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experiment both interesting and entertaining, and more importantly, it required a minimum amount of mandatory crew involvement.  

MEDICAL DETAILED SECONDARY OBJECTIVES (DSOs)
Preflight planning limited the number of medical experiments to one that required inflight crew involvement.  The test included near visual acuity and a measurement of thresholds of contrast sensibility.  Each crewmember performed the 30-minute series of tests twice during the mission.  Two sets of baseline runs were required prior to flight and one postflight.  This test was found to be irritating to the crew.  

ENTRY
Entry was normal in every repsect [[respect]].  

A late decision (approximately TIG-10 min) was made to wave-off the primary opportunity to KSC.  This produced no problems.  The WCS was reactivated to manage the fluid loading that had commenced earlier.  

The decision to switch to Edwards AFB (EDW) as a landing site necessitated a data processing system (DPS) to transition back to OPS 2 to load the correct runways.  Again, this was executed with no problems.  

In concert with the communication configuration for most of the mission, the speaker/handheld microphone was used through the deorbit burn until entry interface (EI) when the helmets were donned.  This was a much more comfortable mode of operation than donning helmets earlier or using the headset interface unit (HIU) and headsets.

The deorbit burn, the longest of the program, was normal.  Due to the high orbital altitude, the postburn period was greater than 30 minutes to EI and was very relaxed from a timeline standpoint.  

Since the sun set shortly after the OMS burn and rose just prior to landing, the crew was provided and extended viewing period of the fantastic light show that encompasses the vehicle during entry.  

Repressurizing the main propulsion system (MPS) thrust vector control (TVC) system produced one hydraulic alarm on system 2 which was not considered abnormal.  The low q-bar programmed test inputs (PTIs) produced some expected flight control system saturated (FCS SAT) alarms, but other than that, the entry was alarm free.  

No turbulence or density shears were noted during the descent profile.  All PTIs, except one at Mach 9, were accomplished.  The one that was missed was due to a roll reversal.  

Tactical air navigation (TACAN) and air data incorporation were normal.  One state vector transfer to the backup flight system (BFS) was accomplished at the Mission Operations Control Room's (MOCR's) request.