Preflight Interview: John Phillips

The STS-100 Crew Interviews with John Phillips, Mission Specialist.

Q: First off, tell me: Why did you want to be an astronaut?

A. I wanted to be an astronaut because I wanted to be an explorer. If I had been born 500 years earlier, I would have wanted to be an ocean explorer. And 200 years earlier, I would have wanted to be a land explorer. And, in our era now, one of the places where people are doing physical exploration is into space. And for me it was the exploration that's available in this era. I could very well have chosen underwater exploration. That's another frontier we're exploring right now, and that would've been fine, too.

What led you to pick space?

Well, I was always interested in flying airplanes. My dad had been a bombardier in World War II, and after the war, he became a private pilot and then a commercial pilot and made his living for a while as a pilot. And, I sort of grew up in an environment where we talked about airplanes, and my dad liked to go to airports and look at old airplanes. And so, flying was kind of a natural path for me. I knew I wanted to fly jets for the Navy, and so, I went off to the Naval Academy and did that. And, from there, it was natural to pursue the astronaut business.

Give me a little more detail on your career path that got you to where you are right now.

Okay.

What were the steps?

Well, for me this is career number three. I graduated from the Naval Academy and then became a Navy pilot. I flew the A-7 aircraft, an attack plane off of carriers, and I spent a total of 10 years in the Navy. And then, I got out of the Navy and went to grad school. I went to UCLA for four and a half years, got a master's and a Ph.D. in physics with a specialty in space plasma physics, which is the study of the atomic particles and electromagnetic fields in what we think of as empty space but which is really, of course, not empty. Then, I worked at Los Alamos National Lab as a physicist for almost 9 years in a group that designs and builds spacecraft instrumentation and flies them on mostly NASA missions - some Department of Defense missions also - and then analyzes the observations and makes scientific discoveries. So, for me this is career number three, but careers number one and two definitely contributed to the path that I'm on now.

Any people along the way that helped you [as] sort of a mentor or someone who gave a little spark of inspiration?

There have been a lot of people who helped me along the way. Certainly my thesis advisor at UCLA, Dr. Chris Russell was a big inspiration. he got me started in my science career. I think if I had to point at one particular person who sort of inspired me, it would be a person I've never met and has nothing to do with the space business, and that was Edmund Hillary, who was one of the first two men to climb Mount Everest. He wrote a book called Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, which I guess is sort of the New Zealand version of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." And in that book, he told his life story - [about] himself as a young man mostly - culminating in his climbing Mount Everest. And, he wrote a foreword to the book, which I copied out of a library book and still have to this day. It was words that were very [inspirational] to me about never letting go of your dream and try to overcome all kinds of challenges and eventually you'll get where you want to go.

Let's talk about this flight - STS-100. You're bringing up a robot arm. What's its significance and why are we even flying this flight?

Well, the main purpose of the flight, as you said, is to deliver the robot arm for the space station. And, the robot arm is absolutely essential to the rest of the space station assembly, as well as to the operations after assembly is complete. Now, the shuttle has a very capable robot arm. We've been flying it for a long time, and it works real well. But, it's only so long. It works great in the vicinity of the space shuttle. But, as the space station gets bigger and bigger, the shuttle arm simply won't be able to reach. And so, we have an arm that basically has two ends that are identical, and it can move like this around the station and get to places where the shuttle arm could never get. For example, the very next flight after ours, assembly flight 7A, brings up the station airlock, and the shuttle arm cannot do that installation. It has to be the station arm, and so, if we don't successfully install the station arm, then it puts a hold in the assembly sequence.

Before you get that arm up there, you have to rendezvous and dock with the station obviously. Talk me through the process of rendezvous and docking on this flight, and tell me what you'll be doing as you rendezvous and dock.

Well, as one of the new guys on the team, they determined that I really didn't have time to go through the rendezvous training. So, I have very little responsibility that's really pertinent to the rendezvous. I'll be helping solve any malfunctions that occur, and taking a lot of pictures is mainly my job during the rendezvous. For example, I'll be taking pictures [with] the IMAX camera that's in the payload bay, but I really can't give you [a] much better description than that of a rendezvous because I don't know a whole lot about it.

Well, after you do successfully dock with the space station, what happens those hours immediately thereafter? Any sort of exchanges that go on?

