Space: A Fully Mature Spaceplane

The largest shuttle crew ever weathers a series of glitches

Palm trees were drooping in the heat of the midday sun and alligators snoozing after a breakfast of fish, when the alien bird swooped down from the sky. Roseate spoonbills and wild pigs scattered as it alighted with a gentle whoosh! on the 15,000-ft. ribbon of concrete beside the Florida marsh. On two previous missions, Captain Robert Crippen had been scheduled to land the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center, the launch site, and each time bad weather had diverted the ship to Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert. But this time, a looming Hurricane Josephine had cooperated by veering northward, making it possible to touch down in Florida. As the astronauts debarked, a nearby sign announced: WELCOME BACK. THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER AT K.S.C.

For the crew of Challenger, it was a peculiarly ambiguous mission, which combined show-stopping successes with exasperating glitches. Mission Specialist Kathryn Sullivan, 33, became the first American woman to walk in space, but her celestial stroll was encumbered with an unscheduled, mundane chore: helping fellow Space Walker and Specialist David Leetsma, 35, fasten a balky antenna atop the shuttle.

Time and again, the astronauts devised ingenious makeshift solutions to overcome gremlins. With nearly all of its objectives accomplished, NASA insists that the shuttle "is now a fully mature space-plane." That may be an exaggeration, but the 13th shuttle flight, the sixth by Challenger, can boast at least one notable achievement. Although Crippen, Sullivan, Leetsma, Jon McBride, Sally Ride, Paul Scully-Power and Marc Garneau of Canada were crammed into an area the size of a small studio apartment, they made it through eight days without any noticeable clashes or even displays of temper. Marveled Crippen of the largest space crew ever, "You really can fit seven people in here."

From the moment Challenger leaped heavenward on Oct. 5, NASA officials felt unusually optimistic. The turnaround time of five weeks since the last shuttle flight (the maiden voyage of Discovery) was the shortest yet and exactly the interval that NASA had set as its longterm goal. What is more, the lift-off was by far the smoothest in the program, occurring only forty-three thousandths of a second late. "A very spectacular flight," beamed Shuttle Operations Director Thomas Utsman, "a very clean count."

That exuberance was soon dampened, however, when the astronauts had difficulty trying to activate the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS). Bearing three scientific instruments, the satellite is designed to measure the amount of energy that bounces from the sun into the earth's atmosphere, where it is swirled about by wind and water and partly tossed back into space. By better understanding the dynamics of solar radiation, scientists hope they may be able to predict world weather patterns more accurately. But when Ride applied her expertise with the Canadian-built 50-ft. remote manipulator arm to lift the ERBS from the shuttle's cargo bay, two 12-ft. by 8-ft. solar panels on the satellite refused to unfold. After fruitlessly shaking the cylindrical ERBS with the arm, the astronauts turned the shuttle toward the sun, until the frozen latches on the panels loosened up. Within three hours, the satellite was deployed.