Then we flew away and a little while later, they lit the motor and took it up to where it was supposed to go in geosynchronous orbit. ![]() Then we just bolted it and it had a spring-loaded ejection, so we could deploy it, the springs would pop off and the thing floated away. Once we had the bar latched, we could grab it with the mechanical arm and position it over this rocket motor. I flew it down and got the timing of the wobble so they had the satellite in front of their nose and they just reached up and grabbed it. The satellite was wobbling a bit, but the vehicle is incredible, and you can move it just inches. So, they were three points around the satellite, and we just flew up to it and did another rendezvous. When we got them out there, we had one guy on the end of the arm, and two in foot restraints and hard mounted. Since we only had two of those and three people, we had to do it like scuba diving, and "buddy breathe." We put the umbilical on one, ran it for a few minutes, got his suit full of oxygen, then we put it on the other guy for a minute or two and went back and forth like that. We took the third suit in, but while you're in there, there's an umbilical to plug in and get cooling and oxygen. Two of them were in the airlock and two were outside just in the cabin. : How did you manage to get around that?īrandenstein: The mission was originally scheduled to have four spacewalks, and we had two spacewalking crews, so luckily we had four suits. One of the big challenges was we were having three people out on a spacewalk – the shuttle wasn't configured for that, and it had never been done before. We came up with this three-person approach, and when we told the ground, they fine-tuned the positioning. What do we have out there that we can use, and what approach can we use to try something different? We had the whole crew there, looking around at our natural resources. And then before you know it, a couple heads come up out of the mid-deck. So we tried to pretend like we were sleeping, then Kevin Chiltin, who was my pilot, floated back and we started looking out the back window. If you're not careful, or if you flip a switch on anything, they can tell if you're awake or not. So, we turned off all the lights and let the ground think we were sleeping. (Image credit: NASA)Īt that time, theoretically, we were supposed to be going to bed on orbit. The question is, did we have enough fuel to come back and do another rendezvous? We did, so as commander, I suggested to the ground that we take the day off and come back with a different plan.Įndeavour's STS-49 crew captures the INTELSAT VI satellite above the shuttle's payload bay. We backed away from it again, but we didn't feel quite as bad because we knew they could get it under control again. On the second day, we had a little more training and some lessons learned, and we tried six times before the satellite was kind of running out of control. But 30 minutes later or so, they called up and said the satellite was back under control and we could try again tomorrow. ![]() What do you remember most from that part of the mission?īrandenstein: The first day when we had no success, we felt really bad about it because we thought that was it. After you and your crewmates discovered the tools to retrieve the satellite didn't quite work as they were intended, you had to improvise a bit. : The pictures from the STS-49 mission, especially during the three-person spacewalk, are incredible. It was a very clean vehicle, it flew very well. ![]() And as it turned out, it was an excellent vehicle, and that was fortunate because the mission had more than its share of challenges. Getting onboard, there was no trepidation or anything like that, relative to the fact it was a new vehicle. And that was done on purpose, for training, especially as all the vehicles evolved. Endeavour was new, but the orbiters were all very similar. What was it like to command a vehicle on its maiden voyage?ĭan Brandenstein: It was a neat opportunity – a real honor. sat down with Brandenstein recently to reminisce about Endeavour's first mission, its contribution to the space shuttle program, the future of human spaceflight, and how he almost flew every orbiter in NASA's fleet:
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