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Operation during flight

Camera set-up.

A few days before launch, the KidSat camera is stowed in a locker on the space shuttle's middeck. Once the shuttle is in orbit, at a specified time in the Flight Plan, an astronaut will take the camera out of the locker and mount it in the shuttle's overhead window. On STS-81, this is scheduled to occur on the morning of the astronauts' second day in orbit.

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The camera is held in a mount that is attached to the window. When the camera is in place, it looks directly out the window. The mount holds it fixed, so that it always points in this same direction. From the ground, we can control when the camera takes a picture, but we can't control the direction it's pointing. The camera will be pointing straight down to the ground when the shuttle is "upside down" (with payload bay and the overhead window facing the Earth).

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The astronauts not only mount the camera in the window, they also hook it up to its own computer, an IBM ThinkPad. The ThinkPad, in turn, is connected to one of the Shuttle's communication systems (the Ku-band system). Once this is done, the ThinkPad it is able to communicate with a computer on the ground. The two computers can then transfer information between them.

07/22/96                                 Page 4.4