Kevin Kregel had his lucky fishing hat firmly in place, complete with an array of fishing tackle above the floppy brim and a chinstrap cinched up tight.
Kevin Kregel had his lucky fishing hat firmly in place, complete with an array of fishing tackle above the floppy brim and a chinstrap cinched up tight. It was time to try the fly-cast maneuver. Commander Kregel wasn’t out for trout on a mountain stream. He was at the controls of the space shuttle Endeavour. Instead of wielding a fly-fishing rod, he and the crew of the 97th shuttle mission were preparing to whip a slender, 200-foot-long mast into place on day two of their 11-day quest to create an unprecedented map of Earth.
With one end mounted in the orbiter’s payload bay and the other cantilevered out into space, the mast was a central part of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). It was also the longest instrument ever flown aboard a space shuttle. A detector at the end of the mast and one nestled inside the shuttle bay were ready to collect reflections from a radar beam aimed at Earth below. First, there was the matter of swinging the fragile mast around to precisely orient the instrument in orbit. Doing it with a detector as heavy as a grand piano attached to the far end was going to be the tricky part.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Michala Garrison
