Preflight Interview: Scott Horowitz

The STS-105 Crew Interviews with Scott Horowitz, commander.

We're speaking with Scott Horowitz, the commander of STS-105. Tell us, why did you want to be an astronaut?

I've always wanted to be an astronaut, ever since I was a little kid. When I was growing up the race to the Moon was on. By the time I was in the sixth grade, we had landed people on the Moon. I had a sixth grade teacher actually write in my little annual yearbook at the end of the year, "Been a great year. You've been a good student," and all that, "and someday you'll be one of the astronauts of tomorrow." And, I always loved science. I love flying -- I've been flying with my father since I was 6 years old -- so I said, "What a perfect job for me." That's when I decided I wanted to be an astronaut.

Tell me about that education and career path that got you to be an astronaut.

When I went to school I decided I was going to be an astronaut. So I said, "Well, I'm going to have to learn how to fly." I'd flown small airplanes, so I said, "Well, I'm going to probably join the military and fly jet aircraft and become a test pilot." In order to do that, you also have to have a bachelor's degree, so I went off and got a bachelor's degree in engineering. And then, I decided I should get a graduate degree, so I went to Cal State, Northridge, got my undergraduate degree in engineering. After that, I went to Georgia Tech and received a master's and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering. After that, I joined the Air Force and became a pilot -- an instructor pilot, then an F-15 pilot, then went to test pilot school and became a test pilot. And, then finally, was interviewed and, after a couple of attempts, was accepted by NASA to become an astronaut.

Any particular people along the way that helped guide you - helped point you here?

The starting point, like I mentioned, a person who was influential way back when was my sixth-grade schoolteacher, Mr. Smith. And I still have, in an album, the letter he wrote me saying that someday "you may become one of the astronauts of tomorrow." Of course, my parents were very influential, really emphasized education and all the activities that I was a part of that helped me prepare to get here.

Let's talk about this flight you're commanding, STS-105. Give me an overview of the goals of this mission.

Well, STS-105 is the second mission of its type. The first one was the one that was commanded by Jim Wetherbee and his crew earlier in the year; the first rotation flight, which was 5A.1. We're 7A.1. This mission's major goals are to bring up the next Expedition crew, Expedition Three, and bring home Expedition Two. And associated with that are a number of tasks: to successfully transfer the crew, get them all their needed supplies onboard, most of which are stored in a logistics module called the MPLM, which is basically a large shipping container that's in the back of the shuttle. That's our primary objective on this mission. Some other objectives include moving an Early Ammonia Servicer, which is on a structure in the back of the payload bay, up onto the station onto a large truss up there called the P6 truss. That will be done during an EVA. There are some other payloads -- one of which is called MISSE -- that will be deployed on the space station that are coming out of our payload bay. And then there is a second EVA that includes putting up some cables and handrails and everything on the Lab to prepare for a mission coming up later on. Those are the major objectives of the mission.

Have you had much training with the Expedition Three crew?

We haven't had a lot of training with Expedition Three because they're so busy training for their increment. They're going to go up and live in space for almost half a year, so they have a tremendous workload just preparing for their stay on the space station. We have had several exercises together. We've done a couple of integrated simulations together where they simulate that they're on the station or they're on the shuttle getting ready to go to the station. We've done some training together over in the mockups where we practice emergency egress training that we will have to do as a crew. So we've trained some of those issues together. Other than that, though, they've spent a lot of time in Russia in training for their increment. We've spent a lot of time training our shuttle side of the house.

Before you can achieve any of the goals of this flight, you have to successfully dock with the space station. Talk me through the process of docking on this flight.

Rendezvous and docking the shuttle to the station we've done several times now, so there aren't a lot of unknowns. We're going to be doing what the last few crews have done. Our docking, like previous ones, we're going to rendezvous from below the station. We will fly below the station and enter a point that's about 500 feet underneath the station, as viewed from the Earth. At that point, we'll start a maneuver which we call a TORVA - it's a twice orbital rate, pitch-up that we fly around the space station and we get on to what we call the V-bar. So, we're in the same velocity vector as the space station. Once we get up to that point, we will simply fly towards the station at a very slow, controlled rate, get everything lined up, and then when we get a "go" from Mission Control, we will fly in and dock to the space station on the V-bar, we call it, which is in the velocity vector of the space station.

