One Small Step Page 23
Astronaut Bruce McCandless tests a mobile foot restraint during Space Shuttle mission STS-41B.
Satellites on the Wrong Path
Part of the mission was to deploy two satellites, Westar and Palapa B-2. Although the satellites were released, unfortunately they went into the wrong orbits.
Brand: The deployments didn’t work out so well. Here we were deploying two satellites that were similar to what were so successfully deployed on STS-5. One, the Palapa, was for Indonesia, and the other one was for Western Union. Anyway, it turned out that their booster rockets had similar failures. The deployments from the payload bay went flawlessly. Everybody checked that backward and forward. But what happened about a half hour after each of the satellites left us, was it started its burn, which was to send the satellite up to an orbit 23,000 miles out away from the Earth, called geosynchronous orbit. The engine burns, which were solid rocket burns, each started, and then after about 20 seconds unexpectedly stopped. We had the underside of our vehicle pointed in the direction of the burning satellites so that any speeding particles from the burn would just hit the underside and wouldn’t do any harm. We were observing with a TV camera on the end of the Shuttle’s arm. I’m not sure even today that it’s well understood why those rockets burned out prematurely, but each left its satellite stranded in an inappropriate orbit. Of course, one of the satellites was later rescued by a follow-on EVA mission.
STS-41C: Repairs in Orbit
The next Shuttle mission, STS 41-C in April 1984, was also dramatic. It was designed to capture and repair an ailing scientific satellite—Solar Max, built to study the Sun. It had malfunctioned, but since it was designed to be repaired in orbit Challenger, on its fifth flight, was sent to undertake the task. Because Solar Max was tumbling, astronaut George Nelson flew the MMU (manned maneuvering unit) backpack out from Challenger’s cargo bay in an untethered spacewalk, carrying a capture device.
Nelson: Everything worked perfectly until I got to the satellite and flew up to dock with it, and then it didn’t work. So I ended up making things worse, making the satellite tumble, and trying all kinds of stuff, actually just grabbing hold of the solar arrays. It was pretty exciting in retrospect, and the memories of the view from there are just amazing; the Shuttle against the Earth and jets firing and all this. What an extraordinary experience to be able to fly the MMU.
Fortunately it proved possible to grab the satellite with the Shuttle’s robot arm and bring it into the cargo bay where it was repaired and returned for several more years of productive scientific life.
STS-41D: Another O-ring Problem
In late August 1984 the 100th manned spaceflight took off with the first flight of Discovery. Carrying a crew of six, it successfully deployed three satellites. But with hindsight this successful mission will be remembered for things other than the satellites it deployed. During launch an O-ring in each SRB failed. Flames had penetrated their way to the casing joints of the SRBs and started to eat away at the rubber seal of the backup O-ring. The leak on the left-hand SRB was so bad that hot gas broke through the primary O-ring. The SRBs did not fail before they burned out and were jettisoned, but had they burned for just a few more seconds the O-ring would have been breached and the crew would have perished. The crew were unaware of the dangerous situation, however, and only found out after the Challenger investigation.
Fear of Flying
Mike Mullane was a mission specialist on Discovery’s first flight, which was scrubbed several times before it launched. He recalls:
There is nothing that is more exhausting than being pulled out of that cockpit and knowing you have to do it tomorrow. It is the most emotionally draining experience I ever had in my life of actually flying on the Shuttle. I will admit that it is terrifying to launch. Once you get up there, it’s relaxing, but launch, it’s terrifying. And people assume that it gets easier. I tell people, no, it doesn’t. I was terrified my first launch. I was terrified my second launch. I was terrified my third launch. And if I flew a hundred, I’d be terrified on a hundred. And as a result, you have this sense of death. You think about it a lot before you go fly. You prepare for death, basically. I know it’s ridiculous to think you can predict your death. You could get in an auto accident driving out to get in the T-38, and that’s your death, and here you are thinking it’s going to be on a Shuttle. But I certainly prepared for death in ways, in a formal way. I served in Vietnam, and there was certainly a sense of you might not come back from that. And I said my goodbyes to my parents and to my wife and young kids when I did that, but this time it was different because it’s such a discrete event. It’s not like in combat where in some missions you go off and fly and never see any enemy antiaircraft fire or anything. But this one you knew that it was going to be a very dangerous thing. And as a result, 24 hours before launch, you go to that beach house and you say goodbye to your family, to the wife, at least. That is incredibly emotional and draining… it could be the last time she’s ever going to see you, and you know it’s the last time you might ever see her.
Salyut 7: Fully Fitted for Life on Board
In April 1982 Salyut 7 was launched. It was originally the backup to Salyut 6. There were delays with the follow-on Mir space station project, so it was decided to launch it as Salyut 7. With Salyut 7, the Soviets demonstrated that they could live and work in space for long durations, coping with almost every eventuality. Salyut 7 had a docking port at either end of the station and it carried three solar panels. It had electric stoves, a fridge and constant hot water. It was first visited, in May, by the Soyuz T-5 crew. They stayed for 211 days. The following year the two-man crew of Soyuz T-9 stayed for 150 days and in 1984 three cosmonauts lived on board for 237 days.
