sure the rest of the team is aware of what is going on.

L. Ham: Right, and keep me appraised; if we get the point where we switch back to the other loop then we ought to talk about how many days we want to keep extending. You'll lose a bunch of science if we lose both water loops?

Vanessa: Absolutely, yes. The BDS {Bioreactor Development System}(?) as everybody knows has been doing great science and EORF {Enhanced Orbiter Refrigerator/Freezer} and all of the samples we collected back there so want to make sure we keep the system viable so we can get the samples back home. Other things with regards to the payloads themselves, they all are still operating nominally. CM2 on its activation day had some problems with initial setup. IFMs were run yesterday and the runs have been successful since then. They are catching up on their runs. One of the actual samples is an atomizer itself. They don't think they will be able to run that sample again. That was the one they had problems with on the initial setup, but, however they are getting very good science and FREESTAR has captured dust over the Atlantic and they very pleased with that. So all in all, payloads is still doing very well. ...to come home safely.

L. Ham: Thanks. Okay. Bob?

FCOD/Bob Cabana: No issues, Linda.

L. Ham: Okay. Sam?

Sam: The crew is healthy and we're not working any issues.

L. Ham: Integration?

Integration: Yeah, we're working a few things. One of the things that we're working-Spacehab's inverter, due to the moisture content-they're just looking, again, just looking/preparing in case we get a case because of the moisture to pull from breakers as a back-up plan. Right now everything is okay and nominal but they are just working some contingency issues.

L. Ham: ?

Integration: And we'll go back and take a look at the down weight.

L. Ham: Okay. Anything else? ?

Integration: Yeah, nothing else.

L. Ham: Loren?

Loren: Nothing else from us.

L. Ham: Shuttle Processing?

Shuttle Processing: Nothing to report, thank you.

L. Ham: Launch Integration?

Launch Integration: Nothing from here, Linda.

L. Ham: Marshall Projects?

Marshall Projects: Nothing today.

L. Ham: Safety?

Safety: Nothing.

L. Ham: Okay, I have one...I did get email from Julenne? talking about getting the cameras out on the runway and planning to get them shipped to JSC and she had asked, FCOD has asked, whether we want to hold the STA {Shuttle Training Aircraft} and try to get the cameras on the STA to get them back here and I did talk to the people out at Ellington about that and we would like them to hold the STA and get the cameras on. We think we can meet your 3:00 wheels up time, Bob, and that's a crew length of day issue. So we think we can get you the camera if we land on the first rev in time to get that back here at JSC. I think Building 44 got some kind of power outage on Sunday so, or Saturday, once they get back open on Sunday we'll get the film developed into Marshall by Monday. I think there is also some film that ends up getting developed at the Cape but the plan looks like it's coming together to get Marshall those views, so Bob we appreciate you support at FCOD.

Bob Page/KSC Photo Analysis Team: Linda, this is Bob Page, we would also like to get the crew handheld film on the STA, and that means getting it out of the bag of film so I hope the crew put in a separate bag like it's supposed to happen but sometimes it doesn't.

L. Ham: That's standard ops? Because we have not asked them any special procedure.

Bob Page: It's standard ops that they are suppose to put that film from the ET in its own bag and then put that in the bag with the rest of the film so it's easy to find so we can process it first and the crew here on the ground would like to pull it out of the bag and get it on the STA with the rest...with that camera.

Bob Cabana: Linda, normally all the film ends up in a bag on the middeck for getting it off easy. It's just a matter of looking in that bag for that film and it should be labeled.

L. Ham: ...don't want...the crew to do anything special because it will be in that bag and it should be labeled.

Marsha Ivins: The film comes off the orbiter on the runway and its processed.

L. Ham: It actually get's developed at the Cape?

Marsha Ivins: No, no. _____?

L. Ham: Okay, and we're hearing from Marshall that does come off on the runway, Bob, you probably know that and you guys just need to make sure you get your hands on it.

B. Page: That's correct.

L. Ham: Okay. Anything else today? Okay, let's go on with weather and entry brief.

Weather: Good morning. The...currently, if you look at the video you see a low pressure system up there over Georgia with a front trailing across New Orleans, that low will be moving off to the northeast and dragging that front across the Florida panhandle today. By tomorrow, that front will be dissipating somewhere over Florida with the high pressure that's now over Texas will be building eastward bringing dryer air and light winds into Florida for Saturday's landing opportunities. With that, we can start with landing opportunities for Saturday. You can see it's pretty much a ridge of high pressure over Florida with really no frontal systems anywhere in the vicinity, just the one down over the Bahamas and the one up in the Tennessee Valley. So with that, let's look at the forecast for Saturday's landing opportunities.

L. Ham: So your not thinking about any fog for Saturday?

Weather: It may be a good time to discuss the fog situation, I know we've had some questions about it. You'll notice I did not put fog in the forecast for Saturday for two reasons. Number one, with the dryer air pushing into Florida and then I'm expecting the winds aloft to be between 8 and 12 knots in the lower thousand feet and that should provide enough turbulent mixing to preclude the development of fog. However, the downside to that would be, if the winds are lighter than what I'm expecting in the lower thousand feet, let's say less than 10 knots and fog should form, then the good side of that is we'll see it form before we have to make a de-orbit decision because we are de-orbiting, our landing time is like 2 hours after sunrise and so that way we'd be de-orbiting well after the fog would form. So we'd see it. There is no way that the fog is going to form after we de-orbit. So, the only bad part to that would be if it did form, we might have to wait another opportunity because the flight rules says that you have to be go-observed at the same time. But I'm not expecting that because of the winds and dryer air, I'm really not expecting it. And even if it did form, it would burn off by landing time since we've got 2 hours of sunrise, of heating before our touch-down for that first opportunity. Therefore, I didn't really mention fog. Questions?

L. Ham: No.

Weather: So it looks, for the first opportunity on Saturday at KSC, just a few clouds at 3500 feet and scattered clouds to 25000, winds from 300 degrees at 6 peaking to 9 knots. The second opportunity is about the same, maybe a slight increase in wind but really no significant difference. Both Edwards and White Sands have acceptable weather for Saturday. Any questions for Saturday?

L. Ham: No questions.

Weather: For Sunday, in the event of a waveoff, the change there at KSC would be that the winds coming around to the northeast would, may bring some of the low clouds offshore close to the landing facility so for that we've put in a slight chance of broken clouds at 3500 feet, winds out of the northeast at 7 peaking to 10 knots. Out at Edwards, we may start to get some Santa Anna wind conditions out there so we've got northeast 30 degrees at the 13 knots peaking to 23. No wind violations at Edwards. White Sands is going to be getting a lot of wind out there particularly in the afternoon hours, so we've got crosswind and headwind violations out there with a chance of 4 miles and blowing dust, visibility is reduced out there due to the strong winds. So we've got 2 20 at 18 peaking to 30 at White Sands. So that's the situation for Sunday in the event of a waveoff. Any questions?

L. Ham: No questions.

Weather: Okay, for Monday, EOM+2, the only difference there going from Sunday to Monday at the Cape, would be mainly the winds swinging around from northeast to southeast and generally that's a little more favorable for not having ceiling violations so we didn't put any violations for Monday's forecast in there, just scattered low clouds, broken high clouds, and southeast winds at 7 peaking to 10 knots pretty close to the runway configuration there. Edwards and White Sands both look good for Monday with winds at Edwards about 10 to 18 knots out of the northeast and clear skies at White Sands with light northwesterly winds. So the bottom line is things look real good for Saturday and in the event of a wave off, still looking pretty good for both wave off days at both KSC and Edwards.

L. Ham: Okay, any questions for Weather? Alright. LeRoy?

LeRoy Cain: Okay, good morning, you should have the deorbit entry planning briefing, two charts. I'm not going to tell you much, Linda, that you don't already know. We have plenty of consumables and plenty of deorbit opportunities on all the out days. Just to go over it briefly, we do have through EOM+4 which is a landing on Wednesday and LiOH is still the limiting consumable there. As far as propellant, we have plenty of propellant to support 2 opportunities on each one of those days. I made a note we could probably get 3 opportunities on one or more of those days is what it looks like but we don't have enough yet to get another day. I anticipate that might even change. Supply water is the same storage we usually have. We have 6 to 7 opportunities for the first 3 days and then it will just depend on how early we wave off on those first few days, those first opportunities, how we manage the water and we'll do that as we normally do. Cryo is the same story as prop. And I've already mentioned the LiOH. As far as the trajectory, we do have 2 opportunities to both sites on end-of-mission day. Same thing on EOM+1. The first day, there's overlap but it's not going to come into play.

L. Ham: Yeah, but for the first rev even if we want to land in the dark at Edwards?

LeRoy: Yes, but I'm not considering that for these purposes.

L. Ham: We don't need it.

LeRoy: Yeah, right. The comment was just that Edwards really does have an overlap opportunity the first day but it's dark and obviously we wouldn't even consider that so I didn't put it on here. As far at the daylight opportunities go for KSC, we do have two opportunities everyday except the last day on EOM+4, we just have one. At Edwards, we have two daylight opportunities the first two days and then one the remaining days. And Northrup.

L. Ham: And these are just lit ? 2 2 1 1 1 at Edwards is just lit?

LeRoy: Just the daylight.