Shortly after docking, you'll open up the hatches and see the Expedition Two crew. What do you think that moment's going to be like for you?

To see the Expedition Two crew is going to be pretty interesting for me personally after we dock because I flew with them on STS-101 last year, so we were on the same crew. It's going to be sort of like a reunion in space, if you will. We went up to the space station back when we were doing a lot of repairs, before anybody was living on it. Now, they will have been up there for several months, and I'll get to go see my old crewmembers again, and we'll be reunited as a crew once more. So there's going to be a lot of neat emotions, seeing them again, and it'll be really exciting to be welcomed aboard the International Space Station.

What's going to happen in the hours right after docking, after you see the crew?

Right after we have the initial greeting with the crew, the first thing I do is a safety brief. We have to be briefed on any particular safety aspects of how they're doing operations on the International Space Station. Almost like you would if you were flying on an airliner or riding on a large ship, where you know where the emergency exit is that takes us back to the space shuttle, where the emergency equipment is -- masks and fire extinguishers and all those kinds of things. After that is done, we are going to get right to work trying to move some of the equipment off the middeck of the space shuttle, which is going to be amazingly compact. I mean, we're going to have all this stuff piled in the middeck to help support transferring the Expedition Three crew. So, some of their most critical items will be transferred very shortly after we dock. The Expedition Three crew will start their handover briefings with Expedition Two, and then we'll start going about getting ready to do all of our joint work together.

What's the process of exchanging the Expedition crews? Does that happen all in one day?

We will have an official day, if you will, that all the Expedition crewmembers will be exchanged on our flight. The thing that has to happen is the Expedition Three crew has to have briefings from Expedition Two to effect a handover. One of the most important things is that the seat liners that go into the Soyuz spacecraft that, if they were to have to leave the space station without a shuttle there, those seat liners are custom-fit to each of the crewmembers. Those have to be in place on the Soyuz that is now docked to the station before they can officially accept the role of being on the space station. So, that's the official time. That will all happen in the same day.

What lessons did we learn from the crew exchange on STS-102?

102's was the very first time we had done this, and one of the lessons we learned about crew exchange is: You'd like to try to keep the crew exchange all at the same time if you can. They had some other operational reasons they could not because of the complexity of their mission and the different tasks that had to be done by different crewmembers on both sides. We've taken those lessons learned and tried to simplify their plan to make our exchange go smoother, and one of the ways of doing that is to have the exchange all happen on one day so that, if you do have to have to do operations on either side of a closed hatch, you have the correct crewmembers on each side.

You mentioned earlier the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module going up to the station again. What's the process of getting that from the shuttle's payload bay onto the station? Is that the same process we've seen the last couple of flights?

Right. The Multi-Purpose Logistics Module -- the MPLM -- will be transferred out of our bay onto the side of space station using the robot arm on the space shuttle. Pat Forrester, our MS-1, is primarily responsible for doing that transfer. He will grapple the MPLM in the bay. We will release the latches that hold it down and he will fly it up onto the side of the space station. At that point, the space station crew will have activated the latching mechanisms that are going to accept the Logistics Module. He will fly it into a position until he gets the ready-to-latch indication, which says it's all in position. They will latch it down and bolt it down solid, so it's an airtight seal between the two. At that point, he can release it with the arm, put the arm back in the space shuttle bay, and then we can go about pressurizing up the area between the two modules and doing the checkout and the electrical hookups, and getting ready to go into the Logistics Module to do transfer.

What is going up in the Logistics Module this time?

Our Logistics Module's bringing up several racks. One of the big advantages of a Logistics Module over any other method of bringing things up, it has a very large opening between the Logistics Module and the station, so you can bring large racks in and put them in the Laboratory. Besides that, there's all the supplies. There's food, there's clothing, there's experimental supplies, there's replacement spare parts and a lot of other equipment just to support the whole Expedition Three activity. You can imagine, to support a crew of three on station and do all the science that you need to do for four to six months is quite a lot of equipment. Also, we will take all the old equipment that is used up, and we'll bring all that down in the Logistics Module for the return trip home.