STS-51A: A Retrieval Mission
There followed the canceled mission 41E, and the successful sixth fight of Challenger 41G, which lifted off on October 5, 1984. Shuttle mission 51-A was the second flight of Discovery, launched less than a month after the previous mission had deployed the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite. Its crew of five were a few months into their training when the satellites deployed during the February STS-41B Shuttle mission malfunctioned and went into useless orbits. The two satellites were valued at several hundred million dollars and, although they were insured, NASA agreed to retrieve them, since it wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of the Space Shuttle. The McDonnell Douglas Corporation, which had made the satellites’ rocket motors, were also very interested in getting them back so that they could discover what had gone wrong. So what was due to be a straightforward flight, the deployment of two satellites, became the adventurous retrieval of two wayward satellites as well.
The first idea was to use the Shuttle’s robot arm to grasp a small stud nicknamed the snubber. The satellites would then be drawn into the payload bay. Rick Hauck, making his second flight, was the commander.
Hauck: I remember one morning Dale Gardner (the flight’s mission specialist) came in and he said: “I was up all night. I was thinking this is not going to work. It’s too small, the snubber’s too small, the rates are too high, and we got to do something else. There’s got to be a better way.” And he came up with the idea of developing what was later called the stinger, and the stinger was mounted on the MMU and essentially was a probe that could be driven up inside the solid-rocket motor cone, the rocket already having been fired, so that wasn’t an issue. The idea is, you push the probe up into the cone and then you release fingers that pop open and snag at the throat of the cone and then you spin a wheel down that screws it down and you got it. And it had the advantage [that] you didn’t have to match any rates with the satellite. If you’re going down the axis of rotation, you don’t have to do anything other than be on the axis of rotation and then capture it. And then, of course, there’s some rotation that’s transmitted through the mechanism to the astronaut, but you just flip a switch on the MMU and nitrogen jets are fired and it’s stabilized. So it was a brilliant idea.
Safe Recovery
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In space, Discovery maneuvered alongside the first satellite to be captured, Palapa B-2 (the orbits of both satellites had been lowered so that they could be reached by the Shuttle). Palapa B-2 was recovered, with Westar recovered a day later. It was the last time a nontethered spacewalk has been performed, and the last use of the MMU. It has been replaced by a smaller version called SAFER, which is used for emergency purposes only.
Hauck: I saw a NASA press release or a statement from one of the people in the NASA Press Affairs Office saying: “STS-51A. The crew’s going to go up, they’re going to launch a satellite, and they’re going to bring back two satellites,” as if it was a piece of cake. And I was livid. I thought: “Here we are, NASA is shooting themselves in the foot because we are implying that this is easy.” And I had the opportunity to see this gentleman the morning of the launch, and I said: “You have set NASA up for a humongous failure by the nature of this press release.” And I said: “In my view, if we get one of these satellites back, it’ll be amazing, and if we get both of them back, it’ll be a miracle.” And I said: “You have not done NASA any favors.” Well, we got both of them back, thankfully, but we were close to getting neither of them back.
TIMELINE
1984 3 February Shuttle STS-41B is launched, the fourth flight of Challenger
6 April Shuttle STS-41C is launched, the fifth flight of Challenger. It recovers the ailing satellite Solar Max, designed to study the Sun
30 August Shuttle STS-41D is launched, the first flight of Discovery. Despite potentially catastrophic O-ring failures, the mission successfully deploys three satellites
5 October Shuttle STS-41G is launched. The mission is the first flight with two female crew members and includes the first spacewalk by an American woman astronaut
8 November Shuttle STS-51A is launched, the second flight of Discovery. The mission recovers two satellites deployed during mission STS-41, which went into incorrect orbits
“The most important thing for us was to dock”
RESCUE OF A CRIPPLED SPACE STATION
SALYUT 7, SOYUZ T-13 AND MIR
1985–1986
Evidence of growing Soviet confidence and technical abilities became apparent when a crew was sent to attempt to reactivate the Soviet space station Salyut 7, which had experienced a power shutdown. The following year, Soviet cosmonauts achieved another space “first,” by traveling from one orbiting space station to another several thousand miles away.
In 1985 the Salyut 7 space station suffered major systems failures following the departure of the Soyuz T-12 crew. The seventh expedition to Salyut 7, Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Svetlana Savitskaya—the second Soviet female in space—and Igor Volk, had stayed on board the space station for 12 days beginning in July 1984. Dzhanibekov and Savitskaya carried out a spacewalk, during which they tested equipment as well as cutting, welding and coating metal samples.
But now Salyut 7 was without power and according to one Western commentator was “dead in the water.” Even if the systems could be brought back on, it was by no means certain that a Soyuz craft could dock with it to enable a crew to get aboard. Nevertheless, it was decided to try—a clear indication of the growing confidence of the maturing Soviet space effort.
The Russian Salyut 7 space station in orbit, with ferry spacecraft Soyuz T-14 docked at the bottom.