L. Ham: We have more if you count the dark ones.

LeRoy: Exactly. On the Edwards discussion, of course we're not planning to activate for end of mission. My recommendation is that we shouldn't need it through EOM+2 and so if we happen to still be on orbit after the weekend, after an end of mission+2 wave off, we could have a discussion as we look at the weather and determine whether or not if we want to bring it up.

L. Ham: I agree unless something happens with the Spacehab and the water loops that we don't need to activate Edwards through Monday inclusive and then Tuesday would be pretty much pick'um day.

LeRoy: Correct.

L. Ham: As we gain another _____ Tuesday we'd call up Dryden.

LeRoy: Yes, and I think from propellant and Cryo there's a good chance that we could manage it such that we get to that point we could actually get another day but the LiOH would be where we'd have to get creative.

L. Ham: Right, and we don't need it.

LeRoy: And we certainly don't need it. The APU plan is our standard plan. On the second page, there's some details of the deorbit opportunities in particular for the first couple of days. I just put the KSC opportunities on here. The timeline summary has the summary for today. Tomorrow and end of mission -1 as far as when the crew gets up and where we come in, I'll come on with the entry team at 1:30 in the morning and then we'll get into our standard preparation for L-1 day FCS {flight control system} checkout, etc. We come in the same time Saturday morning with the first weather briefing being just a little after 3:00. TIG for the KSC opportunity on Saturday, the first opportunity is 7:18 with the landing at 8:16. Those are central times. And then I've got the times on there for the backup opportunities. So you already heard the weather story and it sounds very good and we obviously have plenty of consumables and plenty of opportunities, so we're not working any issues.

L. Ham: Great. Any questions for LeRoy? Alright, so the plan is to just use KSC for Saturday and hopefully we get landed and we don't even need to think about Sunday or Monday. But, alright, any other discussion for today. Thank you.

- end -

PRESS ROUNDTABLE

STS-107 MISSION MANAGEMENT
July 22, 2003
PRESENT:

KYLE HERRING, JSC PAO,
LINDA HAM, Chairperson, STS-107, Mission Management Team (MMT)
PHIL ENGELAUF, Mission Operations Directorate
LeROY CAIN, STS-107 Ascent/Entry Flight Director

3 p.m.EST
Tuesday, July 22, 2003

[TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FROM TELEPHONIC RECORDING.]

MR. HERRING: I will introduce the panel. Some of you have already been introduced, but since we are on the air and there is a lot of people listening, I'm sure, let me run down to my left here.

It is Linda Ham who is on STS-107, served as a Space Shuttle program manager for Integration.

Phil Engelauf, to her left, is the Mission Operations Directorate representative for STS-107. He is also a veteran flight director.

A lot of you know LeRoy Cain. He served as the STS-107 Ascent/Entry flight director.

All three, I think, have some opening comments, and then I guess before we start, just for the record, Tracy, why don't we start at your end, and you guys just quickly go around, so that they all know who you are, also.

QUESTIONER: Tracy Watson, USA Today.

QUESTIONER: Todd Halverson [ph], Florida Today.

QUESTIONER: Eric Pianen [ph], Washington Post.

QUESTIONER: Marcia Dunn, Associated Press.

QUESTIONER: Bill Harwood, CBS.

QUESTIONER: Mike Cabbage Orlando Sentinel.

QUESTIONER: Mark Carreau, Houston Chronicle.

QUESTIONER: Gina Treadgold, ABC News.

QUESTIONER: Matt Wald [ph], New York Times.

MR. HERRING: I will ask when we get to the questions -- I know these microphones work pretty well, but make sure you speak up with your questions, so everybody can hear that.

With that, I will turn it over to Linda.

MS. HAM: I know most of you, but for those of you who don't know me, I will give you a little bit of history about my background here with NASA.

I have been here with NASA for 21 years. I did start in Flight Control in the Missions Ops Directorate. I was a propulsion flight controller on the Shuttle flight, and then I became a flight director in early 1990, 1991. I was a flight director for 9 years. I had been lead flight director on several missions, including a Space Lab mission which is similar to the STS-107 science mission and also for the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the servicing missions. I also did Ascent/Entry flight director.

I have been in the Shuttle program for 3-1/2 years and was in the position as manager for Integration in the Shuttle program for the last 2-1/2 years, and that includes chairmanship of the On-Orbit Mission Management Team.

Most of you know, immediately after the accident on February 1st, I chaired the Mishap Response Team. I did that for the 6 weeks immediately following the accident, and then we turned that over to the NASA Accident Investigation Team, which was led by Randy Stone.

They began their investigation while I was chairing the MRT, and during the time when they were doing the investigation, we felt that it would be appropriate for me and the program managers not to come forward and talk to the press because we didn't want to interfere with their investigation, but now that they are wrapping it up and they are in the report-writing stage, we felt it would be appropriate for me to come forward and speak to you in particular about the Mission Management Team process in a generic sense and also more flight specific on what we did on STS-107 since.

So I am really happy to have this opportunity to finally come forward and describe to you the Mission Management Team -- [audio break].

[Pause.]

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: All participants, please continue to stand by. We are having technical difficulties right now. Please stand by.

[Pause.]

MS. HAM: [In progress] -- and we have members from different centers. Kennedy Space Center has members. The Marshall Space Flight Center, those projects have members, including, for example, the external tank. We do tie into headquarters. They are tied into every MMT.

The MMT, our responsibilities are to review the content, the mission replanning, any significant issues that come up, and to develop a future plan. So it is sort of, during the flight, kind of a pyramid of all the other meetings that are going on. There is a lot of meetings, a lot of activity in the control center that go on during the flight.

I did chair the MMT for 107 in particular. We do operate and we communicate, and everything that we do, we do it as a team. Like I said, it is kind of the top of the pyramid of all the activities that are going on during the flight. So outside of the MMT, we are still -- I come into the control center, talk to the flight directors, talk to the MOD rep, talk to the MER. I go down there every day during the flight.

The MER, I will talk about that a little bit. The engineering hub in the control center on the first floor of the control center, they housed all the systems experts. These experts addressed the technical issues, and the results of their analysis are communicated to the MER manager and their management up to the MMT.

The MER manager is actually a NASA person, but all of the subsystem experts are a contractor. They are either the United States Alliance or Boeing.

If we have a specific problem that we are going to work, for example, we had the assessment team, we pull together a special team. We usually call them PRT, Problem Resolution Team, which I am sure you have heard of in the past. They will, again, meet, below even the MER management level, and they are accountable to the MER. They will brief the MER in meetings that happen in that room, and to MER managers, both NASA and contractor site, and the important things that come out of those meetings will be forwarded to the MMT.

So that is kind of generically how the process works, and one of those PRTs that was a specific team that worked 107, we called the Debris Assessment Team that you have heard about and we have read about in the papers.

That was it.

MR. HERRING: Okay. Phil?

MR. ENGELAUF: I will just keep my comments brief, just to give you a little background about myself.

As Linda indicated, I was the Mission Operation Directorate representative on this flight for STS-107. I am a flight director by discipline, started with NASA some 25 years ago at [inaudible] Research Center, but I have been here at JSC since 1982, started out as a flight planner in the Shuttle program.

I was selected as a flight director in January of 1990 and have been doing that job essentially ever since that time.

I have served as a flight director on 29 Space Shuttle mission, have been the lead flight director on 11 of those, and as most of you are aware, just before the first of the year, Wayne Hale [ph] accepted an assignment at Kennedy Space Center, and he transferred down there. Wayne was the deputy chief of the Flight Director office at the time, and when he went to the Cape, I moved up and took the deputy for Space Shuttle within the Flight Director office.

On this particular mission, I served as the Mission Operations Directorate representative. As Linda indicated, the MMT has representatives from all of the various disciplines and responsible organizations. Mission Operations Directorate provide the Flight Control Team. We do the traditional mission control function that most of you think of when you see pictures of the Flight Control Team during missions. The flight director is the head of that team, and we are represented to the Mission Management Team by a single individual who is not a console operator for that particular flight.

It is traditionally the chief of the Flight Director office or one of his deputies, and in this particular case, that was myself.

MR. HERRING: LeRoy?

MR. CAIN: Thanks. Again, I will be brief, also, because I know most of you and have spoken to most of you at least once already.

My background briefly, I have been working here at Johnson Space Center for about 15 years. I also started in flight control. I had various different positions in flight control as well as flight control management for about 10 years, and in 1998, I was selected to be a flight director.

Since that time, I have served as a flight director on several missions in ascent/on-orbit phase as well as entry, and STS-107 was my fifth mission that I worked the ascent on and the seventh mission for which I worked the entry.

MR. HERRING: Thanks, everybody.

Like I said before, we will start at this end with Tracy and then just work ourselves around. If you would, limit it to one question, and we will come back ground. Go ahead, Tracy.

QUESTIONER: For Linda Ham, can you tell us when you heard -- what have you heard about any requests for imagery of the shuttle on-orbit and how you responded to those?

MS. HAM: That is an interesting question.

We have read reports that the Mission Management Team had declined a request for outside assistance, and if you read through the transcripts, you will notice that the Mission Management Team never addressed the request for outside assistance because it never came up in any of the meetings.

