Word: spacelab
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the Mir orbiter was launched in February 1986, Soviet officials announced that it would eventually become the first permanently manned space station. Last week the Soviets moved a big step closer to that milestone. As part of the first complete crew change aboard the spacelab, three cosmonauts docked their Soyuz TM-4 craft with Mir, which had been occupied by a team of two since March...
...they were unable to launch another that could have assisted the Defense Department in tracking submarines. Reason: the apparent failure, possibly due to weak batteries, of a microswitch on the door of the canister housing the satellite. Other frustrations included a sticky latch on an air lock in the Spacelab, which prevented mission specialists from maneuvering the Very Wide Field Camera outside to survey ultraviolet radiation from interstellar sources, and a failed effort to monitor crew members' urine production in a weightless environment...
...crew also saw an abundance of less spectacular stuff during the first half of their planned seven-day mission: a literal flood of foul-smelling particles of food and feces spewing from the pens of 24 rats and two squirrel monkeys in the $1 billion, 15-ton, European- built Spacelab stowed in Challenger's cargo bay. So pervasive was the odiferous tide that it was carried through a connecting tunnel into the shuttle's cockpit. "This isn't very much fun, guys," complained Commander Robert Overmyer to Mission Control...
...midweek the crew, wearing surgical masks to reduce the danger of possible infection, had managed by using vacuum cleaners to clear the air and get on with the major business of the 17th shuttle flight: conducting scientific experiments in the Spacelab. The two physicians aboard observed and tended to the rat and monkey menagerie, checking the animals' reaction to weightlessness and looking for clues to the space sickness that has plagued many astronauts during their first few days in space. Meanwhile, two physicists and a chemical engineer were busy on projects ranging from shooting pictures of the auroras and growing...
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...