Space shuttle Discovery was ready to embark on a history-making mission. It was set to carry the largest payload ever to the International Space Station. On board: the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module.
During the mission, back here on earth, the Discovery Channel was scheduled to unlock the history-making achievements of the first 50 years of the space program.
Central Florida on Demand's John Handiboe chatted with Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, a veteran of three shuttle missions and a 2004 inductee into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, about the spectacular video transformation.
John: I was watching some of the clips from the special, "When We Left Earth: The NASA Mission." It is remarkable, because they are transforming the vintage NASA archives into high-definition. It gave me chills to see those images. It's just spectacular.
Dr. Sullivan: Isn't it amazing? And if you look back, dig it, to what it takes to bring that to us in HD, imagine going back to the NASA film vault and being handed the one and only reel of film that shows Neil Armstrong stepping off onto the moon, and say, "Hey John, you can reproduce this and turn it into high-def, but don't mess up this one. It's the only one we have." It is a tremendously complicated process, and it is just extraordinary to see the results. See "How They Did It" below.
John: There has only been two or three times that NASA has allowed that footage to be taken out of cold storage and used.
Dr. Sullivan: That's exactly right, and for the obvious reason. NASA has the responsibility to the country and history to ensure that we always have that documentation, that record. The imagery from the moon, some of the earlier video from Mercury and Gemini, Ed White's spacewalk footage -- I remember watching that as a young girl, but I didn't see it that vividly back in the 1960s.
John: I watched that video as well, and you can even see a glove float out of the capsule.
Dr. Sullivan: It's pretty amazing stuff. Some of the audio recordings are also in there for the first time. I think it was one of the Mercury flights. They found on-board audio and some of the loops that are not normally broadcast from air to ground, and they laid the over. There are also those fun scenes of the first seven guys just hanging around and socializing in the water with their water skis. It's a really new perspective on events we may have been watching, but we didn't see them this way.
John: You were the first American woman to walk in space. Did you have to get inside the "Vomit Comet"?
Dr. Sullivan: We do get inside the so-called Vomit Comet, but it's not the best way to train for spacewalks. It's kind of the carousel and carnival version of experimenting with zero gravity. To really get ready for a spacewalk, and to get ready for what it's like to maneuver in zero gravity, under water and neutral buoyant is the best way to do that. Just like scuba diving.
John: You probably get this question all of the time: What is it like to be in space, and when you get back and step back on Earth, what's it like to be under gravity again?
Dr. Sullivan: It's an amazing privilege to serve as an astronaut and have the experience of flying in space. You do the science and engineering work for countless teams from across the country and around the world. On a personal level, the first glimpse I got of the Earth out the window of a spacecraft was really and literally breathtaking. It sucked the wind [out of me], and the dumb, stupid phrase of, "Wow, look at that," came right out of my mouth before my brain could catch up. Zero gravity is a complete delight. It is so much fun to do your daily living in that environment. So it's amazing what we've been able to do in these first 50 years of space travel, and it just makes me wonder what we'll accomplish in the next 50 years.
John: The space program is America's journey, but here in Central Florida, we have a special tie to the program. It is in our backyard. Tell us about the NASA family, and how you come together to go on these amazing journeys.
Dr. Sullivan: Space flight is humankind's journey, and within that, we can all claim our particular space. Being a part of a crew is an interesting thing to form. It's five professionals of somewhat different backgrounds who have to meld all of that together into one effective team. We are told we are intense, type-A people, and that's great, but we have to both be able to compete with each other and drive each other excellence, and also support and back each other up. Getting that balance is an interesting leadership challenge. I have been thinking about that, in particular yesterday and today, because of the other reason I am here, for the 30th reunion of my classmates, those of us who joined the space program in 1978. Thirty-five folks altogether -- the first six women to join the program, the first two African-Americans, the first Asian-American -- an interesting, fascinating, fun bunch. A good number of us have made it back down to see off Discovery [Saturday] and reminisce about the time it was our turn to sit in the front seats.
John: Do you still get the chills and the butterflies when it's counting down to launch?
Dr. Sullivan: Absolutely, as a human being watching this great undertaking, and I guess as an alumnus of this great team. To know all of the technical pieces that are going on, and to have such a respect for and an empathy for the folks who are on console and on the spacecraft, what they're thinking, what's riding on all of this, how focused and precise they're being about things. I love watching the NASA team perform. It's a great group of folks.
The Discovery Channel's space special is called "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions." It airs on the Discovery Channel beginning June 8 on Bright House Networks Channel 41, and in HD on Channel 1340.
Discovery Channel: How They Did It
Talks with NASA began in late 2006, followed by a trip to Detroit in January 2007 to test the HD transfer of a piece of priceless Apollo footage.
NASA's space footage has been removed from cold storage just two or three times since it came back from space.
The series archive producers viewed over 500 hours of footage, more than 100 of which have been transferred into high-definition for the first time for this series.
Clones of this footage are being donated to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Apollo footage was filmed on specially-adapted, lightweight film that 40 years later has literally curled at the edges.
After the film is taken from the freezer, it has to be left to warm up for two days before it can be transferred by a special tele-cine machine that can read the curled edges of the film, as well as the flat centre-line.
Some of the original audio recordings have never been accessed before, and it is even harder to deal with them.
The Mercury 4 audiotapes had never been transferred to digital, due to bad tape stock.
To be able to use those sources in the series, the original magnetic tape stock must bake for 48 hours, cool for 24 hours, then NASA staff has one chance to digitize it.
The Gemini 9 and Gemini 12 missions are both stored on the actual original tapes in 30-track, 1-inch format.
This means that NASA staff has to perform a restoration on the original equipment used to play these tapes back, before they can digitize them, or even play them at all.
Synching up some of this original mission audio with the newly restored film footage is another first for this series.
To see this and more Hey John! features, go to Central Florida On Demand, Digital Cable Channel 300.
Comment on this story.