It never came up to me personally. What my involvement was, was I did hear about a possible request for imagery via a phone call. When I did hear about that possible request, I began to research who was asking, and what I wanted to do was find out who that person was and what exactly they wanted to look at, so that we could get the proper people from the ops team together with this people or group of people, sit down and make sure that when we made the request, we really knew what we were trying to get out of it.

So I went to our contractor, United States Alliance, to see if they were making a request. I went to the Space Shuttle engineering office to see if they were requesting, and I also went to that Mission Evaluation Room where all the engineering work was. So I am thinking if anyone knows it, they will know that there is such a request out there.

I couldn't find any requests. So we did not pursue that.

MR. HERRING: Todd?

QUESTIONER: Todd Halberson of Florida Today.

Given the hostile environment that the Shuttle flies in, I am wondering if you can tell me why you guys did not meet over the holiday weekend, the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.

MS. HAM: I wanted to say some more about this picture. You know, I had absolutely not reluctance to ask for outside assistance, nor did the program. We certainly would have done that if we could have got the right information together and the right people together and done that.

The people -- now we go to 20/20 hindsight -- several weeks after the accident, I did find out who was asking, and these folks that were asking were actually in the MMT and never brought it up. They were in the MER meetings before the MMT and never brought it up. So, for some reason, they didn't feel comfortable bringing it up in the MMT. We certainly think they would have done that at those other meetings or in the hall or at any time, and it never, never came up.

After that one day that we are referring to where I did hear about it, I never heard of another thing, and to my knowledge, it has never come up as anyone again, the request.

Okay. Now, your question?

QUESTIONER: My question was, given the dangerous nature of orbiting shuttles in this environment, I am wondering why you guys did not meet over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.

MS. HAM: In my judgment and the judgment of the Mission Management Team, we didn't feel it was necessary to hold a meeting every day. Each of the MMT members are highly involved in the flight.

Phil comes in even when we don't hold MMTs, and we get our work done. The engineering team will still continue with their analysis. In fact, they asked if they could have over the weekend to finish the imagery analysis. They wanted through the weekend to do that.

The astronauts are still involved in contacting their people, their CAPCOMs and the Mission Control Center and the other folks. Safety is in the MER. I came in over the weekend. So, in our judgment, we felt like we didn't need to hold a meeting to continue with the work and processes that we were doing during flight.

It is not uncommon, if you look back even on Space Station flights where they are highly complex. We do not meet every day.

In fact, the last two Spacelab science kind of missions that we flew in 1998, in those two flights we had five MMTs on one and seven on another. We are also on call, 24/7. Within 2 hours, we can be in the control center having a meeting.

One of the subjects that we talked about at one of the early MMTs during the STS-107, where we were talking about a possible in-flight maintenance procedure to repower a [inaudible] that could have shorted, I said, "We are not going to do that until we hold an MMT. If you guys decide you want to pursue that path, then we will get together and meet as a team because we don't want to do something without everyone's concurrent." So it is easy for us all to come together if we need to.

MR. ENGELAUF: I'd like to add something to that, though, and you guys are familiar enough to understand.

The Flight Control Team with the flight rules, which are essentially the charter from the program, had a lot of latitude on how we operate in a real-time environment.

The Mission Management Team is exactly that. It is a management team and not a real-time flight control function. So it is important to distinguish there that the flight control time on console is there and ready to respond to any [inaudible] situations, and we really only look to the management team for direction when we get outside the envelope of predetermined objectives for the mission or if we have a phenomenal case where we call in a lot of outlying support.

As Linda pointed out, if we come into a situation like that, the Flight Control Team can engage the MMT within a matter of an hours to get additional guidance, but it is important to realize that the management team is not necessarily there to supervise the day-to-day, minute-by-minute operation of the flight. That is not the intent.

MS. HAM: Plus, the MER could call the MMT to come in.

I have people that -- actually program people support the mission, 24/7, also, in the customer support room, and they can call to invoke the MMT. We have a standard procedure on how to do that.

MR. HERRING: Eric?

MR. CAIN: Tom, to complete that answer, it wouldn't be complete without saying that as a flight director on console in real time, regardless of the frequency of the Mission Management Team meeting schedule, we are in place to manage the team.

As Phil said, beyond that, we have at our ready disposal a list of names and phone numbers and direct lines of communication with folks that we can get in contact with, and as Linda and Phil mentioned, we are prepared and trained in such a way that we will call up. And whether it is for a notification or whether it is for a request for a meeting or whatever it might be, we are at the ready to do that as it becomes necessary, if it becomes necessary, and that is regardless of the frequency of the MMT meeting.

QUESTIONER: Given all of the uncertainty about the nature of the foam strike, why was it that you folks decides to quickly that it did not really pose a safety-of-flight issue, given the fact that the Crater model perhaps wasn't the best of all models available to you and given the fact that there was a lot of uncertainty about precisely how large the foam was, where it hit on the wing, whether it was on the tiles or the RCC?

And what did you mean when you said January 21st that, "Really, I don't think there's much we can do"?

MS. HAM: Well, let me answer the first question, first, about why did we quickly [inaudible], why did we come to the conclusion that it was not a safety-of-flight issue based on the Crater model.

Again, we were trying to give the technical community sufficient time to do an in-depth analysis. They did do their analysis. They did use the Crater and these other tools that they have available to them.

I do trust that the Mission Evaluation Room with their systems experts would bring forward their results of that, and they did come forward on that Friday the 24th and said that they did not believe that there was a safety-of-flight issue and that there would be no burn-through, and at most we would have a potential turnaround issue from work on the Orbiter that we have to do post-flight.

I did trust that their analysis and the work they had done was correct.

Now, back on the other question about on the 21st which when I made a statement about what we could or couldn't do during the flight, when I first was alerted to that, I couldn't even recall making that statement. But, of course, I did go back, re-read the transcript and listen to the tapes, and sure enough, I did say that.

Now, if you put that in context to what the MER manager was talking to me about and the things that I was thinking, the way I recall this is I was thinking out loud, and, of course, I do know that we do not have TPS repair, tile repair or RCC repair capability that we fly as a kit on the Orbiter. That was part of what I was thinking.

The other thing that I was trying -- thinking about was having the engineering community go back and get a flight rationale from STS-112. If you recall two flights prior to 107, we had the foam come off, a pretty big chunk of foam from the same area that we were thinking came off the 107, the bipod ramp, and it struck the SRB.

I was trying to remember back to October when we were at the flight readiness review for the STS-113, the next flight, trying to think about what was our flight rationale, was it based on the fact that the density, the properties of that foam could not do any damage to the Orbiter. I couldn't recall, and I wanted the engineering to go back and pull that data, so that we could confirm that.

If that was what the flight rationale was, then we would feel pretty comfortable about this mission being safe. It didn't end up being what the flight rationale was. That is where I was going with that.

MR. HERRING: Marcia?

QUESTIONER: For Linda, I was struck by reading the transcripts that the topic of foam doesn't even come up until halfway or two-thirds through the meetings, and frankly, it looked a little skimpy, the discussion.

I am trying to understand why it wasn't at the top of the agenda because it was a potential flight safety issue, and how is it that it seemed to have got buried under a lot [inaudible]?

MS. HAM: We usually start our MMT with mission ops director just to give us a status of what who is doing, where they are in the mission, and then we go to the Mission Evaluation Room, the MER, and then he will bring things up in whatever order that he happens to bring them up on that particular day.

You will notice on that first MMT, I believe I asked about it because I did know, you know, the times that I visited the MER and talked to my office with people -- I did know we were doing the analysis. We were still looking at the ascent video. We were doing the transport analysis, which is based on where the foam comes off, where could it potentially hit on the Orbiter and at what velocity. Then the third piece would be the Orbiter piece on what could be the potential damage to the Orbiter.

It wasn't lengthy discussions, that first meeting. We knew they still had the analysis in work, just wanted to make sure it was all underway.

A lot of the things that we discussed were in the MER and in other meetings and rooms. This is sort of the top of the pyramid with senior management there. We don't actually do the analysis. So we don't get a real in-depth discussion of all the nuts and bolts that went into that.

MR. HERRING: Bill?

QUESTIONER: Let me ask him a lengthy question because I am not sure how to phrase it.

I have thought a lot since this happened. I was around after 51-L, and I remember joking with other reporters after the management changes that were put in place, I would joke it will never fly, you know, there are just so many checks and balances that will have to happen.

And yet, the system that a lot of the media and outside of NASA have criticized that very system. I mean, you guys are in that very system that was put in place after 51-L, that everybody unanimously said in this case did not work properly, somehow missed the significance of the foam strike, continued flying, the flight rationale was not correct for whatever reason, Crater was wrong, and the analysis was not correct.

So my question is: How did NASA get from the STS-26 mindset when this management system was fresh? I have no doubt just based on experience that when STS-27 rolled around and big chunks were falling off the bipod, you guys would have stopped and fix that. I just don't have any doubt about that. That is personal opinion.

But how did you get to this point where this system failed in the way that it did? I mean, if anybody has any thoughts about that, any one of you.

MS. HAM: I think there's huge differences in the way we work today than in the Challenger timeframe.

QUESTIONER: Post challenger. I'm talking post challenger.

MS. HAM: Right.

QUESTIONER: The changes that were made in the wake of Challenger.

MS. HAM: Well, we have had foam off since STS-1 from the tank. So I am not sure if the thinking before, between STS-1 and STS-26, -27, -28, that foam off was different than it is today.

