The STS-87
My friend Kalpana Chawla made her first flight as an astronaut on the Space Shuttle mission STS-87. I had fun collecting info about the mission from the Web so I thought I would put links to some of the stuff here for other friends of Kalpana. I'm sure that as we get further from the mission dates, some of these links will get stale, but enjoy them in the mean time!
The total mission time (start of motion to wheels stop) was 15 days, 16 hours, 35 minutes, 01 seconds. The NASA's Liftoff page has a nifty digital timer for countdown to the next launch or mission elapsed time for current missions.
The total mission time (start of motion to wheels stop) was 15 days, 16 hours, 35 minutes, 01 seconds. The NASA's Liftoff page has a nifty digital timer for countdown to the next launch or mission elapsed time for current missions.
Where not-in-this-world is Kalpana Chawla?
If there's a mission going, you can use the very cool JTrack system to find out! In the mean time, you can see where Mir and other interesting satelites are right now! (apologies to Carmen San Diego, and kudos to the people who do Liftoff to Space Exploration at Marshall Space Flight Center.)
Coming home to Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility on December 5, 1997. You can find many other cool photos of STS-87 on the KSC Electronic Photo File.
Here's Kalpana in the White Room, getting ready to crawl through that little hole in the background and become an official space cadet! Click the picture for info about Kalpana.
Here goes Columbia from Pad 39-B at Kennedy Space Center on November 19. During a mission, you can get lots of near-real-time info, like stills from the video fees at the Shuttle Countdown Video Page, and sound and video from NASA Select TV. There's a bunch of other real-time data on the Shuttle Web.
Here's the Spartan satellite that didn't initialize properly after being released from the Remote Manipulator System (a.k.a. the arm or the Canadarm).
The Official STS-87 Home Page at NASA has a lot of info about the mission and its payloads. There is also info at the Unofficial STS-87 Page. The NASA Shuttle Reference pages have lots of details about the space shuttle and its systems. There seems to be extra detail in the 1988 News Reference Manual. The list of Frequently Asked Questions from the sci.space.shuttle newsgroup has some interesting stuff, too. Also, United Space Alliance has pictures, tours, etc.
