‘Cosmic hit’ cuts shuttle links

Press, 10 October 1984, Page 10

‘Cosmic hit’ cuts shuttle links

NZPA-AP Cape Canaveral The space shuttle Challenger’s crew of seven, fighting communications problems, were expected to resume their radar camera studies of the Earth today and take part in a 40-minute news conference with reporters in Asia, Australia, and the United States. Space officials said that a hook-up was being arranged to permit questioning of the astronauts by reporters in Bangkok, Jakarta, and Sydney for 20 minutes beginning at 3.38 a.m. (NZT) today. During the second 20minute period the crew would take questions from reporters at the space centre in Houston, Texas.

Nature added to Challenger’s woes yesterday with “a heavy cosmic burst of radiation” that cut communications in half, and a tropical storm that was heading towards the ship’s landing strip. The “cosmic hit” — a flare or electrical disturbance streaming from a sunspot eruption on the Sun — wiped out the memory of the tracking and data relay satellite orbiting 35,405 km overhead. The satellite, which looks down on half the Earth, receives voice and digital communications from the shuttle and relays it to the ground. Mission control in Houston said that the satel-

lites would be ready to work again soon. A spokesman said that he did not think much important data had been lost during almost 12 hours of outage because it had been stored on tapes aboard Challenger. In Challenger’s cabin the temperature rose to 32.2 deg. for the second day because of icing in the cooling system. The commander, Captain Robert Crippen, complained “it feels like it’s about late August in Houston.” In spite of the problems, the work for the crew of seven went on uninterrupted on the fourth day of their eight-day flight.

Although the astronauts could not send the data to the ground, the shuttle’s radar, camera continued S’ng below the surface of es, deserts, and oceans. The radar signals are transmitted as digital data and then converted by ground computers into photograph-like images, a process that takes time. The first two such photos, taken of downtown Montreal, were taken to mission control yesterday and were described as “exquisite.” During the breakdown, the astronauts communicated with mission control through ground stations, but they were unable to send any of the high-speed data

; from the radar camera, i The ship is in an orbit i that takes it as far north as I northern Canada and as far south as the tip of South America, covering 63 per , cent of the globe and 90 per ’ cent of its inhabited areas. , The radar photography ( work scheduled for Challen- ( ger yesterday ranged from a study of volcanic flow of lava in Hawaii to looking at deforestation in Brazil. On another orbit the 1 radar was to survey sea ice ; . along the Arctic ice field, to determine subsurface char- , acteristics, to explore for ground water in Saudi Arabia, survey rice-fields in Japan, and to gather, data about sea pollution along Japanese coastal areas.