QUESTIONER: This was the biggest piece ever, and when 112 was the biggest piece ever, by far from all the previous experience. I am just trying to see how this evolution took place.

MR. ENGELAUF: I don't think that the fact that this was the biggest piece ever was really -- there wasn't a lot made of that during the mission in the MMTs. I am telling you now as an observer sitting in the MMT from the ops perspective.

I think Linda's point is correct. We operate by a series of methodologies that I think have been tested over a long period of time, and we did put a lot of changes in place after the Challenger accident.

I think the way we do business today is largely representative of what we -- the changes that we moved to after Challenger.

As Linda pointed out, we have had foam come in off the tank at various intervals during the program, and I have seen this characterization, I think, that this group of management got comfortable with foam coming off the tank or that Ron or Linda or somebody got comfortable with foam coming off the tank.

And I think that is a little bit unfair because foam has been coming off the tank periodically, not -- you know, I don't want to characterize this as just constant, but we have had instances of foam coming off the tank throughout the history of the program, and the same management processes that I think got us comfortable that that was not really being a safety-of-flight issue have been allowed to continue, rightly or wrongly.

I don't think you can point to individuals today and say that that person got comfortable with it because we have sort of inherited this from the time Linda and I were back as front room flight controllers and there was a completely different set of people managing the program.

But I think the intent is that our process has tried to cover these sorts of things, and we tried to put all of the checks and balances in place and we try to do all of the analysis. On this particular case, I don't think that the problem was that we didn't do the analysis or didn't take notice of the foam. I think we got the wrong answer on the analysis.

MR. CAIN: Bill, from my part, I would just add that, to get to your question, part of the answer has to be the fact that we don't know today why we didn't have good flight rationale, and we are going to go back and certainly try to understand that better.

The board is doing a lot of work, and they will have some good suggestions and recommendations for us. We look forward to hearing their evaluation from their perspective. They have a very unique and valuable perspective that we intend to pay very close attention to, and I suspect that they will help us with that question.

My impression is, though, that at least part of the answer has to be that, fundamentally, we are dealing with an incredibly complex system, and it is the most complicated machine that humans have ever built and intended to operate. Over time, we are going to make some human errors, and that has got to be at least part of the answer.

We do everything in our power every single day in this business to manage the systems to minimize that, and over time, with as complex as a system as we are talking about and the risk environment of space, that has to be at least part of the answer and I suspect we will learn more as we move forward.

MR. HERRING: Mike?

QUESTIONER: My questions are for Mr. Engelauf and Ms. Ham.

There was an exchange between the two of you in the MMT meeting, the 24th I believe, when you talked about informing the crew of the debris strike, in light of the fact that the media has found out about it, and it gives the clear impression, at least it did to me, that if we hadn't -- we the press -- hadn't found out about it that the crew never would have been told. Is that true, and why or why not?

MR. ENGELAUF: I would say that is probably true.

At the time that we sent that up to the crew and the ultimate determination that we made in the MMT, was that this was not going to be a safety-of-flight issue and, therefore, because the crew could not do anything with that information, it wasn't going to change the way that they would conduct their operations on board the vehicle. It wasn't going to change the flight plan. It was going to have no bearing on the conduct of the mission.

Over time in dealing with the crews, they are extremely busy on orbit, and bothering them with information that really doesn't bear on the conduct of the mission is just something we don't normally do.

Because we did get questions here on the ground about that and there was an upcoming press conference on board with the crew, we decided there was a possibility that they were going to get a question about it. Rather than have them be blindsided by a question that they didn't have any background on, we simply told them that, hey, there has been this issue discussed on the ground, we think it is a non-issue, and by the way, here is a little MPEG file, so you can see what we are talking about. It was very innocent.

MR. HERRING: Mark?

QUESTIONER: I am Mark Karo from Houston Chronicle, and mine is for Linda Ham.

Can you tell us when during the mission in your mind, you were satisfied the foam wasn't an issue, and was there any single thing that was sort of a clincher?

MS. HAM: I believe that would be the Monday. I don't remember the date of the MMT where they closed out the last open area where they had analysis. At the MMT on Friday -- I think it was the 24th -- they had closed out five of the six areas, had one remaining open area, and that was the main landing gear door and needed to wrap that analysis up. So I was pretty comfortable that Monday that there was no issue for the mission.

MR. HERRING: Dana?

QUESTIONER: For any of you, how should the request for imaging have been handled? You make it sound like a very casual off-the-cuff process, but what should the process have been to formally request imaging that didn't happen?

MS. HAM: Well, the formal, I can explain. There is a formal route, but even an informal route we typically work. If we hear about the request, we can certainly act upon it, if we need to meet or just pursue it.

The formal process would be that if someone brought it up at the MMT or brought it up to someone when we would hold the meeting, they would share with what we wanted to do, and then we go through the Mission Ops Directorate to a [inaudible] position they have, flight dynamics officer. He had some standard procedures that they work with the Department of Defense or whoever it is to ask for the outside assistance.

MR. HERRING: Matt?

QUESTIONER: Matt Wald.

Linda, on the transcript from the 24th, you say that you had had a discussion with Calvin Shomberg [ph], who is not in the room, about damage to tile from -- potential damage to tile from foam.

Why a tile expert and not an RCC expert, and could you describe that conversation? All you did was allude to it in the MMT.

MS. HAM: Right. First, why the tile expert. I cannot recall if the RCC expert was in the room or tied in, and you would have to go back and ask that person if he was or wasn't.

The Mission Evaluation Room, with all the systems expertise, they call in the right people. I will bet he was tied in, either downstairs or in the room.

I will say that the RCC was one of the ones that was closed out early. They had done the engineering assessment and evaluated it. He said that the worst case on the RCC would be a coating damage, which would not be a flight safety issue whatsoever. So that was closed out earlier.

The tile discussion that -- yes, Calvin was in the MMT, and he did speak from the back of the room. You couldn't hear him in the -- so it didn't come out in the transcript. He was reiterating something that he had talked to me about in my office saying that at worst case that the tile may have sort of a slope-shaped kind of damage and at worst case they would go down -- it would still have a layer at the FIP [ph], a layer of tile remaining.

So he did not believe that there would be any burn-through completely all the way through a tile, that tile, and did not believe there was any safety-of-flight issue. And he had been in my office describing this to me, a couple of days prior to that. I think it was the Tuesday or -- Wednesday of that week.

QUESTIONER: Do you know who the MMT person -- did you get a report from an MMT person that said surface which can only stand .007-foot pound [ph] -- excuse me -- excuse me -- from an RCC person who said that this surface that could only -- it is only designed for .007-foot pound was going to come off with nothing more than coating damage from [inaudible]?

MS. HAM: I did not get a report from that person specifically, the MER manager -- from the MER manager.

QUESTIONER: From the MER manager.

MS. HAM: Yes.

QUESTIONER: And who is that?

MS. HAM: McCormack.

QUESTIONER: McCormack. Okay.

MR. HERRING: Tracy?

QUESTIONER: Tracy Watson again.

You mentioned earlier that there were people on the Mission Management Team meeting as well as in the MER who had wanted imagery. Did you ever [inaudible]?

MS. HAM: No. The people -- now, in hindsight again, once I found out who they were that were members of the assessment team that wanted them, they were tied -- they were in the MMT, yes, and they were in that MER meeting, yes. In fact, I think they briefed the briefing to the MER manager.

QUESTIONER: So who were they? Can you tell us the names?

MS. HAM: The co-chairs were Rodney Rocha for Engineering Directorate, and United States Alliance, Pam Adore [ph].

QUESTIONER: Pam Adore?

MS. HAM: Yes.

QUESTIONER: Pam was on the MMT, and Rodney was, too?

MS. HAM: He was tied in from downstairs. I asked him that several weeks after the accident, and I asked him, "Were you at the MMT?" He said he was in the MER -- its telecon. So he didn't -- he just didn't walk off, and he was there, downstairs.

QUESTIONER: But you asked him from the MER whether imagery was wanted, and that person could know that Rodney --

MS. HAM: I did not ask in the MMT. I asked on the phone. I called the MER up as soon as I found out, which was on a Wednesday, and called the MER manage and said," Do you know of anyone asking for outside assistance?" They said, "Well, we'll check around and make sure, and we'll call you back." They checked around, called me back and said, "No, nobody was looking." You're right. At their meetings, it never came up either. At the engineering meetings held in the MER, the request never came up. You can confirm that with the MER manager.

QUESTIONER: Do you think that that indicates some kind of problem, though, in people's willingness to speak up? Because it's obvious some people did [inaudible].

MS. HAM: If it was, it was, you know, down at the lower level of management.

I really can't put words in their mouth or I cannot speculate on why they didn't feel it was appropriate to bring it to the MER manager or the MMT.

QUESTIONER: I was curious as to why the Boeing analysis, the so-called "Crater assessment," why that wasn't more formally -- or either formally briefed during the MMT. It seems like there was a brief discussion about it, I think, on the 24th, but I am curious as to why the head of that team did not come in and brief the MMT on that issue.

MS. HAM: The MER manager will brief -- uses his judgment, the MER manager and his management team, on deciding how much, the level of detail he needs to bring forward to the Mission Management Team.

I believe that the engineering community didn't feel it was a significant enough issue to bring forward a great deal of information.

