Shuttle men put life back into Max

Press, 13 April 1984, Page 8

Shuttle men put life back into Max

NZPA-AP Houston Two American astronauts have made the first in-space parts swap on a satellite and controllers are preparing to send Solar Max back to work.

The satellite, held away from the shuttle by the robot arm yesterday, was to be released into orbit later when the arm relaxed its grip and moved away from the satellite, said the flight director, John Cox.

Solar Max would be released pointing towards the Sun and the space shuttle crew would watch from 12 to 20 metres away for funny motion — ready to snatch it back, Mr Cox said. Then Challenger would move 60 metres away and trail the satellite for one orbit around the Earth, moving at the end of that time from 16 to 80km away while maintaining a communications lock with the satellite.

“There is no intent to regrapple unless there is a problem,” Mr Cox said. In the early testing of the satellite everything looked good.

“Commands go in, commands go out, telemetry flows... the rest of the equipment looks good,” said Frank Cepollina, the boss of the satellite repair mission. “I’m absolutely ecstatic. “So were the repairmen. “I tell you, everything worked like a charm,” said James van Hoften as he worked with Dr George Nelson in the space shuttle cargo bay. “Haven’t had one glitch yet.” The two spent seven hours, seven minutes outside the cabin — almost five turns around the Earth — breaking by six minutes the spacewalking record set by Skylab astronauts in 1973.

Afterwards the shuttle’s robot arm lifted Solar Max high over the shuttle, as an athlete might hold his trophy, while ground engineers switched on electrical power and monitored its systems.

Air Force weathermen were less than cheerful about conditions for the planned landing at Kennedy Space Centre, saying that chances were only 60-40 for acceptable cloud conditions. If the weather does not improve the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could either extend the flight a day or two or land at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The spacecraft check-out looked like it was going just fine, the astronauts were told before they went to sleep. Engineers at Goddard Space Flight Centre, in Maryland, were conducting the tests.

“Fantastic, that’s all I have to say,” said Mr Cepollina, the Solar Max repair project manager. “This is iow you like every day at the office to be.”

He gave a warning that he did not want to say everything was perfect prematurely. “We’re really not there at this stage of the game,” he said.