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CNN Live Event/Special
Space Shuttle Columbia Returns after Hubble Makeover Mission
Aired March 12, 2002 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, this is a special report.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning.
COSTELLO: We're on a little early, 4:30 in the morning. I'm Carol Costello, along with Chad Myers, and we're going to help the space shuttle land because we can do that...
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: ... this morning...
MYERS: You know what,...
COSTELLO: ... or at least pretend.
MYERS: ... it's coming down. We were watching it on the Satellite just about five minutes ago. It was over New Orleans headed to Florida, obviously, for the big landing. They get one shot. They can't take off and try again like a big airplane can because they don't have engines to get them back up.
But here is the video that we're seeing now from what we believe is inside the shuttle.
COSTELLO: Yes, it's hard to tell exactly what it is. Takes a long time to land, a long time. It's called the heads-up display, and we don't really know what that is either,...
MYERS: Well,...
COSTELLO: ... but it looks very scientific. And hopefully in a moment we'll see the actual shuttle coming down to earth. It's going to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
MYERS: Right.
COSTELLO: The runway is actually three miles long, and they had these powerful xenon floodlights all along the runway to help the shuttle land safely.
MYERS: Hopefully they're floodlights with fog lights on them because right now the visibility is only eight miles with fog. The dew point and the temperature are exactly the same, which means the relative humidity at 100 percent, so this is a marginal landing at best with this visibility. And the winds are no problem.
But there you see, here you -- comes the runway in sight.
COSTELLO: And you know why the space shuttle was up there, they were...
MYERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the Hubble.
COSTELLO: ... -- they were repairing the Hubble. Actually, they were updating the Hubble Telescope is a better way to put it. They actually had to shut the whole thing down and then sort of insert a new heart to make the Hubble about 10 times more powerful than it is already.
MYERS: Is there any audio there from (UNINTELLIGIBLE)? There you go.
COSTELLO: Yes, let's listen.
ROB NAVIUS, NASA: Gear down and locked. Main gear touch down. Carey deploying the drag shoot. Nose gear touch down. Columbia rolling out on runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center.
COSTELLO: You're listening to the voice of Rob Navius from NASA. Let's listen some more.
NAVIUS: Wrapping up a 3.9 million-mile mission to improve the power and the vision of the Hubble Space Telescope.
MYERS: Oh, cool pictures. Infrared obviously, huh?
COSTELLO: It's awesome. Yes.
As you -- as you can see, a picture perfect landing by the Space Shuttle Columbia which has, by the way, logged nearly four million miles during its -- during its 11-day journey.
MYERS: That looked better than the landing that I had in Orlando last week.
(LAUGHTER)
COSTELLO: Very smooth. Can you imagine how fast that thing's going and how powerful that parachute out the back must be...
MYERS: The little drag shoot there. Yes.
COSTELLO: ... to actually stop it? Yes, doesn't seem like it's going to but it does.
But anyway, the scientists won't even know if the repair mission on the Hubble worked for at least another month.
MYERS: Wow, I didn't know that. I thought it turned right back on?
COSTELLO: It did.
MYERS: I heard something...
COSTELLO: It turned right back on, but they put that powerful lens inside which increases the Hubble's power...
MYERS: Right. Right.
COSTELLO: ... by 10 times, but they won't know if it actually has done that for at least a month. But so far they think the mission has been successful.
MYERS: Excellent.
COSTELLO: And I think they're going to go up one more time and make another update on the shuttle, and let me see, when is -- that should happen in 2010, so that won't be for a while.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Columbia, Houston, we copy wheel stop. Welcome back, and we'd like to congratulate you all on a very successful mission servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. We have no post-landing deltas.
COSTELLO: So it sounds like the astronauts on board are safe.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: And as you can see, some vehicles are approaching the shuttle right now to help them get out and get back down to earth, really.
MYERS: Awesome pictures this morning. Good morning, if you're awake.
COSTELLO: Awesome pictures. And the fog didn't interfere and we're happy, so we're going to wrap this up, return it to the "NEWSROOM." And I guess we'll be back on the air at 5:00 a.m. as usual. So let's go back to "CNN NEWSROOM."
MYERS: Lots of rain in the southeast, show you about that.
COSTELLO: "CNN NEWSROOM" is next.
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