What do you think?

MR. ENGELAUF: I agree. He presented, essentially, the results of the analysis and not necessarily the details of it, I think probably because the result indicated that he didn't believe we were going to have a problem. Had he decided that we had a problem, we would have talked about the underlying assumptions and the details and so on and so forth.

Crater. As an observer, again, sitting in the room, my interpretation of the conversation was that Crater was the tool that had been accepted up to that point as the standard tool for doing that kind of analysis, and they had run essentially what would be the norm for that kind of analysis.

MS. HAM: Another thing is that you also noticed that nobody asked questions either. You can ask John Rutts [ph], the safety rep, and all the folks on their contractor team who also supports the MER meetings, their management [inaudible] in the MER when they have those. Nobody had any technical questions. Everyone seemed to feel comfortable with what we were being told.

MR. HERRING: Eric?

QUESTIONER: This is for Linda Ham. Let me just sort of come at this question from this direction. Is what you are saying, that throughout the mission while there were all of these conversations going on at various levels among engineers and contractors and all that about the need for imagery, that you didn't know anything about those concerns and questions, and therefore, you never really responded to them until you found out after the fact?

And secondly, how much responsibility do you personally feel you bear for what proved to be faulty decisions on the severity of the foam strike and the need for the imagery?

MS. HAM: The answer to the first question on the imagery, I was never alerted to the concerns that were expressed by the engineers working the issue. Neither the severity, the potential severity of -- some of them felt -- of the damage or the fact that they wanted the [inaudible] image, again, it came up to me that there may be a possible request on Wednesday. I forget which day that was.

MR. ENGELAUF: The 22nd.

MS. HAM: The 22nd, that is when it initially came up to me. That is when I went and spent a large part of my day trying to find out who was requesting it, so we could get the proper information, and it ended that day. It never came up again, never, not in the hallway, not in the Mission Management Team. None of my MMT members had heard about -- heard or brought forward to me the fact that someone had been asking. So that was the beginning and the end of it.

QUESTIONER: Could you do the second part of my question?

MS. HAM: The second part, could you repeat it?

QUESTIONER: How much responsibility do you personally feel you share in what proved to be faulty decision-making on the foam and the need for imagery?

MS. HAM: Okay. Well, first of all, on the imagery, I will take responsibility for being the chair of the Mission Management Team. You know, I am the team leader there, but we are a team.

We all heard the discussions. None of us felt that the analysis was faulty. I said, first, imagery, but I am actually addressing the analysis.

I personally, nor does the MMT, do the analysis. We must rely on our contractor work force who had the systems expertise to go off and do that analysis. We don't have the tools to do that. We don't have the knowledge to do that or the background or expertise to do that kind of thing. So we do rely on the systems experts. That is the way that we operate. We have to rely on them to bring that forward.

On the imagery, as a team leader, I am accountable for that team, but again, no one came forward and asked for the imagery on my part and that of program management. We had no [inaudible] in going forward in asking for external help.

MR. HERRING: Marcia?

QUESTIONER: Some people with the board have told me that in listening and reading your transcript [inaudible], and other board people said the decision-maker should be [inaudible]. And I'm just if -- do you consider that overly harsh criticism? I am just wondering. I mean, you have been reading and listening to all of these various comments, too, I'm sure. How do you address these comments?

MS. HAM: Well, it goes without saying that we were all trying to do the right thing. All along, we were basing our decisions on the best information that we had at the time. Nobody wanted to do anything harm to anyone. Nobody wanted to -- obviously, nobody wanted to hurt the crew.

These people are our friends. They are our neighbors. We run with them, work out with the gym with them. My husband is an astronaut. I don't believe anyone is at fault for this.

MR. ENGELAUF: It really is amazing to me, Marcia. It is unconscionable to me that people can attribute to the members of the MMT or the Flight Control Team or the rest of the folks who are in these missions anything other than the best of intentions. These are people of good conscience doing everything in their power to get the right answers.

This is what we do for a living. When LeRoy sits at that console and his job and my job when I am there is to keep the crew safe and get them home in one piece, that is everything we do here, and when we come to work, that is all we are focused on.

So, in the end, yes, we lost the crew and we lost the vehicle, and we can't escape that. And nobody feels worse about that than every one of us who has our hands on these missions every day, but it is not because of lack of good intent or lack of effort on anybody's part. If the system fell down, we will fix the system, but it is really difficult for me to attribute blame to individual personalities or people.

We can find mistakes in analysis, and we can find places where we weren't good enough, but it is not because of malice or ill intent.

MR. HERRING: Bill?

QUESTIONER: Bill Harwood.

LeRoy has already done this in a previous briefing, but with Linda and Phil, just for the record, kind of, A, I know you were in mission control that day. Where were you? And I was wondering what your first reaction was when this telemetry came in, when you realized that it was the left wing, and maybe give us some insight into what you were thinking at that moment.

I mean, LeRoy had said that he immediately thought of the impact when he first heard [inaudible], and I have got a million more, but I will stop there.

MS. HAM: I was in the mission control center. We were up in the room where management overlooks the control center.

When we first lost the transducers and the MMACS officer reported that to LeRoy and then he had -- I think he [inaudible] some more, and he was looking to see if there was any kind of common electrical box or common MDM, multiplexer or demultiplexer, and when he commented that there wasn't anything common that he could find, then I began to worry and I thought yeah, it is a left wing, and once the EECOM, another flight control position, began to report some loss of parameters, again, I was thinking about it being the left wing now.

At that point, we were just wondering what was going on and what could this potentially mean to us, not that it wasn't that this could be catastrophic, but as we progressed, once we lost com with the crew and then we never got radar tracking and then, you know, it was past [inaudible], obviously all the managers up in that room, probably 20 of us, knew that we needed to get the MRT set up.

We needed to get this investigation team set up. So I immediately started calling the MIT chair, Dave Whittle [ph], so that he could get his [inaudible] and we could have the meeting and start sending people out.

QUESTIONER: Tell me kind of on a personal level. I mean, that is business level, but there had to be some personal level in your mind as you heard this stuff coming out.

MS. HAM: Well, yeah. I mean, it is not a fun situation to be in. Very difficult.

MR. ENGELAUF: Mine is really similar. Linda was up in the viewing room. I was down on the floor at the console, immediately behind LeRoy's, and similar to Linda's, when Jeff Kling indicated that he had lost the four transducers, my first -- I made a mental connection there to the impact during the ascent, but at that point, I wasn't even close to thinking about a catastrophic outcome. I thought maybe a connector had been jarred loose by the impact, and even though at first blush, Jeff couldn't find any commonality, kind of deep down inside I was expecting him to come up with "Oh, I found it now, and now I know where the commonality is. They all go through this connector," or some similar sort of thing.

When we lost some more transducers, part of it was this was a difficult puzzle we were trying to figure out, and I was waiting to get some more data, so we could figure this puzzle out.

We lost comm with the crew. At first, that wasn't unusual. We take hits periodically. When we didn't get comm back, you sort of get that sick feeling in your stomach that this is not good, but in my heart, I was still holding on to hope that, yeah, comm will come back in a minute and then we will know why we were out of comm and we will have some more data, we can solve this puzzle.

When we got to the point where we should have had radar data and we didn't, it was, in my mind, pretty clear that we had -- we were having a real bad day and we probably had lost the vehicle. It wasn't 100-percent certain, but I was pretty sure.

John Shannon was sitting at the console with me, another one of our Ascent/Entry flight directors at the time, and he reached down. He was sitting closest to the book shelf, and he reached down and he had the contingency procedures out and handed them to me. And he said, "You need to turn the right page here."

He left the room and went up to talk to the managers and sort of informed the managers, who -- not Linda, but some of the other folks who were up there observing, that we were going to have a real problem here.

I did get a phone call then from one of the other flight directors who was involved in the mission, and not to reveal his name, but indicated that he had been observing the over-flight and saw multiple objects overflying the area.

I got that call. It really confirmed what we already knew, pretty much. I mentioned that Ellen Ochoa who was standing beside me there leaned over the console, got LeRoy's attention and told him. And again, I don't think I told him anything he didn't already know in his heart, but it was sort of a final confirmation. And about that time, we were getting video pictures from Dallas and at the control center as well. So we had pretty clear indications by that point.

We called for the securing at the control center. At that point, it took me a minute. A couple of the crew members were people that I knew fairly well, and, you know, I reflected on that for a minute or two.

But then your training does take over, as LeRoy said, and everybody is going to want to know what happened during the accident, and our piece of helping that happen is to secure the data in the control center and make sure we don't lose anything.

In addition, I think -- I have a real focus on the Flight Control Team members, having been here during Challenger, not on console, but I had just finished the flight just before Challenger. I remember how a lot of the people were really severely affected, and I looked out at the Flight Control Team and looked into the eyes of some of the people sitting at the consoles.

And I think the rest of my focus for that day was playing back-stop for LeRoy and helping him through with the procedures, keeping the people in the control center engaged and focused on what they were trying to do and, quite honestly, looking at the next day and trying to figure out where we were going to go from there and what to do with the people.

MR. HERRING: Mike?

