Record walk in space

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33418, 27 December 1973, Page 9

Record walk in space

t.A Z. Press .4 asocial uni—Copyright) HOUSTON. December 26. The Skylab 3 astronauts made a record spacewalk on Christmas Dav. and succeeded in focusing their cameras on the comet. Kohoutek.

Lieutenant - Colonel. Gerald Can and William! Pogue remained outside jthe space station for seven hours, beating the (six hour 33 minute record established on November 22 by Colonel Pogue and the third 'member of the crew, Dr {Edward Gibson. But the !record was unexpected: the astronauts had been due to spend only 5! 'hours outside the spacecraft. ‘‘Be it ever so humble,! there’s no place like home,” Colonel Carr said as he! climbed back into the space station. The scientifically-precious I comet photographs may have| been taken at a high price: i the manoeuvres of the 85-ton! spacecraft necessary to take! them may have used about: 30001 b of thruster fuel —! more than 10 per cent of the; 26,0001 b left for the balance of the 84-day mission, which ends on February 8. Experts have been_trying

I Ito preserve as much of the I thruster fuel as possible in J case Sky lab loses a second of its three gyroscopes; one ' froze up early in the mission, yand a second has shown some isigns of faltering. If it fails, the space station would " depend on the thruster fuel I land on rockets aboard the | Apollo command ship to J maintain stability. Dr Gibson, who remained ! jinside the laboratory during (‘the space walk, began using I the thrusters when the two gyros were unable to turn the craft properly. At one '!point, he said, the thrusters were “really belching out.” SOYUZ SAFE The Russian cosmonauts (aboard Soyuz 13 landed ‘ safely today at the end of their mission, after more than '{a week in space, the official ' Moscow news agency, Tass, I reported. The agency said that nine ■days after launching the (spacecraft landed about 20<> kilometres from Karaganda in Kazakhstan. The health of both cosmonauts, the pilot. Commander Pyotr Klimuk and the engineer, Valentin Lebedev, was good, the agency said. , The mission appeared to have been nothing more than a proving flight for the Soyuz craft, which is due to link up with an American Apollo capsule in 1975.

( It was only the second manned Soviet mission since 1971, when three cosmonauts were killed during atmosphere re-entry after a pressure failure in Soyuz 11. Tass said various scientific and technical research experi- . ments were conducted during the mission, and the cosmonauts surveyed areas of the earth’s surface with a view to studying natural formations in the interests of the Soviet national economy.