Yeah. We were originally supposed to open the hatches and bring some stuff over to the space station and get some things from them as well, and that's changed. I really am not quite up-to-date on it. I think what we're going to do now is put some things in what they call the "vestibule," a very small area between the two vehicles and not ever open the hatches and not ever shake hands with the other crewmembers. But, I think that's still subject to some negotiation, so I'm not quite sure exactly what's going on.

Eventually you'll have the doors open. You'll be able to meet the Expedition Two crew.

Oh, that's right.

Anything special you're bringing for them?

Well, we're bringing a few surprise gifts that I really better not talk about now. We're bringing a lot of supplies of course. We're bringing a lot of camera film and food and tools and water and that sort of thing, as well as a few sort of personal things for them from our crew that will be a surprise. I guess that's about it.

Now the day after docking, the shuttle's robot arm is going to be used to install that robot arm on the space station and the first space walk of the flight begins. Obviously, this is a very important day. Talk me through what happens on that day, and tell me what you'll be doing.

Okay. I'm the IVA, or [Intravehicular Activity] guy on the crew. That means I work with Chris and Scott, the two space walkers, when they're outside. And, the first space walk - or EVA 1, Extravehicular Activity one - is indeed very important. The two space walkers will be in the airlock, and they'll be helped to get dressed and get all their equipment configured by myself and Yuri Lonchakov. And then, they'll go outside the airlock of course, and the first thing they'll do, after configuring a few tools, is they will go up to the Spacelab Pallet, which is a large pallet that's going to be on the side of the U.S. Laboratory. And that will have been placed there robotically previously - in fact, just before they go out the airlock - and on that Spacelab Pallet is the robot arm that's folded up in a peculiar way that it had to be packaged for launch. It's folded up in a way that it will never be again. And, there's also something called the UHF antenna - ultrahigh-frequency antenna - which is used for communication between the space station and space walkers and between the space station and the space shuttle during a rendezvous. So, the first thing they will do is take that UHF antenna - they're choosing that first, even though it's not the highest-priority payload because they kind of have to get it out of the way. But, they're going to install it on the U.S. Laboratory, and then, the real work begins of activating the Canadian robot arm. And, it starts with removing bolts, and there are these huge bolts - as long as my arm and maybe - I don't know - half an inch in diameter or something like that. There are these huge bolts, and each bolt has four bolts supporting that bolt. And, they have to back off all these bolts and remove them. The function of what we call the "super bolts" is to hold this big robot arm in position during launch, and as soon as they back off the first bolt, then we're committed. We can't ever torque it down the way it was torqued down at Kennedy Space Center. So, once they back off the first bolt, we're committed. We're leaving the arm there, and they take off a bunch of bolts. And then, they have to unfold the arm. The arm, as I said, is folded in a way that was particular for launch. They have to unfold the arm, and then they have to put in a special kind of fastener, basically, that holds the hinge point open. And then, they do what we call the "boom raise," which is where one of the space walkers on the end of the robot arm will grab hold of one of the joints of the station arm, and, in a very long, slow, controlled manner, he will unfold it completely. In other words, he'll basically do this to the arm. And, at this point, of course, the arm cannot unfold itself. It's not powered up. But, he will get it unfolded, and then we will, in fact, apply a certain kind of power to the arm. But it's basically just keep-alive power. Let's see, what else happens on EVA 1? That's basically it. The arm deploy takes by far the longest period of time. The UHF antenna is also very important, but it's a secondary task. And then, there [are] a lot of clean-up activities and some preparation for the second EVA. And then, they come back in the airlock. They'll be outside about 6 hours.

At what point is that station robot arm fully operational?

It's not fully operational at that point, because it's still mounted on the Spacelab Pallet. And, one thing I forgot to tell you is they have to physically unbolt the two identical ends, which have launch hooks that hold it to its receptacles on the Spacelab Pallet. What they have to do is power the arm through one of those two receptacles on the Spacelab Pallet. But, remember, we're going to take the Spacelab Pallet home with us when we go. So, it's not fully operational yet. And then, they have to walk the arm off, which happens the next day. That is, they take one of the two ends of the arm and, and ungrapple it from the Spacelab Pallet and move it over to the U.S. Laboratory and then hook it into a grapple fixture on the U.S. Laboratory. And, it's still not fully operational, because we've got more tasks to do on EVA 2 to make it so.

