Computers delay shuttle landing

Press, 10 December 1983, Page 11

Computers delay shuttle landing

NZPA-Reuter Edwards AFB

The American space shuttle Columbia landed safely yesterday after computer failures delayed the touchdown almost eight hours and forced it to cross militarily sensitive Soviet territory.

Because of the delay Columbia had to follow, in the opposite direction, almost the same path over' the Soviet Far East taken by a South Korean airliner shot down by a Soviet fighter on September 1.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said Washington did not seek Moscow’s permission for Columbia to cross Sakhalin Island, the Sea of Okhotsk, and Kamchatka Peninsula — all military sensitive areas for the Soviet Union.

But they said that the shuttle was flying about 110 km above the Earth, far higher than ordinary aircraft, at 29,000km/h. Columbia’s six-man crew achieved a scientific extravaganza during their 10 days in space — a shuttle record — with experiments using the European Space Agency’s SUSI billion Spacelab, as well as American equipment. They were kept in orbit almost eight hours longer than planned after two of

five computers and one of three identical navigation instruments failed. If Columbia had landed earlier, as planned, it would have flown over the Pacific, east of all land.

Instead, after firing its rocket engines over the Indian Ocean to take it out of orbit the craft followed a track over Kampuchea, Vietnam, China, North Korea, and the eastern Soviet Union, on its descent towards Edwards Air Force Base in California.

All the shuttle flights have orbited over Soviet territory but this was the first time one had left orbit

and was on the way down when doing so.

Asked whether Columbia could have flown over Soviet territory as a reconnaissance craft, the space agency officials said that satellites already orbiting the Earth could take far better photographs than any the shuttle could have obtained at its height and speed. They said that Columbia was still making the transition from spacecraft to aircraft when it was over Soviet territory. At a welcoming ceremony at Edwards the mission commander, John Young, praised the crew, especially his pilot Major Brewster Shaw, whom he said had “what it takes to do the right thing at the right time.”

“We had a lot of fun, enjoyed every minute of it,” said Mr Young, whose previous spaceflights included a lunar landing and the first shuttle mission. Of the shuttle, he said: “We built it, we fly it and we share it with others,” in a reference to the international nature of the mission.

The other four crewmen were not at the ceremony. As part of the mission’s physiological experiments, they had to begin more tests immediately after landing.