QUESTIONER: My question is for Ms. Ham. I would like to revisit the on-orbit photography question, if I could, briefly. My understanding is that the first request for on-orbit photography did not come from the Damage Assessment Team, but it came from a fellow who was part of the inner center photo working group at Kennedy Space Center, and that he contacted his boss or someone -- Wayne Hale, who in turn contacted Mr. Austin and sort of got the process informally revved up.

And that when you responded to the photo request, it was not to the Damage Assessment Team's request, but it was to the Kennedy Space Center request. It has also said that these requests have collided in Ms. Batique's [ph] office when Shaq [ph], Mr. Rocha's superior, went to talk about getting possible on-orbit photography.

Can you talk about that for a minute? Which requests were you responding to when you turned it down, and how did that whole thing unfold? And specifically, what were your conversations with Mr. Austin and Mr. Hale?

MS. HAM: Okay. That was the first phone call I received was from Lambert Austin on that Wednesday morning. He said that he had heard about a possible request for imagery, and we talked about it some. And I said, "Well, who has asked?" He said it was United States Alliance Systems Integration who said that USA Orbiter wanted the picture, and I said, "Who?" He said, "Well, I really don't know." I said, "Well, Lambert, will you go see if you can find out, and I will see if I can find out, also."

So I did call Lawrence Driver [ph] for United States Alliance to see if he knew of anything, and he checked around and reported back that he hadn't heard of any request for imagery.

I talked to Space Shuttle, engineering office, and I talked to the Mission Evaluation Room, and I could not find a facility.

So then I did call the Cape, and I called Wayne. And I said, "I know you talked to Lambert, and Lambert was asking about a possible request." I said, "You know, I have been spending the day trying to find out where it is coming from, and I really can't find a source. So I don't think we need to pursue it."

QUESTIONER: Did Mr. Hale inform you at that time that the source that had originated had canceled?

MS. HAM: Not that I can recall. I cannot recall that.

MR. HERRING: Mark?

QUESTIONER: Mark Karo from Houston Chronicle.

I wanted to go back to the minutes and to January 21st, and you made a comment, "I hope we had the good flight rationale then," referring back to the outcome of the flight readiness review for the 112 mission.

I guess I wondered what you were thinking and how much did you know because you really are asking, as I interpret it, the other people to find out and refresh you. How much did you know about that incident, and how much did you know about it then, and what -- I guess I was also curious from that what you wanted these other experts to respond to you with and what did you want them to come back, not the answer, but the information that --

MS. HAM: The information I was asking for was both the information for the -- it was actually the STS-113 flight readiness review after 112, what was our flight rationale. That was even -- and I also wanted to go back to the STS-87 where I knew we had some foam loss on the inner tank flange where it was popcorning off to smaller pieces, what was our flight rationale there.

What I wanted to do was pull those two pieces of data. What I was searching for is our flight rationale because I couldn't recall it. It had been, what, 3 months prior when we did the STS-113. It was for our rationale based on the material properties of that foam, so that even on the bipod ramp, if that foam would come off, that it would do no damage to the Orbiter. That is what I was hoping for because, if we had done that kind of analysis before we launched 113 and say even the biggest size of bipod foam that could come off and mass properties of that, so that it won't be enough kinetic energy to hurt the Orbiter anywhere, anywhere hit.

Well, that wasn't what the flight rationale was, but I was hoping it would be because then we could certainly -- besides the assessment we were doing for this mission specifically, with that other piece of information that would back the assessment that said we don't have a safety flight issue, we could say -- feel even more comfortable that we were safer this way.

QUESTIONER: I gather that is not what they came back and told you, and I was just trying to close the loop on --

MS. HAM: That's true. They did not brief that out back at the MMT. What they came back with was a charge from the FARs for both the STS-113 and also the 89 which was the flight following 87, and, of course, that was a whole different case. It was a different kind of foam loss, and the 113 story could not support the flight, the flight that was 107. What we needed to do was rely on them completing their analysis to indicate whether we would have a problem during 107.

QUESTIONER: So, I just wanted to make sure. This sort of fed in, then, to eventually the credibility of the analysis you had going on with --

MS. HAM: It would, yes.

QUESTIONER: -- Boeing?

MS. HAM: That was the goal.

QUESTIONER: It made it more crucial.

MS. HAM: Yes, it did.

QUESTIONER: Okay. Thank you.

MS. HAM: Rather than have the analysis in, the analysis we had done two flights ago, we only had analysis we were doing during 107.

QUESTIONER: Thank you.

QUESTIONER: Linda, what is your next assignment at NASA? What is next for you?

MS. HAM: I have some opportunities. Some people have suggested jobs I could do here at NASA. I haven't made a decision. I am leaving for vacation the end of this week, and I am not going to decide what I am going to do until I get back.

You know, I have -- my family is here. My husband is an astronaut, as I said. So he would like to see me continue with this career here. So I need to figure out what I am going to do.

QUESTIONER: But you are going to stay here at NASA?

MS. HAM: I am going to stay with NASA.

QUESTIONER: Linda, reading through the transcripts, there's a couple of places where you ask [inaudible] issue only and we have seen pieces of this size before, haven't we. McCormack says that you sort of fumbling about what the size of the damage is and that the analysis isn't complete and [inaudible] jump conclusions. You sort of cut him off and say no burn-through means no catastrophic damage, localized heating damage [inaudible] tile replacement.

In hindsight, 20/20 hindsight, were you sufficiently open to the idea that this was a really serious problem?

MS. HAM: In 20/20 hindsight, you are asking 20/20 hindsight or what my thought was then?

QUESTIONER: Well, it sounds like you were just kind of seeking reassurance that everything was okay as opposed to digging in and saying how do we know this, are we asking the right questions, do we have the right people on this, have we [inaudible] this properly.

MS. HAM: I was asking to make -- I was trying to reiterate what Don McCormack had already said to me, so that everyone in the room could understand what he was saying.

When he said -- would make statements like no burn-through, that that meant no safety-of-flight issue, I wanted -- I was trying to reassure even myself that that was a true fact. I couldn't really [inaudible] or jump to a conclusion that there could be no damage until they came forward and -- catastrophic damage, until they came forward and complete that analysis and tell me what the analysis showed.

Again, I don't have the engineering expertise, nor do I have the tools to do that kind of analysis. So I didn't have a preconceived notion on the damage or the possible consequences, and I needed to wait for them to complete their work.

MR. HERRING: I have time for one more round. So try to keep them fairly brief.

Go ahead, Tracy.

QUESTIONER: I have a quick question, then a follow-up.

I have heard from a number of engineers that when they saw the ascent video, they were very worried and instantly feared loss of vehicle. Did any of you hear about those fears?

MR. ENGELAUF: I will tell you first that I did not. I was not aware of anyone having any concerns, much less significant concerns. Certainly, for safety of flight, what I was aware of was that we had a potential for some reflight turnaround schedule or manifest type issue only, if you will, if we had some kind of minimal damage to the tile or the TPS. I was not aware of anything of that nature until well after the accident when some of these reports started to surface.

QUESTIONER: Since none of you seemed to have heard that, do you think that indicates some kind of communication difficulty that should be addressed?

MR. CAIN: Let me follow up first, and then I will let Phil and Linda answer.

We foster a culture here that very much encourages folks to talk, to communicate. The lines of communication are always open. We encourage people to -- if we think we have an issue or a problem, we stand up and talk about it. We debate it. We will bring the data forward. That is the culture that we very much encourage and we foster around here.

The reason we do that is because, as you had heard Linda mention earlier, not the least of the reasons we do it anyway, is because we have the safety of a crew, the success of the missions at the forefront of our mind every single day when we come to work.

So, in order for us to be able to do our jobs effectively, it is crucial that we have open and clear lines of communication. It is absolutely critical, and it is, frankly, expected of every single person in every organization, from the engineer all the way up through the groups in the management of the programs and throughout the agency, but certainly for human spaceflight endeavors, that is the culture that we foster and I believe that it is alive and healthy today.

MR. ENGELAUF: I would have to agree with LeRoy. There is not a lot else I can add there. From the standpoint of the Flight Control Team culture, I think that is so inherent and embedded in the psychology and operating standards that it really is second nature to us.

I think more often, people pick on us when there is disagreement or discord, and I think it is just because we take all the inputs and we talk about everything. We spend our days when we are not flying missions in rooms having heated technical debates over how we do this or that or what this particular data means.

So I don't think there is a resistance or a reluctance, and I will tell you that at no time during the mission from the first time I heard about the foam strike until the end of the mission did I ever hear anyone express a concern for loss of the crew and the vehicle as a result of the debris strike.

MS. HAM: I can also say that I was never alerted to any concerns expressed by the engineers, and I do -- I am in the MER a lot. I am down there and I wander around in the Flight Control back rooms and others areas, and I did not hear any concerns.

Now, obviously, there are formal methods for getting things and communicating through the MER and the MMT and all that, and there is the informal way. For some reason, we didn't get it either way, which I think is also of interest. So whatever happens somewhere, we probably need to figure that out and see if there is a way we can improve that, but I would also agree that we have wide-open communication. Our doors are always open, and we are more than willing to hear what people have to say.

It is the only way we can operate. It is the only way are going to hear about these kind of things and the only way we can continue to fly safely. So we really do need these people to feel comfortable and come forward with their issues.

QUESTIONER: In terms of the MMT meetings during the STS-107 mission and how this all played out, Linda, is there anything that you in 20/20 hindsight would do differently?

