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Saturday Morning News

Latest Space Shuttle Mission Features Debut of New Technology

Aired May 20, 2000 - 8:17 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now for an update on what's happening well above the weather, the seven member crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis is now about 16 hours away from a scheduled docking with the International Space Station. On their way to this 200 mile high rendezvous, they're checking out gear and conducting experiments. Flight controllers report an apparent stuck valve on one of the larger thrusters used to change the orbiter's course in space. Engineers say they simply will not use that engine until it is time for the shuttle to head home. The crew says the shuttle's new glass cockpit is working like a charm.

So what's a glass cockpit, you ask? CNN's Allard Beutel has an explanation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FLIGHT CONTROLLER: And liftoff of Space Shuttle Atlantis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLARD BEUTEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This may look like a typical launch, but as the saying goes, don't judge a book by its cover. NASA says Atlantis is now the most updated space shuttle ever. This mission to the International Space Station is the debut of more than 100 shuttle modifications, including a new state-of-the-art cockpit. Patterned after the Boeing 777, NASA spent about $200 million developing the new glass cockpit.

SCOTT HOROWITZ, ATLANTIS PILOT: It's called that because it's basically, if you look at the dashboard, it's all glass displays.

BEUTEL: NASA replaced the cockpit's outdated mechanical gauges and monochromatic screens with 11 full color liquid crystal flat panels. The new glass cockpit is lighter and uses less power than its predecessor.

JAMES HALSELL, ATLANTIS COMMANDER: From a pilot's perspective, there's nothing but good about it. We can put any channel of information that we want on any screen. So we can, in essence, design our own cockpit, put the instruments where we want them across the face of the panel. In some ways we are just catching up with the current technology. Most airliners, certainly most, all airliners that are coming off the assembly line now have glass cockpit technology.

BEUTEL: NASA says the new color displays make it much easier for astronauts to see important shuttle functions. For example, cautions and warnings now appear on the screens in vivid red. Before, warnings showed up as bright green on the lighter green screens.

HOROWITZ: We've actually seen in our training flow that we can take advantage of the fact that we can reconfigure the displays for the tasks that we're doing to optimize which of the crew members gets to see what information. And, in fact, we can duplicate information in a way that more people can keep an eye on each other's, you know, systems and back each other up.

BEUTEL: NASA's other three shuttles are scheduled to receive their glass cockpits within two years.

Allard Beutel, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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