Word: spacelab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ninth mission, the shuttle will carry aloft Spacelab...
...delay was especially embarrassing to NASA because Columbia was to have carried into orbit the $1.1 billion European-built Spacelab. A self-contained scientific station, it will perform a wide variety of experiments while parked in the shuttle's open cargo bay. At Kennedy last week crews stripped away the questionable booster while tests continued on why the insulating material failed. NASA said that there would be no firm word on a new launch date before Nov. 1. Lift-off could take place as soon as Nov. 28, but if that "window" is missed, the next opportunity would...
...working TDRS is the key to the shuttle's next flight, ST59 (scheduled for Oct. 28). The system will be vital to the operation of the European-built Spacelab, a laboratory for ongoing space experiments to be borne aloft by STS-9. To reassure Spacelab's anxious European backers, NASA added a day to the initial schedule for STS-8, thus allowing more time for the crew to check the voice, data and video transmission circuits of TDRS. Though the system delivered an "out of order" message to the President, NASA technicians were at pains to insist that...
...TDRS (for tracking and data-relay satellite). It will open up communications with spacecraft beyond the range of ground stations. Additional delays would play havoc with NASA's timetable, postponing the placing in orbit of as many as 30 other satellites. Rescheduling would also stall the launch of Spacelab, Western Europe's contribution to the shuttle program, now listed for a September flight on Challenger. Says one irreverent NASA official: "Abrahamson is praying, 'Engines, heal thyself...
...will also enable scientists to perform more mundane research, like that planned for Spacelab. Among them: investigations into the behavior of metals, chemicals and even living cells in what scientists call the microgravity of orbit, the familiar condition of weightlessness. Some student experiments will be carried up as well, probably as part of NASA'S so-called getaway specials, compact canisters as small as 1.5 cu. ft. that can be placed on a flight for as little as $3,000. One young man recently announced he intended to use such an experimental package to see if fruit flies breed...