MS. HAM: In 20/20 hindsight, there are things the MMT could have done better. There are things the analysis team could have done better. There are things the whole NASA team could have done better. 20/20, perfect-vision hindsight, I would go back to the STS-113 flight readiness review, and we should have done more analysis on the foam loss we had on 112 and we should have really come -- look back, done the engineering and done the work to see if we were safe to fly with the bipod [inaudible] foam coming off. I think, you know, going back that far was where we really needed to go to solve this issue.

MR. HERRING: Eric?

QUESTIONER: Could you tell me who from NASA headquarters monitored these MMT meetings, particularly the three where foam was discussed?

MS. HAM: They tie in every day to the MMT, and I probably even have with me exactly those locations. I can't tell you who was in the room.

QUESTIONER: But somebody from headquarters was monitoring all of these?

MS. HAM: Yes, that's correct. They --

QUESTIONER: All [inaudible]?

MS. HAM: Yes.

MR. HERRING: That is probably a question for headquarters, if you want to know who actually was there.

You can have one more, Eric, since that was [inaudible]. That was my answer, and I don't count.

QUESTIONER: Talking about 20/20 hindsight, again, do you think that perhaps there was too much emphasis placed on the need for following proper procedures and going through correct channels and somehow some of these concerns were not -- did not filter up to the top of the pyramid, as you described it?

MS. HAM: My initial answer is no, I don't believe that is the case because we are, again, more open-door policy, more than willing to take anything, any information we get either formally or informally. That is why I do go into the MER. That is why I do talk to people in my office. That is why Calvin Shomberg came to my office. I talked to Ralph Roe, the head of the vehicle engineering office. We are always talking. It's part of the job. That is why I come into the Flight Control Team. We would take an input anyway that someone was willing to give it, be it phone, e-mail, anything.

MR. HERRING: Marcia?

QUESTIONER: In the few days after the accident, many of the -- Ron Dittemore [inaudible] people from Washington kept saying how the crew was being kept abreast of every little development during the flight about [inaudible], engineering analysis, and that is certainly a disconnect to reality. Were people that badly informed?

Also, every mission, you read the execute packages, and there are all these little nits and all these little minor, seemingly minor and big things, and yet, this one, you say was would never have even been mentioned if reporters hadn't been curious, and I just don't understand. Doesn't the crew have a right, a moral right to know about problems being worked, even if they might be later proved not to be a real problem?

MS. HAM: I am going to let you answer the last half of that question, Phil, but for the first part, I can't really speculate on what Ron was thinking when he did his press conferences or whoever else that you were referring to.

QUESTIONER: I think General Kostelnik and maybe Bill Readdy even. There were quite a few people saying the crew had been kept abreast of everything.

MS. HAM: You will have to speak to them about what they were referring to in their press conference, but I will tell you that Ron and I, we talk every day. We do during missions. We do when we don't have missions. It is several times a day, no matter where he is or where I am. We communicate all the time, and every -- most everything I know about what is happening during the mission, he does know.

Now, about execute package and the other information the crew gets, I will let Phil answer that.

MR. ENGELAUF: I got a flavor of the question, that somehow people believe that we on the ground thought there was something gravely wrong with the vehicle, but kept it from the crew. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reason we didn't do anything different than what we talked about here today is because we did not believe that there was anything seriously wrong with the vehicle, certainly nothing that the crew could have any impact on in the sense of taking any action. We weren't going to send folks out to do tile repair because we didn't think -- I mean, we didn't have tools to do anything, but we also thought that that was going to be a ground turnaround thing.

When you talk about the really trivial things that you see in the execute packages, the typical standard is if there is anything that affects either telemetry that the crew is going to have insight into when they call up a display, even if it is a redundant transducer that has failed offscale low and doesn't affect anything, if they might ever call up a page on the computer and see a bold "L" for offscale low next to that transducer, we will call and tell them even if it is something that they can't see. But if they ever had to select an alternate system, they might see something different in the performance or they might want to be aware that we have limited capability on a certain function, even if it is not the primary function. We put that in the failure impact workaround summary, everything that is wrong.

In this particular case, if we told the crew to look out the window, there was nothing to see because we believed that any damage was on the bottom of the vehicle. We were very certain that if the crew had looked out the window and seen anything wrong with the top of the vehicle, we would know about it and we wouldn't have to tell them, they would be telling us.

We just did not believe that there was anything that we could tell the crew that they could do anything with, and at the time, we had no indication or belief that we were -- that there was anything here that was going to affect the crew, even in the long run.

QUESTIONER: So was part of it, then, you didn't want to unnecessarily worry them and have them distracted?

MR. ENGELAUF: With a non-issue, that is exactly right, and had we not expected that they were going to then be subsequently asked a question in a press conference and not know the question, that is the more severe consequence of being asked a question you don't know something about even if, in fact, we really don't think it is a problem. So the fact that we anticipate that they might get some questions, we went ahead and told them because that was then the least-distracting thing was to have them know in advance that they were going to get a question like that.

QUESTIONER: And do you think this is something they are going to rethink? I mean, obviously future crews are going to want to be more on top of what is happening.

MR. ENGELAUF: Knowing what we knew at the time and in trying to translate that into a future scenario, I am still not going to tell the crew about things that I don't think are any impact to the mission.

Another example, on STS-112 when it talks about the foam strike, in that case a piece of foam hit one of the solid rocket boosters. We never told the crew. It didn't hit the Orbiter. It wasn't going to affect the Orbiter. It wasn't going to affect anything else that happened during the rest of the mission, and there was no reason to trouble the crew with that.

Given the same caliber of circumstances, I think I would do the same.

Now, are we going to turn up the gain on our sensitivity to what might be a problem or not a problem? I think that is going to be natural for every human being that works in the agency.

As was pointed out earlier, when return to flight, STS-26 was probably the most intensely scrutinized flight we have flown, more so than even STS-1. I would probably speculate that STS-114 will be even more intensely scrutinized before, during, and after the mission.

MR. HERRING: Bill?

QUESTIONER: You guys have eloquently stated your views of how this all went, and that the communications, the channels are there, and really -- I mean, I am not trying to make this sound offensive in any way -- it sounds like you guys are saying this system is fine, but something clearly didn't work. So I guess I am wondering.

The board is obviously going to come out and force changes on you guys. I guess, A, is there any concern that they are going to fix things that aren't broken? What do you guys think was broken? Because something was. And a third part of my one final question, on a completely different topic for Phil, is there -- based on what you guys have said, the way information was flowing during this post -- when you finally saw film, there was no way in the world you could have saved this crew. Right or wrong?

MS. HAM: I will start with the first question.

QUESTIONER: Fixing things that aren't broken and you guys think everything is pretty good the way it is.

MS. HAM: I believe we should wait until the CAIB report comes out and find out what they are going to say, so we can fix what they have told us we need to go address.

I think we will take a good hard look at every one of the recommendations and findings. NASA and the return-to-flight team will determine how they are going to disposition each of those.

On the communication problem, most of us feel that it is open. Obviously, there was some kind of a problem because it never got from some level of engineering management to either the program. Somewhere, there was a breakdown.

We have a formal route, and you don't have to go that route. There is an informal route. It didn't make it until there is something we need to do about. We just need to figure out what it is.

MR. ENGELAUF: I go back even one step further. Like I said earlier, in the final analysis, every night when I go to bed, we lost STS-107. We lost the crew. We lost the vehicle. Clearly, that is not the way it is supposed to happen, and that is not what we do here.

So, no matter how you look at the arithmetic, whether you can find a mistake or not, we are getting the wrong answer, and we have to fix that. We all know that.

I will go with Linda's answer. We are going to have to wait until we get some recommendations from people who will look at this from a different perspective than the one that we do.

It is very difficult to pinpoint the details. I think it may be even something that just isn't obvious to us. I certainly don't want to leave it to the easy answers and fix something that isn't the thing that is causing the problem.

The rescue mission, I think it is an impossible question to answer. I really do. Folks have done a hypothetical case study. The precepts of that study require you to make assumptions that were not present at the time on this vehicle, on this particular mission.

They are also predicated on specific circumstances of where the next vehicle was and the flow and things like that, and I don't think that those -- you know, short of imposing a requirement, that those are going to be the generic case in all cases.

I also don't think that you can get the right answer without all of the circumstances that were present at the time and their real adrenaline factor. Could I go over and run a simulation with a Mission Management Team and a Flight Control Team? Sure. Would it look like what would have happened on that day if we had really tried to do this? I doubt it very seriously. So I would stop short of trying to answer whether we could have saved the crew or not.

MS. HAM: But had we known that there was a catastrophic situation on orbit, we certainly would have done everything we could --

MR. ENGELAUF: Absolutely.

MS. HAM: -- including, you know, is there anything we can do for the tile repair, and we certainly would have pursued rescue. There is no doubt.

MR. ENGELAUF: I don't say we wouldn't have tried. We pulled out all the stops, we had done everything within human capability, I don't know whether we would have succeeded or not.

MR. CAIN: I showed up on February 1st, and really, the only job I had to do that day was to get the crew and the vehicle home safely. And we weren't able to accomplish that.

So, similar to what Phil said, that is what we come to work to do, and I have a tremendous feeling of something went wrong in our system, in our team, in our processes, and again, as I said before, I think it is important for us. We will look forward to what the action board has to say.

