Shuttle to touch down on schedule

Press, 29 March 1982, Page 1

Shuttle to touch down on schedule

NZPA Houston The United States space shuttle Columbia will land as scheduled at 8.27 a.m. tomorrow. at White Sands Air Force Base. New Mexico, mission control announced yesterday.

Various problems besetting Columbia's third spaceflight as well as poor weather on the ground, had caused officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to predict that the shuttle

might be forced to make an early landing. Officials have discounted the effects of lost insulating tiles, reduced communicating power, and other problems that have developed since the shuttle blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida a week ago. Weather forecasts at the landing site in southern NewMexico are favourable for a touchdown tomorrow, officials said. The officials have said the mission by the astronauts. Gordon Fullerton and Jack Lousma. which has already been twice as long as the shuttle’s two earlier flights.-, was a success. Technicians who prepared

experiments testing the shuttle's physical effects on space and .involving the craft's robot arm "are jubilant with the quantity and quality of the data," said the flight controller. Mr Haro Draughon. ' Earlier in the mission, space officials cancelled another experiment involving the robot arm because of television camera failures. The purpose of the mission. the third test flight of four in the $lO billion programme. is to gauge the shuttle's reactions to temperature extremes and, its effects on space. On Saturday the astronauts conducted another successful test-firing of the craft's main rockets.