Selected Reporting
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....Read more
Flying the Seatless Chair
When the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from Florida last week, the roaring flames signaled the start of NASA's busiest year in space. Ten missions are scheduled for 1984, including one with a secret Pentagon payload. But Challenger had barely settled into orbit 190 miles above the earth on the tenth shuttle mission when space gremlins struck. A multimillion-dollar communications satellite, one of two carried on board, mysteriously vanished into the void. Still, in spite of the embarrassing loss, NASA hoped to redeem itself with another of its spectaculars. This week, for the first time, astronauts plan to take a true step into space, leaving the safety of the mother ship without so much as a frail wire to prevent them from drifting off toward infinity.... Read more
NASA Readies a Nighttime Dazzler
This is going smooth as silk." Thus, with only days to go, NASA Spokesman Jim Kukowski ebulliently described the final launch preparations for next week's flight of the Challenger space shuttle. Lift-off for the eighth mission of NASA'S Space Transportation System, known as STS-8, is scheduled for Aug. 30 at 2:15 a.m. at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, just two months after Challenger's historic flight carrying the first American woman into space....Read more
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....Read more
Flying the Seatless Chair
When the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from Florida last week, the roaring flames signaled the start of NASA's busiest year in space. Ten missions are scheduled for 1984, including one with a secret Pentagon payload. But Challenger had barely settled into orbit 190 miles above the earth on the tenth shuttle mission when space gremlins struck. A multimillion-dollar communications satellite, one of two carried on board, mysteriously vanished into the void. Still, in spite of the embarrassing loss, NASA hoped to redeem itself with another of its spectaculars. This week, for the first time, astronauts plan to take a true step into space, leaving the safety of the mother ship without so much as a frail wire to prevent them from drifting off toward infinity.... Read more
NASA Readies a Nighttime Dazzler
This is going smooth as silk." Thus, with only days to go, NASA Spokesman Jim Kukowski ebulliently described the final launch preparations for next week's flight of the Challenger space shuttle. Lift-off for the eighth mission of NASA'S Space Transportation System, known as STS-8, is scheduled for Aug. 30 at 2:15 a.m. at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, just two months after Challenger's historic flight carrying the first American woman into space....Read more