How long is it going to take to unload and reload all this equipment?

Well, we have a whole group of folks that timeline on how many hours we're going to spend, and exactly how long it's going to take, is a little bit of an unknown. We do have data from previous flights that says if the Logistics Module's so full, it takes so long. It'll take several full days of the whole crew working really hard to transfer everything out of the Logistics Module and then repack it up for re-entry.

As scheduled, you have two space walks during your mission, and STS-104 recently installed the Joint Airlock onto the space station. Why are you guys not coming out of the Joint Airlock?

Well, STS-104 is just finishing installing the Joint Airlock, and we're not going to use that in our EVA for several reasons. First off, it wasn't sure during training for STS-105 whether all the equipment necessary to install the airlock would be ready to support STS-104 before we were going to be sent up to rotate out the Expedition Two and Expedition three crews. So in order for us to train a mission, we had to sort of divorce ourselves from the 104 flight, and the obvious way to do that was to train to do our EVAs out of our airlock on the space shuttle, which gave us a little bit of a hit for some efficiency of transferring during the space walks between the space station and the shuttle. But it gained us the ability to plan and train and execute a space walk with a known configuration that, no matter when we flew, we would be able to support.

What is the goal of that first space walk? What's its big purpose?

The first space walk on STS-105 that Dan and Pat will be doing -- the big objective is to install the EAS, or the Early Ammonia Servicer. This is a large, over 1,000-pound item that contains ammonia to service the heat exchange units on the space station. They will go out of the airlock in the space shuttle, and we will grab it with the robot arm and take both the EVA folks and their Ammonia Servicer up onto the P6 truss and install the Ammonia Servicer up there. They will then spend about an hour, hour-and-a-half, installing all the cables and everything to provide heater power and everything to the Ammonia Servicer while it's on the P6 truss on the space station. A secondary objective of the first space walk is to install the MISSEs. These are an experiment that basically witnesses space. They are large suitcase-like objects that get installed on the external airlock. They get opened up to have these small samples exposed to the environment of space. They will stay out there for a long period of time, and then on a later mission, they will be closed up and the samples will be brought back to Earth for analysis.

You're going to be operating the shuttle's robot arm during the space walks. Talk us through the entire process of what's going to happen during that first EVA. Where do you have the arm when the guys first come out of the airlock?

It's kind of interesting that they're going to have the Commander, myself, fly the robot arm for our EVA folks. And, the process is, while they're getting suited up and ready, I will get the arm pre-positioned to support them throughout the EVA. And the first position I will go to on the first EVA is that I will use shuttle's arm to grapple the Ammonia Servicer. So when Dan and Pat come out of the airlock, they will see the arm perched on top of the Ammonia Servicer, already grappled on, awaiting their arrival. The arm, we're going to use it to support them throughout the EVA so one of the first things that'll happen is Dan will translate out to the arm and he will clip his tether to the arm. And he will stay tethered to the arm so I will follow him wherever he goes throughout the EVA. We'll be in close proximity. Then Pat will come out after Dan has clipped his tether onto the arm, and then, they will immediately go to work on the ICC, which is a large pallet that the Ammonia Servicer is sitting on. They have to release the bolts so that we can take the Ammonia Servicer off. At that point, they will get up onto the Ammonia Servicer on the arm, and then, I will give them a ride, with the arm, up to the station. They will pick up a foot restraint and then, with those tools and the Ammonia Servicer, we will go out to the P6 together. At the P6, Dan will get off. He will install his foot restraint so he has a nice working platform for which he will receive the Ammonia Servicer. I'll back them out a little bit and get the Ammonia Servicer lined up in order to do like a final approach to present the Ammonia Servicer to them. When he and Pat are ready, then I will release the Ammonia Servicer from the arm and back out a few feet and then they will spend the next couple of hours getting it bolted down onto the P6 and hooking up all the electrical connections. When they're all done, I'll bring the arm back in. They will get on the arm and I'll give them a ride back down to the payload bay to pick up the Misses And we'll continue on to finish up the EVA that way. So whenever the arm's not being used to grapple something, it's basically being used to tend their tethers and be a convenient place for them to use to translate from point to point to save some time.

