Word: spacelab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...numbers" precision only a master pilot like John Young, 53, America's premier astronaut, can muster. For seven hours and 50 minutes before that landing, however, flight controllers worked frantically hi Houston to get Young, his five crewmates and their prize scientific cargo, the European-built $1 billion Spacelab, safely back to earth. During the unscheduled extension of the 166-orbit flight, the shuttle's longest, some California radio stations had even begun speculating ominously that the ship might become marooned in space...
This chaotic beginning last week seemed to set the tone for the debut flight of the European-built Spacelab 1. Following an almost unblemished Florida launch, the astronauts quickly started to activate the 72 experiments both inside the 23-ft.-long module and on its external pallet, where some instruments are exposed directly to space. They also commenced tests on the most complex machinery aboard the shuttle: themselves. But even though this long-awaited venture in international cooperation appeared headed toward a major success, it was accompanied by annoying glitches that turned the mission into as much a test...
...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 by the brief blackout of a tracking station in White Sands...
Despite the rash of mishaps and irritations, the scientist-astronauts seemed pleased with the gleaming celestial laboratory. Said Lichtenberg, a biomedical engineer from M.I.T.: "It's just an amazing vehicle. Spacelab lives up to all its expectations." In one experiment involving a pallet instrument called a spectrophotometer, the scientists succeeded in making the first measurements of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, in the upper atmosphere. By such observations, scientists can study weather patterns on earth. They can also explore the history of distant worlds, since the presence of large quantities of deuterium is a sign that a planet...
...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