Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NASA, of course, does not permit alcohol aboard its spacecraft or on its facilities, but last week, after Columbia's harrowing, computer-plagued final day in orbit, the space agency had good reason to splash everyone with champagne. Sweeping out of the skies in the fading glow of a setting sun, the space shuttle settled gently onto Edwards Air Force Base's Runway 17 in the California desert with the "right on the numbers" precision only a master pilot like John Young, 53, America's premier astronaut, can muster. For seven hours and 50 minutes before that...
...that instant, the spacecraft's No. 1 computer, responsible for directing the orbiter's navigational and guidance systems, as well as general housekeeping duties, "crashed," or shut down. To the relief of Houston controllers, the No. 2 computer promptly took over. Indeed, under NASA's suspenders-and-belt philosophy, the orbiter is equipped with four electronically linked computers, plus an independently operating backup. Any one of these machines can take charge of the shuttle. About four minutes later, however, after the thrusters fired again to slow the ship, the second computer also stopped...
...Australia and over the western Pacific, it passed only 80 miles above eastern Siberia in the militarily sensitive area of the Sakhalin Peninsula where Soviet aircraft shot down a South Korean jet last September. Never before had a manned American spacecraft flown so low over Soviet territory; happily for NASA, there were no grumbles from the Kremlin...
...troubles with communications led to the loss of some experimental data. They also curtailed TV pictures and disrupted a ground-to-air press conference by cutting off reporters in Europe, where the flight has been big news. The major culprit was NASA's tracking and data-relay satellite, which can relay an encyclopedic 300 megabits per second. Although designed as Spacelab's main link with the ground, it still has not fully recovered from a faulty launch last April and is now capable of sending only a fraction of its ground-to-orbit capacity. These difficulties were compounded...
...Europeans, Spacelab's performance was a welcome change after years of delays. Some Europeans talked of joining the U.S. in creating a permanent orbital station. NASA Chief James Beggs promoted that project last week at a meeting with President Reagan and his Cabinet, with no immediate results. Nothing, however, dampened NASA's cheer. At week's end it was so pleased with Spacelab that it decided to extend the shuttle's record-breaking nine-day mission by 24 hours. -By Frederic Golden. Reported by Jerry Hannifin and Geoffrey Leavenworth/Houston