Shuttle’s First Foreign Charter : Challenger Blasts Off for Scientific Mission Backed by W. Germans

The space agency soared into the foreign charter business Wednesday as the shuttle Challenger slipped effortlessly into orbit on a seven-day scientific flight commissioned by West Germany.

Challenger, on its ninth trip into space, lifted off on schedule at 9 a.m. PST after being buffeted on its launch pad during the night by rain and high winds associated with Tropical Storm Juan.

Bad weather stayed well to the west Wednesday morning, and the start of the 22nd shuttle mission was marred only by minor problems with one of the orbiter’s three fuel cells and with a helium pressure regulator.

Minimal Impact

Launch director Gene Thomas said the fuel cell was performing normally despite difficulties with a coolant valve. He said any failure of the cell would have only minimal impact on the 76 experiments in the shuttle’s principal cargo, the German-assembled Spacelab, a reusable mobile laboratory.

“We have three good operating fuel cells, and Fuel Cell 1 is carrying its share of the load,” flight director Gary Coen said.

The malfunctioning helium regulator is part of the system of thrusters that controls the orbiter’s maneuvers in space, but it was not expected to become a major problem.

Robert Sieck, director of shuttle operations at the Kennedy spaceport, called the nearly flawless, on-time launch “an indication of the maturity the (shuttle) system is achieving.”

Working Around the Clock

Challenger’s record-size crew of five Americans and three Europeans, moving quickly into a split-shift, round-the-clock work schedule, began activating Spacelab about three hours into the mission, which has been hailed as opening a new era in U.S.-European space cooperation.

“We see a partnership building, and we think that bodes well as we move toward development of the (American) space station,” said Norbert Kiehne, head of space projects for the German space agency, DFVLR.

Officials at the German space operations center in Oberpfaffenhofen, West Germany, were controlling the flight’s payload operations through a commercial satellite link to the Johnson Space Center near Houston.

It was the first time that operations of a U.S. manned spacecraft had been directed from another country.

German Experiments

The experiments in the 15-ton Spacelab reflect efforts by German manufacturers and the Bonn government to capitalize on space research, principally by using the weightlessness of space to produce lighter and stronger metals. Three-quarters of the experiments involve such materials-processing research.

The Spacelab payload, known as D1, or Deutschland 1, also contains a number of biological, botanical, navigational and motion sickness experiments, some contributed by the European Space Agency. Germany is paying $65 million of the flight’s $180-million cost.

The commander of the crew is Henry W. Hartsfield. Other members of the Challenger crew are Americans James F. Buchli, Steven R. Nagel, Guion S. Bluford and Bonnie J. Dunbar; German physicists Reinhard Furrer and Ernst Messerschmid, and Dutch physicist Wubbo Ockels.

To accommodate the record number of astronauts, the Challenger was refitted with an extra bunk and a waste compaction system.

Space agency officials said they hoped the compactor would solve earlier problems with the shuttle’s commode and make possible longer flights with larger crews.