Before we get there, let's finish off EVA 1 - this UHF antenna that's being hooked up on there. What sort of additional communications will be possible after that's on there?

It enables the space station to talk, via UHF, to both space walkers and to the shuttle. Right now, during rendezvous, we have two ways of talking to the shuttle. One is indirect. We talk to the ground, and they relay it back up to the station. Or we use a VHF radio that's a lot like a radio you might have in an airport. It's kind of a ground-based radio that was adapted for space. And we just kind of install it in the shuttle and stick an antenna up in the window. We can talk to the Russian VHF communication system on the station, and it's not a very capable system. Eventually we want something more permanent. So, we'll bring up what's called a Space-to-Space Station Radio. And it will complement a similar system that we currently have in the orbiter and enable us to talk to the station during rendezvous and during post-undock and fly around. And more importantly [it] will enable the station to talk to its own space walkers and to our space walkers.

The day after the first space walk, the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module is going to be lifted up out of the shuttle's cargo bay and attached to the space station. What is this Logistics Module, and what are you bringing up on the flight?

Okay. The Multi-Purpose Logistics Module used to have a different name. It was called the Mini-Pressurized Logistics Module, and that name changed. And, in addition it has a name of its own. Our particular module is Raffaello. There are three of them, and these modules were built in the city of Turin by the Alenia Corporation. They are designed to carry things from the ground up to the space station that have to remain pressurized. The payload bay of the space shuttle, where we carry most of our cargo, is not pressurized. So, you couldn't, for example, carry a payload full of animals up there. That's one example. We're not carrying any payloads full of animals, but that's the purpose of the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module - to carry pressurized payloads. What we're doing is carrying two big experiment racks. The experiments are not active and I don't know much about those experiments. We're just carrying up the racks. And then, we're carrying a lot of supplies - a lot of tools, clothing, food, water, that kind of logistics things. We're operating the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module in what they call "passive mode." We don't have any powered payloads on board. We're providing some electrical power from the shuttle to the MPLM in order to keep the heaters on, to keep its temperature up, and that's about all. So, we're going to plug this MPLM into the side of the Node on the station. And then we'll do some of the transfer and the station crew will do some of the transfer.

Talk me through the process of getting it plugged into the station. How does that happen?

Okay. The shuttle robot arm grapples the MPLM in the payload bay. It's controlled by Scott Parazynski and Umberto Guidoni at that point, and the MPLM is held in the payload bay by a series of latches. They will grapple the MPLM with the end of the shuttle arm. Then will they disconnect electrical power with a remotely connected electrical umbilical and also open up the latches that hold it in the payload bay. And then, they move this arm basically straight out of the payload bay on to the nadir, or downward-facing, side of Node 1. And, the MPLM has something called a Passive Common Berthing Mechanism. And then, there's an Active Common Berthing Mechanism on Node 1. The two are basically two big, round flanges with a bunch of powered bolts and latches. And, the arm moves into a latched position. And then, we've got four latches on the active side - that's the station side of the Common Berthing Mechanism - which will grab the MPLM and pull it in a little tighter. Then, we start turning bolts. The bolts [are] remotely controlled and powered, and they have to be turned in a certain sequence, sort of like changing a tire on a car. You have to tighten the bolts a little bit, one at a time. And, we sort of do the same thing with bringing the MPLM in. And then, finally we torque the bolts down, and then, of course, we're firmly bolted between the station and the MPLM. And, somewhere in that process we also ungrapple with the shuttle arm. So, at that point the station crew can then go open the hatch into the MPLM and start moving things.

[The] next day, after the MPLM is attached, Chris and Scott go back outside for the second space walk.

Right.

What are they doing when they go out the second time?

