Thin Wire Away From Eternity
Challenger makes its debut
They looked like acrobatic snowmen as they joyously floated, tumbled and wheeled about in their puffy white space suits. But for Astronauts Story Musgrave, 47, and Donald Peterson, 49, last week's orbital excursion was much more than the romp it seemed to millions of television viewers back on earth. Restrained only by 50-ft.-long tethers, they drifted over the new space shuttle
Challenger's big, open cargo bay, at times peering over the side into the dizzying abyss of space, only a thin wire away from eternity.
While the earth loomed in the background, Musgrave and Peterson put their $2.1 million suits through a 3-hr. 52-min. test, trying out new zero-g wrenches and winches designed especially for space-age mechanics. The exercise offered a vivid preview of the future: that day not too far off when humans will be working regularly in the forbidding cosmic void.
The dramatic space "walk," the first by Americans since the last Skylab mission nine years ago, was the show stopper of the Challenger's delayed, if highly successful, debut. At week's end, five days after a picture-book ascent into the Florida skies and 80 orbits of the earth, the $1 billion space plane landed on Runway 22 of California's sprawling Edwards Air Force Base with an ease that would be the envy of many airline pilots. Skipper Paul Weitz, 50, Co-Pilot Karol Bobko, 45, and the rest of the "Geritol Gang" (as they style themselves because of their ages) quickly emerged from their craft, inspected its exterior and flew to Houston.
With its near perfect performance, Challenger more than matched its namesake, a pioneering 19th-century British oceanographic ship, as an explorer of new worlds. NASA showed it had solved the ticklish engine problems that had delayed the Challenger flight from Kennedy Space Center for 2½ months. But the voyage did reveal that the space agency must face another issue: quality control, which the shuttle program's boss, Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson, has declared a major objective.
Lack of QC, as NASA jargon has it, showed up in small, irritating ways. The astronauts found Utter left behind by workmen, including nuts and bolts, washers, lint on inlets for display monitors, even a coat button. One article that should have been on board was mysteriously missing: a battery for the astronauts' headlamps that are used when the ship moves into the earth's shadow. On the ground, Mission Control's computer twice shut down.
These were all minor matters, however, compared to a failure that occurred on the second day of the mission. Challenger's other major task was to carry into orbit a $135 million package of electronic wizardry known as TDRS (tracking and data relay satellite) that is meant to revolutionize space communications. Capable of transmitting as many as 300 million "bits" of information per second—the equivalent of a 140-volume encyclopedia—the satellite is the first of three complex switchboards designed for placement in the sky. Once they are parked in geostationary orbits 22,300 miles above the equator (where their speed matches the earth's rotation), they will be able to relay signals simultaneously from a score of spacecraft, without the need for the present global network of ground stations. Ten hours after takeoff, as Challenger circled the earth at 153 miles, the astronauts deployed TDRS. Six hours and 15 minutes later the satellite's rocket, called an inertial upper stage (IUS), was completing its second "burn" when ground controllers lost radio contact with the 4,700-lb. TDRS. For three harrowing hours, there were fears that the most complex communications package ever put into orbit was lost forever. Then signals came crackling back from space, although it quickly be came apparent that the satellite had fallen short of its intended orbit, swinging as close as 13,600 miles to earth. It was also traveling at a 2.4° tilt to the equator and tumbling out of control.
No one could explain what had gone wrong. One theory was that the trouble lay with the IUS, which has had many developmental problems. But NASA's engineers and technicians were confident that the never-say-die spirit that carried them through past crises would save their wobbling, misplaced "bird." By week's end a team under TDRS Director Robert Aller, the engineer who a decade ago devised the orbital repair of Skylab after it was seriously damaged during launch, laid out a careful rescue scheme. Over the next two weeks, ground controllers plan to fire the satellite's small, attitude-control jets, or thrusters, gradually raising its position in a series of cautious, measured steps until it reaches its proper circular orbit. Says Aller: "The spacecraft is healthy. We want to be sure that we thoroughly understand the situation before we begin implementing those maneuvers."
