STS-63

Flight Crew

WETHERBEE, James Donald, 42, USN, commander, 3rd mission Previous missions: STS-32 (1990); STS-52 (1992)

COLLINS, Eileen Marie, 38, USAF, pilot

HARRIS Jr., Bernard Anthony, 38, civilian, mission specialist 1, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-55 (1993)

FOALE, Colin Michael, 38, civilian, mission specialist 2, 3rd mission Previous missions: STS-45 (1992); STS-56 (1993)

VOSS, Janice Elaine, 38, civilian, mission specialist, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-57 (1993)

TITOV, Vladimir Georgievich, 48, Russian Air Force, Russian mission specialist 4, 3rd mission

Previous missions: Soyuz T8 (1983); Soyuz T10 launch pad abort (1983); Soyuz TM4 (1987)

Flight Log

As originally planned, Mir should have been visited by the Soviet Space Shuttle Buran but when the first Shuttle finally reached the space complex, it was an American, not a Russian one. The STS-63 mission achieved a number of milestones in space history for both the US and the Russian space programmes, and was another significant step towards cooperative efforts for the forthcoming ISS. With only a five-minute window to rendezvous with Mir, Discovery’s countdown was refined to include additional holding time at the T — 6 hour and T — 9 minute points. The 2 February launch was postponed at T — 1 day when one of the three IMUs on Discovery failed.

Starting on FD 1, a series of thruster burns brought Discovery to a rendezvous with Mir on FD 4. The approach was expected to be as close as 10 metres, but with three of the Shuttle’s 44 RCS thrusters used for small manoeuvres leaking prior to

rendezvous, the Russians voiced some concerns and it took some considerable discussions and exchange of technical information to convince them that it was safe to proceed. Wetherbee brought the Shuttle to a station-keeping distance of 122 metres, then closed to about 11.2 metres with the crews excitedly talking to each other. Cosmonaut Titov, who was aboard Discovery, had spent over a year on Mir in the late 1980s and talked extensively with his colleagues on the station. This was the first time American and Russian spacecraft had been this close for almost 20 years and the next step in the schedule was the planned docking of STS-71 in June. For now, the close approach was a useful demonstration of a skill that American astronauts had not used in conjunction with another manned spacecraft since the Apollo era – proximity operations. Discovery was eventually withdrawn back to 122 metres and Wetherbee executed a one-and-a-quarter orbit loop around Mir as the astronauts conducted a detailed photographic survey of the station. On board Mir, the EO-17 crew reported no vibrations or movement of the station’s solar array panels during the manoeuvres. This was an excellent start to Shuttle-Mir operations and is often termed the near-Mir mission.

In addition to the Mir rendezvous, STS-63 featured the usual complement of mid­deck and payload bay secondary experiments, plus the third flight of SpaceHab. This flight of the commercially-developed augmentation module included 20 experiments, with 11 biotechnology experiments, three advanced materials development experi­ments, four demonstrations of technology and a pair of hardware experiments supporting acceleration technology. In past flights, crew time was taken up with caretaking the experiments but on this flight, developments in remote monitoring and data transfer reduced direct crew involvement and allowed principle inves­tigators to monitor and control their own experiments. A new robotic device to change samples, called Charlotte, was also flown as an evaluation of automated systems that would allow the crew to focus their efforts on other areas of the flight plan. SPARTAN-204 was lifted out of the cargo bay on FD 2 by the RMS and would study the orbiter glow phenomena and firings of the jet thrusters on the Shuttle. It was later released for a 40-hour free-flight, during which time its Far UV Imaging Spectrograph studied a range of celestial targets in interstellar space.

The SPARTAN was also planned to be used during the EVA towards the end of the mission. The EVA (9 Feb, 4 hours 39 minutes) was the first in a series of EVA Development Flight Test objectives designed to prepare NASA for ISS assembly activities. Harris (EV1) and Foale (EV2) were meant to handle the 1,134kg SPARTAN payload to rehearse ISS assembly techniques for translating large masses, but both astronauts reported feeling cold while at the end of the RMS, despite modifications in their suits to keep them warm when away from the somewhat protected environment of the payload bay. One of the final objectives of STS-63 was to test the revised landing surface at the Shuttle Landing Facility. This was expected to decrease wear on the tyres and give the orbiters a better chance of landing in crosswinds, thus offering a greater range of landing opportunities at the Cape to help maintain processing schedules and to meet the launch windows of a tight manifest. Upon landing, the crew received congratulations from the cosmonauts on Mir. The once-independent US and Russian manned space programmes were beginning to merge into one international programme for ISS and this mission was an important step towards that goal.

Milestones

176th manned space flight 97th US manned space flight 67th Shuttle mission 20th flight of Discovery

31st US and 56th flight with EVA operations

1st orbiter to complete 20 missions

1st approach/fly-around with Mir by US Shuttle

1st female Shuttle pilot

2nd Russian cosmonaut on Shuttle

1st EDFT excursion

3rd SpaceHab mission

1st African American to perform EVA (Harris)