STS-93: Columbia Flight Crew Arrival on FSS 195' Level, Walk Across OAA and Ingress into White Room
The primary objective of the STS-93 mission was to deploy the Advanced X-ray Astrophysical Facility, which had been renamed the Chandra X-ray Observatory in honor of the late Indian-American Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. The mission was launched at 12:31 on July 23, 1999 onboard the space shuttle Columbia. The mission was led by Commander Eileen Collins. The crew was Pilot Jeff Ashby and Mission Specialists Cady Coleman, Steve Hawley and Michel Tognini from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). This videotape opens with a view of the shuttle on the launch pad. It then shows the flight crew arrival on the 195 foot level of the fixed service structure (FSS), walks across the orbiter access arm (OAA) into the white room, where the crew is assisted in putting on the final stages of their spacesuits, and then their crawl into the orbiter.