Word: payloads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That expensive steel-and-sheet-metal postscript, the assembly building, shelters the newly assembled spacecraft until it is ready for loading. The job begins in a hulking concrete structure called the Payload Preparation Center, a stationary, 147-ft-high building. There, in a relatively particle-free chamber, the spy satellites and other exotic space gear to be carried aloft will be given final checks in sealed chambers. Explains Engineer O'Gorman: "If we do the job right you should be able to take a transistor radio in there and not pick up a single outside signal." This feature...
Unlike the cargo on current flights, Vandenberg payloads such as meteorological and navigational satellites will not have to be placed in bulky canisters to keep them free of contamination. Instead the devices will be taken into the Payload Changeout Room, Slick Six's third movable building. This 158-ft.-high, 6,000-ton structure moves by rail toward the waiting assembly building, where a mammoth door of six panels, each measuring 30 ft. high and 130 ft. wide, will slowly rise, just like a garage door. Inside the building-within-a-building, the payload will be lifted into...
...calamitous satellite losses. Under the direction of Physicist Ronald McNair, 33, both satellites were spun perfectly out of Challenger's cargo bay. Even so, there could be serious repercussions for NASA and the U.S. aerospace community. Unless the problem with the little boosters, called PAMs (for payload-assist modules), is resolved soon, some upcoming lift-offs may have to be postponed. PAMs are scheduled to be used for satellite launches in May as the upper stage of a conventional Delta rocket and in June during the maiden voyage of the third shuttle, Discovery. Insurance brokers are now warning...
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...
These new headaches demonstrated once again that the shuttle is still very much an experimental vehicle. Even so, NASA could take pride in the debut of Spacelab and the new breed of payload specialists-scientists from outside the regular astronaut corps, including one West German researcher-who managed its heavy load of 72 experiments. The space agency noted that more than 90% of the studies had been completed. If the scientific data transmitted from orbit in just a single burst were lined up as small, text-size electronic symbols, one official calculated, they would extend from the earth...