Satellite aided

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 9

Satellite aided

NZPA Washington N.A.S.A engineers have rescued a $22 million satellite — launched to help rescue survivors of aircraft and ship accidents — from spinning uselessly in space. And they are preparing to save an errant communications satellite carried aloft by the shuttle Challenger. Jim Elliott, spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said yesterday that the environmental monitoring satellite called NOAA-E was finally in place — after a month of spinning like a propeller — and was ready to serve as the first spaceborne American search and rescue system. The search and rescue satellite was launched into a near-perfect Polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on March 28, but then its attitude control thrusters fired wildly and sent it into a

spin. The American satellite joins two Soviet satellites capable of finding downed aircraft and foundering ships. In the second rescue, N.A.S.A. engineers are readying attempts to push the world’s biggest and most expensive communications satellite 14,500 km through space into proper orbit.

The $lOO million tracking data and relay satellite was carried aloft by the Challenger on April 4. It went into a misshapen orbit when the engine on an attached rocket quit too early. Mr Elliott, a spokesman at N.A.S.A.’s Goddard Space Flight Centte, said that engineers planned to fire the satellite’s small thrusters for 20 minutes in the Jjrst week of May, then have a second test firing four or five days later before putting the rescue effort into full swing.