Shuttle rocket loss probed

Press, 30 June 1982, Page 8

Shuttle rocket loss probed

NZPA-ReuterCape Canaveral The United States space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. has ordered a probe into the loss of ?US36 million worth of hardware which helped launch the space shuttle Columbia. The agency said'yesterday it appeared that two spent rocket boosters sank in the Atlantic because their main parachutes had failed. The agency planned to recover the rockets for use in future space flights. A space agency statement said: “Preliminary investigation into the loss of the solid fuel boosters indicates that

the decelerator system malfunctioned.” The 45-metre rocket casings were now resting on the floor of the ocean at a depth of 1100 metres. On the previous three shuttle missions the boosters were recovered. , Aboard the shuttle the astronauts, Captain Ken Mattingly, and Henry Hartsfield began their second night’s sleep and were reported to be in good health by their flight surgeon at mission control in Houston, Texas. Hartsfield, who at the age of 48 is making his first space voyage, .complained of a light headache and slight

sickness. He was told to take aspirin and a motion sickness medication. The astronauts will use Columbia’s 15-metre arm today to lift a 400 kg load from the huge payload bay and wave it around the craft. The package of experiments is known as the Induced Environment Contamination Monitor. The monitor is a desksized detector containing 11 instruments to check contaminants in and around the orbiter’s cargo bay which might adversely affect delicate instruments carried on board the spacecraft. Meanwhile four Soviet cos-

monauts and their French crewmate, LieutenantColonel Jean-Loup Chretien, orbiting the Earth aboard the Salyut-7 space station, started a series of experiments yesterday. The five cosmonauts studied the atmsophere of the Earth, the interplanetary medium, galaxial and extragalaxial sources of emission with the use of photo equipment designed by French scientists. Colonel Chretien, aged 43, is the first non-American westerner to fly in space. The space mission is proceeding normally and the cosmonauts are feeling well.