By Frederic Golden, Reported by Jerry Hannifin and Geoffrey Leavenworth/Houston
April 18, 1983
They looked like acrobatic snowmen as they joyously floated, tumbled and wheeled about in their puffy white space suits. But for Astronauts Story Musgrave, 47, and Donald Peterson, 49, last week's orbital excursion was much more than the romp it seemed to millions of television viewers back on earth. Restrained only by 50-ft.-long tethers, they drifted over the new space shuttle
Challenger's big, open cargo bay, at times peering over the side into the dizzying abyss of space, only a thin wire away from eternity.
While the earth loomed in the background, Musgrave and Peterson put their $2.1 million suits through a 3-hr. 52-min. test, trying out new zero-g wrenches and winches designed especially for space-age mechanics. The exercise offered a vivid preview of the future: that day not too far off when humans will be working regularly in the forbidding cosmic void.
The dramatic space "walk," the first by Americans since the last Skylab mission nine years ago, was the show stopper of the Challenger's delayed, if highly successful, debut. At week's end, five days after a picture-book ascent into the Florida skies and 80 orbits of the earth, the $1 billion space plane landed on Runway 22 of California's sprawling Edwards Air Force Base with an ease that would be the envy of many airline pilots. Skipper Paul Weitz, 50, Co-Pilot Karol Bobko, 45, and the rest of the "Geritol Gang" (as they style themselves because of their ages) quickly emerged from their craft, inspected its exterior and flew to Houston.
With its near perfect performance, Challenger more than matched its namesake, a pioneering 19th-century British oceanographic ship, as an explorer of new worlds. NASA showed it had solved the ticklish engine problems that had delayed the Challenger flight from Kennedy Space Center for 2½ months. But the voyage did reveal that the space agency must face another issue: quality control, which the shuttle program's boss, Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson, has declared a major objective.
Lack of QC, as NASA jargon has it, showed up in small, irritating ways. The astronauts found Utter left behind by workmen, including nuts and bolts, washers, lint on inlets for display monitors, even a coat button. One article that should have been on board was mysteriously missing: a battery for the astronauts' headlamps that are used when the ship moves into the earth's shadow. On the ground, Mission Control's computer twice shut down.
These were all minor matters, however, compared to a failure that occurred on the second day of the mission. Challenger's other major task was to carry into orbit a $135 million package of electronic wizardry known as TDRS (tracking and data relay satellite) that is meant to revolutionize space communications. Capable of transmitting as many as 300 million "bits" of information per second—the equivalent of a 140-volume encyclopedia—the satellite is the first of three complex switchboards designed for placement in the sky. Once they are parked in geostationary orbits 22,300 miles above the equator (where their speed matches the earth's rotation), they will be able to relay signals simultaneously from a score of spacecraft, without the need for the present global network of ground stations. Ten hours after takeoff, as Challenger circled the earth at 153 miles, the astronauts deployed TDRS. Six hours and 15 minutes later the satellite's rocket, called an inertial upper stage (IUS), was completing its second "burn" when ground controllers lost radio contact with the 4,700-lb. TDRS. For three harrowing hours, there were fears that the most complex communications package ever put into orbit was lost forever. Then signals came crackling back from space, although it quickly be came apparent that the satellite had fallen short of its intended orbit, swinging as close as 13,600 miles to earth. It was also traveling at a 2.4° tilt to the equator and tumbling out of control.
No one could explain what had gone wrong. One theory was that the trouble lay with the IUS, which has had many developmental problems. But NASA's engineers and technicians were confident that the never-say-die spirit that carried them through past crises would save their wobbling, misplaced "bird." By week's end a team under TDRS Director Robert Aller, the engineer who a decade ago devised the orbital repair of Skylab after it was seriously damaged during launch, laid out a careful rescue scheme. Over the next two weeks, ground controllers plan to fire the satellite's small, attitude-control jets, or thrusters, gradually raising its position in a series of cautious, measured steps until it reaches its proper circular orbit. Says Aller: "The spacecraft is healthy. We want to be sure that we thoroughly understand the situation before we begin implementing those maneuvers."
By Frederic Golden, Reported by Jerry Hannifin and Geoffrey Leavenworth/Houston
April 18, 1983