Challenger faces big challenges

Press, 7 April 1984, Page 10

Challenger faces big challenges

NZPA-Reuter Cape Canaveral The United States space shuttle was due to face some of the biggest challenges of its three-year history when it blasted off in the early hours of this morning (N.Z. time).

The shuttle Challenger will be making a six-day trip during which two of the crew will attempt the first retrieval and repair of a satellite in space.

It will also be the first time a shuttle tries to rendezvous with an orbiting spacecraft, although the procedures were practised on some earlier shuttle flights. Challenger will be carrying its biggest and heaviest cargo to date, a 10-ton platform containing almost 60 scientific experiments. The platform, called a Long Duration Exposure Facility, is due to be deposited in space tomorrow, and left in orbit until next February.

The facility will then be retrieved by another shuttle and returned to Earth where its various experimental devices will be returned to the scientists who developed them.

“The era of the throwaway spacecraft has come to an end,” one official of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said yesterday. “Modern technology is too expensive to throw away in space?’ That is why the crew of Challenger is being sent up to repair a sun observation satellite that was launched in 1980 but has not worked properly for three years. It would cost about SUS23S million ($357 million) to replace the faulty satellite, known as Solar Max, Frank Cepollina, manager of the repair project, told reporters. He put the cost of the repair mission at about ?US4S to ?USSO million.

Two astronauts, George Nelson and James Van Hoften, will actually make two repairs, replacing one large navigation Instrument and a smaller electronics box.

• Meanwhile, India’s first astronaut has looked down from space and told his Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, that their country was the best in the world.

A smiling, relaxed Mrs Gandhi spoke to Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma in a live television broadcast from the Soviet Salyut 7 space station.