[MUSIC] And we arrived down at the Kennedy Space Center about four days before launch. This is us getting suited up. See how happy everybody else is. It's really a great day to go out to the launch pad, big crowd there which we always like to see. And then we climbed into the air stream and then we take the five mile trip out to the pad. Helicopter escortees, they're there to make sure we don't turn around. >> [LAUGH] >> We get out of the pad and there's really no body else out there except us, suit techs, a few of them. Firefighters to help us out and then we climb in. It's about three hours before we lift off is when we start to get strapped in, a little bit before that. That's strapping in the mid deck. Mike's telling all the Aggies he loves them. >> [LAUGH] >> Karen saying, do I look fat in this suit? >> [LAUGH] >> Ron is happy to be there. >> While, we all tend to live for today, the discovery from people will certainly offer hope for tomorrow. Got the Now stand by for the greatest show on Earth. >> I have no idea what I said. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> And seconds, engines starts, we're coming up. >> 3, 2. [CROSSTALK] >> 300, hang on, 102, 102, auto, auto, I see three at 104, I see a command, end all. >> Yes, Dan, Discovery 1 program. >> I'm LB Lynch, Rock and roll Discovery. >> Houston now controlling the flight of Discovery, a man made [INAUDIBLE] >> So what have you had to say. >> The digitals, thank you. >> Point one, it's coming up on point two. >> All right, that's where [INAUDIBLE]. Two. Three coming up, hang on. Three one four. Expect a call. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> [NOISE] Roger. [SOUND] Everything is looking good. Airs 90 seconds. >> All, right thank you. [SOUND] 100,000 feet. No wonder the earth looks awesome guys. In 50. >> 103, 103. Hello, a little bit. >> Well, that convert. >> Control. Dump's going. >> Looks good to me. >> I see the dump, very good. >> That is coming down. >> Engines looking good. You have three people on the flight deck that need to give a big high five. >> 90 seconds to. >> Alright. >> About yep. >> Going off comm. >> So there we were. We just took the most thrilling ride of our life. But we had a lot of work in front of us. We had to turn our rocket ship into a space ship. We're saying goodbye to that tank there. We had a lot of work to do. There was no time to have any fun. >> [LAUGH] >> No time to take pictures. >> [LAUGH] >> Or snack on an apple. >> [LAUGH] >> In reality though, we had a long way to go to catch up to space station about a million miles or so. Here's Mark doing a rendezvous burn very precisely, because we have a long way to go. And as we get closer, we see our goal, there's Space Station and she's beautiful. It's sunrise there coming up. It's the first time we see all the beautiful colors. Here's Karen keeping us in line. And we show up underneath Space Station. She's huge. We're about 600 feet below her and Mark leans over into me and he says, the words that any person on an airplane who doesn't want to hear. >> Initiating RPM, three, two, one, mark. >> He says, watch this. And he pulls back on the stick. And he says, I'm going to do a loop. >> [LAUGH] >> Okay, They'd get fire if you did that without telling anybody. So, this is our little maneuver to look at the belly of the heat shield of Discover, and it turned out that she was in perfect condition. So, we were happy for our ride home. We had a lot of work to go, and here comes the rest of rendezvous, we're getting in here in about 20 feet, with a couple of minutes to docking. And we have gone again about a million miles down to a three inch tolerance. And here's Mark, finishing up the rendezvous, precisely guiding the docking port right in the heart. >> Eight inches. >> 0.09. >> Two inches. Capture light. >> And move [INAUDIBLE] >> And Houston in station, captured, confirmed. >> All right. >> All right. >> I'll get on with. >> Hey. >> Thanks. >> That's a lot of training man. [LAUGH] >> Thank you. >> That was a great, great flight. [SOUND] [LAUGH] >> Discovery arriving. >> [LAUGH] >> Hey, you guys. >> Hey, you guys, hey, you looking for a plumber? >> [LAUGH] >> Lunch break. >> [LAUGH] >> Sergei, how are you? >> Good. >> Thank you, guys. great to see you. >> Hey, Ronny, look back real quick. >> Okay, after we get the hatches open all start heading on board. >> [LAUGH] >> Good to see you. >> Hey. >> It's a great time to see old friends and new friends, and then it's time to get to work. First hauling the space suits across, Ryan and I got busy with that. Then Mark and the rest of the gang were busy hauling these big bags out of the orbiter for temp stow inside the station as we start to