STS-61

I lost a NASA patch once upon a time. When I went to Kennedy Space Center ("KSC") a few weeks ago, I looked to see if I could find a mission patch I had once semi-earned. The only thing I remembered from the patch was that Story Musgrave was on that mission but there were SO many shuttle missions and NASA organizes them so poorly in their Space Shop that I never found it. So I looked up the missions online, so I could locate the mission number and eventually go to the shop and replace it. I found it. Here it is:



















So in looking for the patch, I happened to read the mission details of which there appeared more than any other mission I was looking at in search for this patch. I got so excited reading about the mission because the reason I had this patch in the first place is because I did volunteer work for NASA/IMAX and 'earned' this token.

The volunteer work was to log every EVA activity with the video clock. This was so the filmmakers and/or NASA would have a reference point for their video and the activity. In order to be allowed to volunteer, you had to go through several weeks of training on the mission goals, the millions of acronyms (so you had some faint clue of what you were logging) as well as all the parts of the Hubble (so you knew everything they were touching and could log it effectively). I got some nice little letter and packet from NASA and a patch after the work was submitted. My qualifications were a willingness to stay up all night with a team of other volunteers, passing the training course and my status as a Astronomy 101 student (hahahaha).

I may be very naive but I'm amazed at the level of detail on this mission website (it was one of the most complex missions apparently - pretty ambitious agenda). I actually do wonder if any of it was aided by the data we created. IF in fact we aided in this, here are the passages that I logged:

The astronauts struggled with the latches on the gyro door when two of four gyro door bolts did not reset after the astronauts installed two new gyro packages. Engineers who evaluated the situation speculated that when the doors were unlatched and opened, a temperature change might have caused them to expand or contract enough to keep the bolts from being reset. With the efforts of determined astronauts in Endeavour's payload bay and persistent engineers on the ground, all four bolts finally latched and locked after the two spacewalkers worked simultaneously at the top and bottom of the doors. Musgrave anchored himself at the bottom of the doors with a payload retention device which enabled him to use some body force against the doors. Hoffman, who was attached to the robot arm, worked at the top of the doors. The duo successfully latched the doors when they simultaneously latched the top and bottom latches.

I logged all that! Everyone was actually really jealous of my segment because it was by far the most intersting event the entire mission because it was so annoying and if you think about it, predictable.

Read all about it here at NASA's STS-61 mission detail webpage.