As currently scheduled, you have a second space walk as well during this flight. What's the big goal of that space walk?

The second space walk is in support of a later flight, 8A. And, the big goal there is to get these two large cables -- they're called the S0 cables -- and these cables are several inches in diameter and they're about 45 to 50 feet long. One goes on each side of the Laboratory Module on the space station. In order to tie those cables down, they have to be tied to handrails, and the handrails are not installed on the Lab. So, the first task once all the cables and the handrails and all are brought out of the airlock, is to install the handrails. So Dan will go down one side and Pat will go down the other side, and they will install all the handrails on either side of the lab. They will then go up and get the large bags for the cables, and one at a time, they will reel these cables out. They'll hook the connectors up on one side and then tie them down so that they're in position to support 8A later when they need to hook these for power to the S0 Truss. And that is the big event on EVA 2. There are some get-ahead tasks that we're looking at also to support moving some foot restraints from one place to another, just to save time for the 8A crew when they do their EVA.

Once again, step us through the details of that EVA and especially the work that you're going to be doing with the arm.

The arm work on the second EVA begins when they come out of the airlock. This time, the shuttle's arm will be waiting for them right outside the airlock. So when they open the door, they'll be looking at the end effector there with the handrail. Again, the EVA crew will clip their tethers to the arm and that's where they'll stay for the whole EVA. Once they get all of their equipment out of the airlock, they will hook it all to the arm. So the arm's going to be acting basically like a large crane. So they'll load up the arm with all of their big bags with the big cables and all the handrails, and then they will simply hang on the handrails and give me a 'go', and I'll go ahead and back them out away from the airlock, take them out of the shuttle bay and then up onto the Lab, which will be way above the shuttle payload bay. At this point, I'll drop them off and they'll go drove off their bags and then they'll go to work. And, basically the arm is just going to back off and be in a nice position to keep their tethers at a good angle so that they don't get tangled up in any of the equipment on the space station. And then, when they're all done I'll pick them up again and bring them back into the payload bay. For the get- ahead tasks for 8A, the arm will be used to actually translate this big foot restraint that has what they call tool stanchions -- a very large tool platform that's part of the foot restraint. We'll go up and get that from one part of the station and then use the arm to basically go around the back side of the lab and drop it off and hand it off to the other EVA crewmember. So Pat will hold the tool stanchion and give it to Dan who will be on the Lab, and then, we'll use the arm to get around the back side of the Lab to do that.

The nature of the space walks has evolved quite a bit during the training for STS-105. How difficult has that training been for you and your crew?

Well, because of all the variability in the space station program, especially with the questions as to who would be able to support the current mission, STS-104 and get the airlock installed before us, there've been a lot of changes to the EVAs that we have been planning to execute for our mission. It's been a little problematic in that we only have so much resources. The big resource is our Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is the NBL, the big giant pool, and we only get so much time to train for EVAs in that pool. So fortunately, a decision was made a couple of months ago, what the final configuration for our EVAs would be, and we've had sufficient time to get ready for those EVAs. You'd always like more time to get ready, but we feel like we're ready to go. We've just finished up our last training session on our S0 cable install and that looked very nice and we have one more left before we go fly on the EAS and we're all ready to rock and roll. So, looks good.

You're operating this shuttle's robot arm, which is, in itself, a very difficult task. Has that been a distraction at all in your job as the commander? How are you able to do both jobs?

Well, it's a little unusual, I guess, for the Commander to be the arm operator during EVA. But with these missions, everybody's multitasking. My, my PLT, my Pilot, is the IV, so, he's in charge of the EVA. He's trained as a backup EVA crewmember. And he's doing all his Pilot duties. As the Commander, I'm pitching in. I'm backing up Pat Forrester, who's my prime operator, so, I back him up with all his arm operations, moving the MPLM and all the other arm work he has to do. And then I step in and take over for the EVA. So, it's been a little bit of a training issue because of all the time, you know, required to train to fly the arm as well as do command duties. But everybody's pretty equally loaded. We've kind of spread the wealth around the crew to get everybody ready to do all their tasks for this mission.

The MPLM is returning to Discovery's payload bay. What's the process of making that happen?

