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plk DATE 03/20/8? page I plk DATE 03/20/82 Page 1 ALEX NAGY: Good morning from the Kennedy Space Center. We are at an eight hour hold which beqan at 10:00 this morning at T-2 7 hours on the countdown clock. This hold is due to be released and the count is scheduled to be resumed at 6:00 pm this evening Eastern Standard Time. This morning wo have with us Jay Honeycutt from the Shuttle Program Office at the Johnson Space Center for a briefing on the flight plan for the STS-3 mission. Jay will also touch on somo of the payload experiments because of briefing this crew involvement but I remind you that the 1:30 and afternoon is a detailed one on the payloads, the experiments if you have some detailed questions you should hold them for this afternoon. Jay. JAY HONEYCUTT Okay. You know we're going to launch on Monday. The liftoff time is 10:00 the launch window will close at 12:32. We're going to launch into an inclination of 38 degrees Mission and a final altitude of 130 nautical miles circular. duration is about 171 hours. We'll land on seven days later on the 29th of March at Northrup Strip at approximately 10:27 Time and 116th orbit. You might note that_ Mountain Standard _ these are basically the landing time is the same and the orbit is the same as if we were going at Edwards just a couple of minutes later. There are principal objectives of this flight are to demonstrate the launch and entry performance, evaluate the payload environment during launch and entry, to perform some long term thermal testing on the orbiter structure and the subsystems. We'll transport the Office of Space Science-1 payload into orbit, perform some experiment operations on it and return it to Northrup. Again, this is the third in our series of operational flight tests so we will be verifying some orbiter hardware and software systems performance and acquiring data on orbiter crew and the ground operations ability to support during the operations phase. And we will additionaly provide some, conduct some contamination analysis within the payload bay to see what the environment will be for payloads in the future. I'm going to run through these as Al said right quick and just really to give you an idea of what the types of payloads that we'll be flying and how much of this mission will be into the details of involved to science. I don't intend to go the scientific performance because of the fact you have a briefing this afternoon on that. But basically we're going to provide some, perform some measurements on emissions that come from the orbiter that might effect scientific observation and look at some of the effects of the orbiter in the orbiter tiles on orbit. Principal one that involves the crew is the plasma diagnostics package which they will use. It's principally it ip with berthed here in the OSS- 1 pallet. The crew will pick the RMS and maneuver it around and above the payload bay to perform some of these experiments. This one is on solar physics, plk DATE 03/20/82 page 2 this is principally non crew involved experiment 1n which it 1s basically turned on and 1t collects its measurements and the crew is not normally involved other than in some pointing. This one is a scientific experiment to determine perhaps some different methods of heat control on orbit. It aqain does not involve too much crew activity other than activation. Again this is non crew involved principally once it gets turned on and collects information while it's on orbit. This one is a Life Sciences Experiment that we attempted to fly on the last mission and didn't complete it because of the fact that the mission was shortened. This is involved in determining how well plants will grow in a nongravity environment. Again, this is stored in a lower bay equipment bay the crew basically checks it each day after their eveining meal just to get a status of how well the plants are doing. The three other ones which I don't have charts for, Induced Environment Contamination Monitor is another experiment that's stowed on the OSS - 1 pallet. The crew will pick it up with the RMS similar to the way they are doing the Plasma Diagnostics Package move it around and check for contamination in and near the orbiter payload bay. The Electrophoresis Equipment Verification Test is to determine whether or not this particular hardware can be used for separation of some biological cells. It's a similar piece of equipment which was flown on the Skylab program and it's principally an equipment verification test rather than a scientific test. And the last one is the experiment that the young man I think is going to brief you on this afternoon and it is involved with how well or lack of how well insects can fly in the absence of gravity environment. This is a quick summary of what we'll do each of the flight days. Day one we'll do our normal activities that you saw on two previous missions, ascent, main engine cutoff is at approximately 57 miles, we'll do the OMS-1 and OMS-2 maneuvers to get us into 130 mile orbit. The crew will go through their normal configuration activties for the spacecraft. Get our of their suits, and then activate the OSS - 1 -jcientific experiments and then they'll perform a gravity gradient test which is a controlled systems test of the orbiter in which basically the spacecraft is put in a nose to the earth attitude and the crew and the reaction control systems are turned off and it's to try and determine whether or not the vehicle will stabilize itself in orb it. Then we start a series of thermal tests, the first of which is tail to the sun thermal attitude which lasts for about one day. These tests, there are three o' them in here an'd they are to determine how well the orbiter systems will perform under various conditions of thermal stress. On day two, we'll start the first of the RMS activities, the unloaded test is one in which the crew jet maneuvers the arm plk DATE 03/20/82 page 3 around unstows it maneuvers it around and basically becomes familiar with the operation of the RMS. The Electrophoresis Experiment is then turned on and run for some period of time and then we begin the first of a series of payload bay door cycles in which we are going to open and close or close and open the payload bay doors after we have been each of these long term thermal environments to see whether there's been any defamation or any we have any concerns about operation of the payload bay doors as a function of temperature. Which we don't expert to see We'll start a I might add. Then we'll end the UN to sun test. test of thermal control test which effectively as you know a bar- b-que attitude control system where you just basically put the vehicle in slow roll as it goes around earth. Then we'll do on day three the first of the RMS loaded operations in which we will pick up the IECM off of OSS-1 pallet maneuver it around, and collect some contamination data. We'll then stow the IECM and deploy the Plasma Diagnostics Package in the same fashion. Once that's completed we'll start the second of the attitude control mode which is a nose to the sun test. On day four we're going to do some RMS heater tests, basically the same as the other thermal cests that we're doing just to determine how well the RMS functions as a result of the various environments that we're in. Again some more EE VT operations and the second of the deployment test with the POP. Day five we're going to do some thermal back test on the RCS thrusters which will be attempts to determine whether or not the cold environment has any effect on the RCS jets and we'll do a POP again. Day six is some more RCS tests, another payload bay door cycle. We'll end the nose sun and go to a top sun attitude which will have the payload bay looking at the sun for about a day. And a number of OSS-1 experiments which will operate in just top sun attitude. The astronomy experiment for one that was shown on previous chart. On day seven we'll do a flight control checkout activties prior to entry, some more OSS-1, another IECM, another payload bay door cycle, start our thermal conditioning for entry, and then early in the morning on the eighth day we'll deorbit and 1 and at Nor thrup . Now in the event that we for some reason have to foreshorten the mission as we did on flight two, these are our priorities activities for that mission. It will be * four day mission, day one will the same as in the nominal mission. Day two we'll do our tail sun attitude test as a number one priority the OMS test will be second and then there's deployed POP science.