move in and get to work. First day's busy, and Ronnie and I headed to the airlock fairly quickly to start pre-breathing oxygen and get ready for an overnight campout in the airlock in preparation for the first spacewalk. The next day, they get us suited up, shove us in the airlock, close the hatch, and a little while later, we're heading outside to get started I think some of my first words to Ron were whatever you do don't look down. >> [LAUGH] >> The first space walk a big part of it was preparing the Japanese laboratory to be installed on the space station. You could see a little bit of us moving around out there, very carefully going from handrail to handrail. If you don't look down, it's a whole lot like just in training. Ron taking a peek in the back windows of the Orbiter. Everybody looks so warm and cozy inside while we're out here. The temperatures are plus and minus 200 degrees. You are dealing with the lights going out about every 45 minutes. We pulled the covers off of the Japanese lab and got it all ready for the installation. You will see some of that in a few minutes. On the second space walk, we are hauling a couple of great big cameras down to the outside end of Japanese laboratory here. We have got those cameras installed. And then commenced to pulling off a bunch of covers that were on that Japanese robot arm. These covers were a special joy to us as we pulled all of those off and tried to get them stuffed in bags to bring them inside. And this is some audio that we did not include in the video. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> This is getting ready to start on our third space walk. This is just a view of the solar rotary joint that Mike was inspecting. And this is us putting the foot restraint onto the end of the robotic arm. Our main objective on the third space walk was to basically replace this big nitrogen tank that you see me holding there. It's about 550 pounds. And we temp stowed it way out on the truss here, as you'll see that. And then we grabbed the new one that was brought up on an earlier flight and brought it back and installed it. And so this is what we call the windshield wiper maneuver, with me on the end of the arm sweeping a big arc over the top of the station. So right now the station's about 100 feet below me with the Earth 220 miles below and it was just an absolutely spectacular view that you could see from my helmet camera right here. Probably about 270 degrees seeing the whole horizon out there and really just unbelievable view seeing the blue planet just hanging in the blackness of space was an incredible sight. This is installing the nitrogen tank back onto the truss. And you could see a view down the truss there as we do that. Meanwhile, Mike is back inspecting the portside of the arrays, again taking some samples and just doing an inspection, making sure everything is okay out there. Then one of the last parts of the third spacewalk was to install this TV camera way out on the end of the truss that we retrieved on the second space walk. Mike and I repaired it inside and then brought it back out. And then here's Mike with an Aggie salute, which signals the end of our space walks. We are on our way back in now, just saying good-bye to the spectacular view as we come back in. Here, I'm closing the thermal cover. And there's our welcoming committee. We were pretty excited at this point. We had three very successful spacewalks. All of our objectives were met and so we're pretty happy there. >> We had a lot of great robotics on this mission. One of the first things we had to do was pick up the inspection boom that STS-123 left behind. We couldn't take it with us because of the size of the Japanese module in our payload bay. So we pick that up and one of the main goals, of course, of our mission was to install the Japanese lab, and here you see Aki is gently pulling it out of the payload bay. And then we started a very, very slow maneuver of this gigantic module. It's the biggest that's on station so far at over 32,000 pounds. The maneuver obviously with such a big mass had to go quite slow. It was about an hour maneuver, but it was some great views while we did that. And of course as we attached it onto the space station it was a great day for the people in Japan. Another thing we needed to do with the robotic arm was move the logistics module. This was another piece that STS123 brought up, and they had it temp-stowed. So we slowly guided it over to its final resting position on top of the Japanese laboratory. We also had the opportunity to work on the new arm that is actually at the end of the Japanese lab. Aki and I worked together to check it out and get it ready for folks to use in the