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CNN Saturday Morning News

Columbia Astronauts to be Interviewed

Aired March 09, 2002 - 08:01   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Sitting in from Johnson Space Center in Houston for CNN Saturday's space day, of course, is our Hubble hunk, Miles O'Brien.

Hi, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's space day, huh? I like this Hubble hunk thing, by the way. Thank you very much.

It's good to see you, Kyra.

We're at the Johnson Space Center in the room where they train astronauts. Take a quick look at where we are. We've moved since our last live shot. Right behind me is the robot arm, or at least a simulator of which, for the international space station. It's an arm that can actually crawl across the, like an inchworm on the outside of the space station, can work from both ends.

And over here, of course, is a full scale shuttle mockup and that allows them to practice using things in the pay low bay, seeing how hardware fits and how systems would work. The crews also practice bailout techniques on that. So that's basically where we are.

Now, coming up very shortly, as a matter of fact, in about 15 minutes -- I've got a monitor right here. Maybe you can tape NASA TV if you want. We're about to get an interview with the crew on board the space shuttle Columbia. A couple other people are going to be doing the interview first and then it's going to come to us at 8:15. And we'll be asking them questions, as well.

And all throughout this morning we invite you to send us e-mails if you have any questions about the space program. We've got a lot of experts, a couple astronauts coming up a little bit later in the program. We've got the astronauts in space. Send it to us now to wam@cnn.com and we'll do our level best to get those questions on the air -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Miles, sounds good. Thank you so much. We'll see you back here in a little bit.

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