NASA Extends Shuttle Mission One Day for Closer Study of Sun

NASA extended the mission of the space shuttle Challenger by one day Saturday to give its crew more time to examine the sun with the largest solar telescopes ever carried into space.

“The longer, the better,” mission commander Gordon Fullerton said. “We’ll go for it.”

A few hours later, the astronauts conducted a television survey of the ship’s black underside and discovered dozens of nicks and gouges in the fragile ceramic tiles designed to shield the ship from the fire of reentry.

Astronaut David Leestma in Mission Control assured the crew that there is nothing to worry about.

“The survey looked very, very good to us,” he said. “The bottom of the orbiter looks better than it did last flight.”

The nation’s 50th manned space flight is now scheduled to end Tuesday afternoon, on the eighth day of the flight, at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Time Lost Earlier

“We’ll see you back in Houston a day later than planned,” Fullerton told Mission Control.

The flight was lengthened to eight days primarily to make up for solar observation time lost because of earlier problems with the $60-million telescope pointing assembly in Challenger’s cargo bay. Its four telescopes are the most advanced and powerful sun-watching units ever sent into space.

“After a slow start on the IPS (instrument pointing system) and science, we’ve been making a lot of money during the last few days,” Dick Richards in Mission Control told Fullerton.

Mission Control spokesman Steven Nesbitt said the insulation tile inspection using a camera on the end of the ship’s robot arm was prompted by the discovery near the launch pad of several pieces of orange polyurethane-like foam insulation from the ship’s external fuel tank.

Nesbitt said it was possible that insulation ripping off the fuel tank during launch might have damaged the critical tiles.

Richards, an astronaut who will fly next March, said Challenger has enough rocket fuel, hydrogen and oxygen for its fuel cell generators to stay up three extra days. Two of those days are always held in reserve in case bad weather or unexpected problems crop up.

Fullerton, pilot Roy D. Bridges Jr., flight engineer F. Story Musgrave and scientists Karl Henize, Anthony England, Loren W. Acton and John-David Bartoe are scheduled to land at 12:47 p.m. Tuesday.