future. >> After we got the Japanese module installed, we opened the hatch and here's us putting a sign. It's a Japanese curtain. It just said, eat more chicken. >> [LAUGH] >> And then after Karen and I checked out the air inside, everyone came inside and, >> [LAUGH] >> Especially Garret enjoyed the moment showing off all his skills that he learned through his expedition. >> [LAUGH] >> After having some time of fun, we had to get back to work. We transferred eight racks. These racks are 500 pounds each. And this is a sign where the technicians on the ground put at the hatch for us. And we saw the Japanese module grow each day. It was empty and then it was full of racks. And in the stowage module, it's empty now. And also in the Japanese module, we had two windows which we looked outside every time that we had some free time. The view out there was magnificent. >> We had the opportunity to do a number of press conferences, which was a great opportunity for people on Earth to talk to us and ask us questions and for us to share our experiences with them. The station is an awesome place to work. As you can see it's quite spacious, and it's probably the only place in or out of this world where it's actually fun getting around, this much fun that can turn you into a kid again. >> And as busy as we were we had some time to get together to have some dinner, and we had a guest there, our 11th crew member. [LAUGH] But now it's time to say goodbye, and we have to leave Greg Shemtov onboard and Garett come with us back to Earth. >> Eight. >> Physical set. >> Houston, in station from Discovery. Physical separation. >> And now it's time to detach from station and head home. >> You guys ready for a little theme music? >> Yeah. [MUSIC] >> And this music is actually for real. Garrett pulled this out and started rolling this in the cockpit, and it was a true, surreal moment. It was a point in the mission where a lot of the stress of all the EVAs and all the robotics and the assembly and all the tests that we've trained for a long time was all behind us, and we could actually really enjoy the moment. [MUSIC] That was us up in the Western Coast of South America, and now here we are over the Amazon Jungle. [MUSIC] >> This is great music. Nice choice. >> [LAUGH] Thanks. >> And then there we are alone again. >> Living on board the shuttle now. As we're backing away the station's becoming a star in the distance. We're still continuing to live. We're shaving, we're washing our hair. Aki's is pretty easy. Karen's was a little more of an issue. >> [LAUGH] >> More like a mane. >> [LAUGH] >> Here's Hawk making one more batch of scrambled egg. [MUSIC] And proof we're all kids at heart. Here's a little Aki hockey. [MUSIC] >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Weight lifting [LAUGH] and more stupid tricks [MUSIC] We don't know what that is [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] There is impersonation [MUSIC] Don't do it. Get him! Get him. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] It's proof we're really kids at heart, throwing rugby in the mid-deck. We got it. >> [LAUGH] >> That was more of miss that we hope for. [MUSIC] There's a [LAUGH] [MUSIC] Karen's cheating. She used her hand. >> [LAUGH] >> Probably don't want to hit my head. >> You're going to hit your head. [SOUND] >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] No commanders were harmed in the making of this video. >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> So now it's time to get ready to come home. We have to turn our spaceship into an airplane. We're all really busy up on the flight deck getting ready and there's a lot to do and it's a little bit tense up on the- [MUSIC] >> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> These guys are all tired because they did most of the work getting us all prepared down there to come back. So here we are entering the atmosphere and you could tell out the window here, it's pretty hot, about 5000 degrees out there. Gravity starting to set in here. >> [NOISE] That was a slowing down [CROSSTALK] from mach 25 to mach 1. We're gliding all the way from over the Indian ocean more or less back home. >> Houston, Discovery, runway's in sight. >> About ten times steeper than an airline.- >> Roger, runway in sight, Discovery. Fortunately, our runway is 15,000 feet long. Touching down about- >> Hold it right there. There you go. >> 200 knots. >> There you go. Touch down, 195. Beautiful. >> Parachute slows us down. I don't know what they're congratulating each other for. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] A couple hours later get to walk around the vehicle. And then head back to crew quarters to see your families.