The arm has walked off previously and is now attached with one arm on the Spacelab Pallet, which was a pallet we brought up on the shuttle, and the other arm on the U.S. Lab. But, it's powered from the Spacelab Pallet, which we're going to take home with us. We can't leave it like that. Okay. So, Chris and Scott basically have to reconnect a lot of electrical connectors, and not only electrical but fiber-optic connectors that carry video and which are very delicate. They have to reconnect it so that the end of the station, excuse me, the end of the station arm that's now on the station rather than on the pallet is powered. And, that's a very delicate process. And, they're working inside a receptacle on the space station. And, it takes a couple of hours. Scott helps, excuse me, Chris helps Scott get started with that task. And then, Scott finishes it up by himself. In the meantime, Chris goes and does a very, very difficult task elsewhere on the station. And, he goes to one of the other Common Berthing Mechanisms on the Node and his job is to remove an early communication antenna. And, that's the early communication system [that] is no longer functioning. The previous shuttle flight basically deactivated it. And, Chris has to take the remaining antenna off to make room for the airlock, which is going to come up on the next flight. Meanwhile, Scott is finishing up the arm activation. And, he has to basically provide two strings of power and video to the arm. That is what we call "a redundant string," "a backup string," and "a primary string" of power and video. At that point, Chris and Scott-and we're maybe 4 hours into the EVA now-Chris and Scott have to go back to the airlock and do a bunch of cleanup tasks; like for example, Chris has moved this enormous antenna back to the airlock and they have to basically get it squared away and move it into the airlock. And the reason they can't press on with the EVA at this point, other than cleanup tasks, is because the station arm now has to be activated. It has to be powered on. And then, it has to be moved to make way for our next EVA task, because it conflicts with our task. So, after Scott has plugged in all the power the station crew will power up the robot arm. And, this is when it's really operational. They will power up the robot arm and move it in a particular way. And when that's done, Chris and Scott have one final EVA task. And, that's to install a spare. This isn't nearly as glamorous a task as installing the robot arm, but it's very important. The spare is called the Direct Current Switching Unit - or DCSU. It's a big box full of relays -this big. And they have to mount it on the outside of the station Laboratory. And there it's provided a little bit of power to keep it warm. But basically, it just sits there in case the functioning DCSU ever breaks. And, it's a very important piece of station hardware. And the way they do that is Scott gets on the robot arm-on a foot restraint on the end of the robot arm-and grabs this DCSU - Direct Current Switching Unit - this big box that's anchored in the shuttle payload bay. And then, he carries it up to a receptacle on the Lab. And, Chris goes over there and meets him and helps him bolt it down. And, that's the final EVA task. And, that doesn't get done until the arm is functional. And then, the rest of the tasks are cleanup, back into the airlock, and repress the airlock. And, in the meantime, Yuri and I, of course, are helping the space walkers from inside. And, we're helping guide them. We're taking, we're using, taking full advantage of the helmet camera. They'll each have a helmet camera, so we should get a beautiful view of what they do. There will be times when they're, when they're doing things where we don't have a view from any of the normal shuttle cameras. But, we will always have a view from the helmet camera. So, we're helping make sure they do everything they need and they don't have any trouble with their tools or their equipment. And, if they do, if we have to change the way things progress due to unexpected problems on the EVA, then we're the people who talk to the ground and come up with new solutions.

There is a third unscheduled EVA listed in your schedule.

Right.

Why is that in there?

Well, this mission has been in the planning stage for a long time. Long before I was in the crew. And, all the various tasks that have to be done on the EVAs have changed several times. And, I think people always had in mind that we wouldn't be able to get everything we need done in two EVAs. So, the third EVA is basically in there as a placeholder to make sure, for example, that we have enough nitrogen and oxygen on board to depress the orbiter one more time and then repressurize the airlock. To make sure we have enough supplies to handle a third EVA. We don't expect we're going to have to do it. But, things keep popping up that we might indeed have to do. For example, there's a leftover task from the assembly flight 4A that involves tensioning the big solar arrays. And, that's eventually going to have to be done. That was mostly done by the 4A crew. But, there's still a little piece of it left to be done. And, some EVA crew is going to have to do that. It might be us; it might be the flight ahead of us; it might be the flight after us. We're not sure. So, right now the EVA-3 is just a placeholder. I think Scott and Chris would love to go outside one more time.

If you don't need that day, how will that day be used?

That day is basically a kind of a buffer to clean up any transfer items we have and to allow us to do a more orderly and then reasonably paced transition of the orbiter back from an orbiter into a lander. If we have to do the third EVA…the day after that is going to be kind of frantic. We've got to undock and deorbit. And we'd like to have a day of buffer to kind of do it in a more relaxed fashion. Because I think we'll all be pretty tired by then.
Raffaello has been unloaded and some things on the station have been loaded back on to it. So, you're ready to move it to the -
Right.