I do think they have a unique perspective, and they have done a lot of really hard work with some very capable individuals, and we are going to take that work very seriously and I think we are going to learn a lot from it.

We already know some things that we want to go do to make ourselves better, and with regard to looking in hindsight, 20/20, if we had known that we had a problem while we were on orbit, I certainly agree and echo what Phil and Linda have said. We would have left, literally, no stone unturned, and as to whether or not it would have made a difference, I think, again, as Phil said, it is an impossible question to answer. But certainly, it made for an interesting academic exercise that has raised some interest, but beyond that, I am not sure we can say much about it.

MR. HERRING: Mike?

QUESTIONER: For Ms. Ham. Since the accident, as the chair of the MMT, you have received a lot of criticism, individual criticism in some cases, and have been sort of a lightning rod for a lot of the bigger pictures, criticisms that have been leveled against the organization and the NASA culture. Do you think those criticisms are unfair, and what has this been like for you personally the last few months as this whole thing has unfolded?

MS. HAM: Well, based on information that I had at the time that I made those decisions in the MMT and information that we as a team had at the time, we were really doing the best we could.

Like we said before, our goal is to launch and, of course, keep the crew safe -- that is our number-one goal -- and also bring the Orbiter back safely and accomplish missions, but that is our job. That is our number-one job.

I think we all take some personal responsibility for this, and I certainly feel accountable for the MMT. So it has been very difficult through this. I know that the important thing to do right now is to get the program back on their feet, get back to the flight, and get back to flight more safely than ever.

My husband being an astronaut and having two kids, we have all gone through this together.

MR. HERRING: Mark?

QUESTIONER: Mark Karo with the Houston Chronicle.

Boy, there was sure a lot of activity coming ahead this year after this flight with Space Station assembly. I wondered, Phil, if you thought that the Mission Control Team was preoccupied by looking ahead, there wasn't the kind of focus maybe on this flight that you might normally have given if that issue has arisen from time to time. Was that at all the case?

MR. ENGELAUF: I don't perceive that to be the case.

The flight rate that we were flying in terms of historical flight rates really wasn't all that high. Now, we have gone through some staffing-level changes over the years and that sort of thing, and we always seem to be operating pretty much at our limit and folks work hard, but that is kind of why people come to work here. We love what we do, and people are motivated and they come here and they sort of thrive on that kind of challenge to some degree.

This was a Shuttle stand-alone mission and not a Space Station assembly mission, and so I don't think it put the same level of strain overall on the personnel and that sort of thing that sometimes we do when we are doing a joint assembly kind of mission. But I don't perceive that has really having been a factor here at all, Mark. I really don't.

QUESTIONER: LeRoy, really you guys have gone through a process here, and you have had to go through a very public grieving process. And you have had to keep silent for a number of reasons, waiting for the report. What has helped you through this process? How has it worked for you?

MR. CAIN: Well, I think the things that have helped me the most is really my family and the community that we surround ourselves with, both the great individuals that we have the pleasure and honor of working with here, but once we get away from here and we are just with the family and the friends and the people that we are close to, like any difficult situation, I think that has been a great help to us. For me, that includes my spiritual life as well, and that has been very important to me. So there are a number of things that me and my family specifically have been able to turn to.

With respect to the rest of my peers and our colleagues here, we, I think, have prompted each other quite a bit because we are in this together.

As you know, we enjoy the successes of this business together as a team and really more like a family than a team, and similarly, when we have problems, we deal with them as a team and as a family. That family is our extended family, and so, at times like this, I think we have been able to help each other out. We have been able to talk about the fact that this is a difficult business to be in.

The highs are really high and the lows are really low, and that is the way it has been since the first time I walked in the control center and the first time as a young man, was a mission control flight controller.

I can remember leaving late at night after long 6-hour simulations, and I had made a mistake on one of the cases. I had to tell you that all the way back then is when I learned that the highs are really high and the lows are really low, but we are here because of the passion that we have for it. That extends to the rest of our peers and colleagues, and it flows out into our families and our communities. At a time like this, that becomes very important because all of those same individuals and structures that you have around you come forward to help.

So, for me personally, those things have been very important and critical, and we have a ways to go yet, but we are getting there, day by day.

MR. HERRING: One final quick one.

QUESTIONER: A question for any of the three of you who would like to answer. Rodney Rocha is presumably like you, a person of good intent, best of intentions. He said that he feared for his job if he pushed too hard on his concerns.

What is your level of confidence that that is an aberration, that nobody else feels the same way? If others felt the same way about bringing things forward during a mission, how would you know that?

MR. ENGELAUF: Maybe it wasn't clear. Somebody down there in the ranks said "I am afraid to raise my hand and say, 'Hey, boss, I am worried about this and you are not paying attention.'" He was afraid, he said. Are there others who are actually afraid? How would you know if others were afraid? How would you know if you are not getting the benefit of the people who work under you?

MR. CAIN: As I stated before, we are very serious about the culture and the environment that we foster here. It is steeped in open communication, and how do you know? The only way you know is by going around and talking to people, and we have great individuals at all levels of management who are responsible for their individual working troops. We rely on them, and the way we raise up the culture and the system, we rely on people to keep the lines of communication open

So the only way you would know is by being in contact and in close contact with the respective levels of management, which I believe we are, but we are talking about thousands of people. I guess if I look at it that way, if it really is only a couple of people, then percentages-wise, that is pretty small, but it is more than what we want. We want that number to be zero.

So part of what we will do is go back and reexamine our practices, and we will reexamine ourselves. We will make sure in every way that we can that if there are things that we can do to ensure that that doesn't happen that we will put those in place. We will do that, again, via opening up the lines of communication at every level, having discussions we have already had and will continue to have in the various directorates.

We have had open, if you will, all-hands meetings to talk about some of these kinds of things, to really open it up to every level and let people know, "Hey, we have had some things happen here, and we all want to put our best foot forward. So help us understand how we can do that." So we will continue to do those kinds of things.

MR. ENGELAUF: I think I would add to that. LeRoy hit on the idea of the number of people we have here and the strength and the breadth of our organizations. That strength and numbers also comes from sort of the checks and balances system.

There are very few occasions here in this business where an entire outcome of a major situation depends on one individual who has the only right answer and everybody else in the room has it wrong.

I wouldn't look at this case as being all of NASA was wrong except one guy who had the answer. There has to be a more fundamental structural problem with how the communication broke down here.

I don't believe if a multitude of people disagreed with the outcome that not a single one of them is going to feel comfortable coming forward. That certainly isn't the environment that we foster, as LeRoy indicates, with the Flight Control Team. I think that our culture of having free and open discussion before flight gets people to know each other and understand the technical issues and understand how to have those debates in a forum that isn't threatening.

I have trouble accepting the idea that this flight failed because one individual was afraid to say something in one particular meeting.

QUESTIONER: More than one individual?

MR. ENGELAUF: I'm not sure I understand.

QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] e-mail back and forth to a variety of individuals. In hindsight, you seem quite worried about this. Is it possible that more than one individual felt too timid to come forward?

MR. ENGELAUF: If you are referring to the e-mails among the MMACS discipline, I personally went and talked with the managers in that organization, not the individual themselves because if, in fact, they felt threatened, it wouldn't do much good to go to them and say, "Gee, do you feel threatened?"

So I went and talked to their management because the flight directors have a relationship with the flight controllers, and if any one of us becomes too overbearing, we will hear about it through their management, no doubt about it.

I talked with Bob Deremus [ph] about those e-mails. We were sure that there is no lingering bunch of people down in the trenches that really had a serious concern and didn't feel they could come forward. They truly were doing that "what if?" thing that engineers do. If you don't have a problem to work on, you will work on the non-problems that you've got and you turn it inside-out and you look at it from every direction.

Here again, people seem to miss some of the details. People talking in those e-mails about the loss of a landing gear tire due to potential penetration into the wheel well, eventually we lose -- you know, we had a penetration in the wheel well here, but the thing that took this vehicle out was a penetration starting up at the leading edge of the wing.

QUESTIONER: Right.

MR. ENGELAUF: So they were looking at a scenario which people purport as "Oh, that is what happened," and I don't think that is accurate.

They were doing what if and what happens, ultimately kind of like what they were talking about in the e-mails, but that is not what took this vehicle out of the sky.

MR. CAIN: Just to add on that real quickly, ultimately it is my understanding, anyway -- and as the entry flight director, I certainly again will reiterate I wasn't aware of any of those, anybody being concerned, and my understanding is that ultimately every person that we are aware of, every single person and individual and group and part of the team in the organization was in agreement that we didn't have a safety-of-flight issue.

So, in the end, even those folks who -- or parts of the organization, purportedly, anyway, who may have had a concern and were reluctant to raise it in the end didn't have a concern is the way I understand it today.

MR. HERRING: Okay. We are now out of time. I want to thank you guys for being here. I want to thank all of you for coming. We appreciate it.

[End of press conference.]

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STS-107 Mission Management Team Telecon

January 17, 2003, 7:50 a.m. CST

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January 21, 2003, 7:50 a.m.

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Friday, January 24, 2003, 8 a.m. CST

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January 27, 2003, 8 a.m. CST

STS-107 Mission Management Team Telecon

January 30, 2003, 8 a.m. CST

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