Word: solar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NASA'S carefully detailed script for the mission was showy but simple. Its highlight was to be a free-floating walk in space to retrieve the ailing Solar Maximum Mission satellite (Solar Max). Sent aloft to monitor the sun's activity, Max broke down three years ago, after only ten months in orbit. Challenger's mission last week was to stop the rotation of Max, use the spacecraft's 50-ft. remote-controlled arm to lift the satellite into the ship's cargo bay, and set it back in orbit after repairs were made...
...more dramatic. Mission Commander Crippen, 46, a three-flight shuttle veteran, gently juggled Challenger to within 200 ft. of Solar Max. George ("Pinky") Nelson, 33, an astronomer and high school athlete who was once offered a contract by the Minnesota Twins, then donned the $ 10 million manned maneuvering unit (MMU), the Buck Rogers-style jet backpack tested on last February's mission, to retrieve the crippled Max. His untethered ride seemed agonizingly slow. It took him 10 min. to traverse the 200 ft. from the open cargo bay across the reach of black vacuum. The short journey was historic...
...script called for Nelson to float to within arm's reach of Max's 7-ft.-long, windmill-Uke solar array panels and fire the minijets on his MMU to match Max's spin of one revolution every 6 min. Using a trunnion-pin attachment device (TPAD), a hollow canister-shaped mechanism strapped like a huge belly button to the chest of his suit, Nelson would gently bump the 5,000-lb. satellite's protruding trunnion pin (installed for just such a rescue). Three rubber-coated, spring-loaded jaws in Nelson's TPAD were supposed...
...device refused to work. "O.K., the jaws didn't fire that time," Nelson radioed after his first attempt. Twice more, with increasing force, he banged against Max without results (TPAD has no manual trigger for an astronaut to operate). Nelson's efforts turned the gentle wobble of Solar Max, whose inoperable attitude controls had been shut down as a precaution by its ground controllers, into a precarious, crazy cartwheel. Radioed a frustrated Crippen: "Is there any way that you think you can do it with your hands...
Nelson grabbed one of the solar array panels, but the movement made Max tumble even faster and more erratically. With the MMU's nitrogen propellant half exhausted and Challenger down to a fifth of its own reserves of forward-thruster fuel-close to the bare minimum needed to rescue an astronaut in free flight-Crippen ordered Nelson to return. Inside Challenger 's cockpit, Mission Specialist Terry Hart, 37, tried three times to snake the remote-controlled mechanical arm past the panels to snatch the satellite, but it remained tantalizingly out of reach. Said Crippen: "We came close that...