- shuttle's payload bay. How does that happen? Is it just the reverse of putting it on there?

Yes. It's exactly the reverse of putting it up there. We grapple it with the shuttle arm. We unbolt the Common Berthing Mechanism, which can be commanded either from the shuttle or the station or the ground in fact. But, our plan is to command it from the shuttle so that way the person who's commanding it is sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the person controlling the robot arm. It makes the communications easier that way. So, we'll unbuckle - unbolt - the Common Berthing Mechanism after grappling it with the shuttle arm. And then, we'll put it right back down in the payload bay and latch the Payload Retention Latch Assemblies, which hold it in the payload bay. And, once again, it'll be Scott Parazynski and Umberto Guidoni doing the controlling. It'll be myself and a station crewmember controlling the berthing mechanism. And, of course we'll be taking lots of pictures for IMAX and just regular pictures as well.

Talk us through that last day. When you do say your goodbyes to the Expedition Two crew and then undock, what's going to happen?

Well, you know, I don't have a good mental picture of this. This is my first flight. And I'm sure that the goodbyes will be a lot of fun and it'll be a real moment for me to remember, saying goodbye to this big station that I'm going to help build. But after we close the hatches, then basically we go through quite a lengthy sequence. It's quite complicated, the undock and fly around. We have to release the shuttle from the stack; in other words, unbolt the shuttle on the station. And then, Jeff Ashby, our Pilot, will fly the shuttle around in a very controlled [way], what they call a "fly around." And, it's not just like he's winging it and zooming around the station. It's very controlled. We know exactly where we're going. We fire the shuttle Reaction Control System rockets in very carefully controlled ways. And, we do this long, slow fly around. While, meanwhile, we're taking a lot of pictures, some of which are for the people on the ground to really scrutinize the condition of the orbiter, to see if anything's not in a configuration they think it's in or maybe something's deteriorating that they didn't know about. So, they'll examine these photos in great detail. We'll also take some more IMAX footage. And then, after the fly around, we'll do some larger rocket firings to establish a safe separation between the shuttle and the station.

You mentioned that this is your first space flight. What kind of advice have you gotten from your fellow astronauts?

You know, I've gotten a lot of very detailed advice. For example, Chris Hadfield told me that on his flight a couple of days before flight he started making sort of a list of exactly how he's going to handle all his personal equipment right in the post-insertion timeline. When we're going from being a rocket into an orbiter and everything's floating all around. And, if you don't know exactly what you're going to do with all your gear, pretty soon you're going to have a big mess floating all around. You won't be able to find anything, and your stuff will be in everyone else's way. So, he advised me to do the same. I think, besides the specific advice I've gotten from the crew, the experienced members of the crew, more importantly is what I've gotten by watching their example. And, watching their example, of course I haven't been in orbit yet so I haven't been able to watch them in orbit, but watching the way they prepare for the flight. And, what they've showed me is that no detail is unimportant. It's worth spending hours now on the ground to make sure we can do something 5 minutes faster once we have to do an on orbit. And, to make sure it's going to work exactly right. And, there's no task that we have to do that's unimportant. There's some clearly that are more important than others, like keeping the rockets running during the first 8½ minutes of flight. But, they're all important and they're all worth really doing your homework on. Making sure you…that personally I have mastered every task I'm going to be expected to do on orbit.

This flight crew is made up of Americans, a Russian, an Italian and a Canadian. And, you're delivering and using hardware developed by the Italians and the Canadians. What do you think this demonstrates about the growing role of cooperation in the exploration of space?

Well, I think it's wonderful. First off, it shows that the reality is that you just can't go it alone anymore. The hardware is too difficult to build and it's too expensive and it's too sophisticated. There's no way that we could be building the station all by ourselves. We need some of the unique things that the Russians bring to the game. They bring heavy-lift capability, unmanned resupply, and a lifeboat as well as, of course, the two modules they brought. Alenia builds us, brings us real quality construction for these MPLMs. The Canadians now have 20 years of experience in space robot arms. And, I'm sure they've applied all their lessons learned and then some from the shuttle in building the station arm. And of course, it's wonderful to work with a crew with three other countries represented. They bring their own viewpoints. And, we all have something we can learn from each other.