The Recovery Mission
Vladimir Dzhanibekov could not have imagined that he would be going back into space so soon, but he and the Soyuz T-12 backup cosmonaut Viktor Savinykh were the obvious choices. They left Earth on June 6, 1985, and one day later they were closing in on the crippled space station.
Dzhanibekov: We saw the station directly after it had emerged into the light—it was blazing in the Sun’s rays, which were just beginning to penetrate the atmosphere. A dot was not a dot, a speck was not a speck—they grew as we approached. The Moon was also within our field of vision. The Salyut’s crimson color gradually grew lighter and finally became white, the shade of ivory. The Salyut appeared to flare still more and at times was painful to look at through binoculars.
We made out the solar panels. At first they seemed to be correctly oriented toward the Sun—a ray of hope. But within a few minutes it was obvious that this was an optical illusion. They were facing in the opposite direction and were useless. It seemed clear that there would be big problems with the electricity supply. But the most important thing for us was to dock—the rest could come later.
We hard docked and checked the hermetic sealing. The equalization of the pressure on either side of the hatch and its opening gave us no problems. The only delay was in order to perform a gas analysis of the inside of the space station. It was possible that a short circuit had caused a fire in which case the scorched remains would have produced a dangerous atmosphere. So we sat there in the docking compartment patiently operating the level of the air sampler, watching to see if the indicators changed color. Just in case, we had gas masks.
There was complete silence in the docking compartment and we were in semidarkness. The rays of our flashlight picked out specks of dust hanging motionless in the air. This oppressive silence and the stillness of the air were the first signs of anything wrong in the station. Our most important compartment was the main compartment. There we found the same darkness, only now it was total. I removed my mask and sniffed the air. It seemed to be normal but the smell wasn’t the usual one. It was a kind of stagnant factory smell. I took several photographs with flash and floated toward the table.
Awaiting us were some rusks and some salt tablets—the traditional “bread and salt” welcome from the previous crew after their 237-day epic stay. We drew the blinds and let in daylight, everything seemed in order, clean and dry, no damage. The portholes were covered in frost. We were by now feeling the cold, the Salyut’s internal temperature was below zero. The worst thing was that there was no electrical power and the back-up batteries were dead. The first thing we had to do was to link the batteries to the solar panels so that they could become charged. We drew up circuit diagrams and severed cables and improvised for insulation. A day after we had docked we rejoiced to see a rise in voltage as the batteries recharged.
Back to Life
Dzhanibekov: Without ventilation, exhaled carbon dioxide accumulated around us. Imperceptibly we grew more and more tired and our heads began to ache. I taught Viktor to breathe out more energetically in order to expel the breath further away. He advised me to wave away the cloud with my hand. To combat the cold we wore fur coats, caps, gloves and boots. At first we worked only in daylight; it was uncomfortable to do so in the 45 minutes of orbital night. When it was dark we would float over to the Soyuz to get warm and to breathe properly. We realized that the space station was coming to life when we could turn the lights on. Then the instruments started working. It was a wonderful moment.
We still had a major problem—water. When we entered the Salyut we switched on the Rodnik water supply system but it was frozen and there was ice in the tanks. Then I noticed a strange plastic column that had grown onto one of the junctions of the water pipes. It was ice, water was escaping from the system and freezing in front of our eyes. When our week’s supply of water would run out we were prepared to drink the coolant water from our spacesuits. We had collected drops of water from various pipes and hoses to add to our daily ration. We knew that our comrades on Earth were preparing an unmanned cargo craft to send to us containing plentiful supplies.
The cooker did not work so we rigged up a system out of towels and foil and a powerful photographic lamp and used it to heat packets of food as well as coffee. The Salyut was slowly coming back to life.
The most difficult thing in the cosmonaut’s trade is the capacity to stand up to, every day, minute by minute, the thousands of unforeseen circumstances. The arrival of the cargo craft, with the resultant unloading and loading, was more than just moving a few boxes. At one time, for instance, five spacesuits had accumulated on board and they took up a tremendous
amount of space.
The spacewalk to charge up the third solar battery required several days training and the checking and adjustment of spacesuits. Soon we listened to the voices on the other side of the hatch signaling the arrival of our replacement crew—Volodya Vasyutin, Sasha Volkov and Georgi Grechko. I was to return, Viktor was to stay. Earth greeted me with sunshine and smiles.
A Year in Space
Thanks to the rescue of Salyut 7 by Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh the space station was host to more long-duration crews, and on May 6, 1986, another space first was achieved.
The Mir space station had been launched on February 19, 1986. Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov docked with Mir on March 15, on the Soyuz T-15 mission. They stayed on Mir for 51 days, unloading two visiting Progress cargo craft. On May 5 they undocked and traveled in their spacecraft to Salyut 7, which was 2485 miles (4000 km) ahead of them in a lower orbit. It took them 29 hours, and it was the first ever inter–space station flight. The cosmonauts stayed on board Salyut 7 for a further 51 days. Then it undocked and journeyed back to Mir for another 20 days, during which Kizim became the first person to have spent a year in space.