To return the MPLM, the first thing you have to do is obviously pack it up. The load master on the shuttle side is Dan Barry, my MS-2, and then we'll have one crewmember from each of the ISS Expedition Two and Expedition Three teams who will be responsible for making sure that all the things that need to go in the MPLM are in the right place and all secured down and sealed up, ready to come home. Then, the MPLM will be prepared to be returned to the orbiter's bay. Obviously close the hatch, turn off all the systems, get everything powered down, and then grapple it with the arm so Pat Forrester will take the arm again from the shuttle, grapple the side of the MPLM. Then, the Expedition crews will release the MPLM from the station. And, once it's clear and released, Pat will fly the MPLM in a reverse trajectory back down into the payload bay. At that point, we will activate the latches that hang on to it and hold it for reentry

Once all that work is done, it'll be time to close up the hatches and leave the Expedition Three crew up there and --

Right.

-- bring the Expedition Two crew home. Any idea what you'll be thinking as that all takes place?

Well, again, the last time I went to station, there was nobody there. So, we were just leaving, basically, a large piece of hardware in orbit. But, now it's come alive because we have people living on the station. So, I guess it'll be kind of like going to visit somebody who lives in a really remote, far-off place. You know, you're sort of sad to say goodbye because you know it's going to be a long time before you get to see them again. Of course, you know, they have a lot to keep them busy, and they'll be very productive for the next several months. Then, we have a lot of work to do to get our space shuttle ready to come home. So, it'll be, again, interesting, the emotions of saying goodbye to fellow astronauts and cosmonauts who are going to go live on the space station for a while as we basically fly home.

Talk me through the process of getting the shuttle ready and undocking and flying home. What happens?

Well, to undock the shuttle is basically the inverse process of how we got up there. My pilot, Rick Sturckow, will be flying the orbiter at that point. Once everything is ready and the station is in the correct attitude, we will command to undock, which will just release the latches between the two vehicles, and he will begin an opening rate to get the two vehicles to separate. He'll fly out to a point that's 400 to 500 feet away from the station. We will fly around the space station. We can take what we call "close-out" photos, or photos of the configuration we left the station in. And, then we will fire a retrograde burn. And, then that will separate the two vehicles from each other and get us ready to come home. Then it'll be time for us to prepare the space shuttle for reentry

After serving as Pilot on three previous shuttle flights, this is your first time out as commander. Have you enjoyed the increased responsibilities of the job?

Yeah, being a commander has been a real challenge. It's a lot of fun to be the guy in charge. Of course, with it comes a lot of responsibility and a lot of things to manage. And so, I've really enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed having a crew. It's just nice to have a great bunch of folks to work with that are all go-getters. You just say, "Hey, I need to go have this done," and they go off and do it. It's really amazing. So, I get to sit back and watch a lot of the real work get done. It's been pretty enjoyable in that sense.

You mentioned this is your second trip to the space station and it's a very different-looking station, like you mentioned before. What do you think you're going to experience when you go up there this time? How is this going to be different for you?

Well, the big difference in the space station, I mean every time we send a mission up there, it changes, because we've been building on and it's bigger. So, the first impression will be as we approach the space station. It's going to look bigger. It's going to have the big arrays on there now that weren't there before. It has the Lab Module on there. It's going to be a much different looking space station from the outside. But, the thing that's really going to make the space station a whole lot different for me on this flight is: it's not just a piece of hardware anymore. It's a living, breathing place where people operate and live, day-to-day. So, we have a place on orbit that is populated 365 days a year, you know, from now 'til as long as the space station's up there.

Why is it important that we explore space? Why even go up there?

It's a good question. Why should we go to space? You know, there's lots of good technical reasons. But probably the most overriding reason why we go to space is to make life better for our children. Everything we do we can explain in technical terms and spinoffs. But, if you boil it all down: everything we learn from space travel and everything we do equates to how to make life better for everybody here on Earth. Whether it's answering some of the very basic questions of where do we come from? Are we alone here? Just our need to explore the technical things that are all spun off that we use in our everyday life -- everything from Saran Wrap to medical improvements. All those things come from our desire to go out and explore space.