Shuttle Roars Into Orbit on Its Seventh Try

The overhauled space shuttle Columbia finally shook off a series of mechanical and weather bugaboos and roared into the heavens above Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Sunday on its seventh blastoff try. Its cargo included a $50-million communications satellite, some brine shrimp, gypsy moths, dog ticks, corn and barley seeds and a Democratic congressman.

“Old Flagship Columbia is looking good,” shuttle commander Robert L. Gibson radioed back to Earth as he maneuvered the 100-ton space plane into a 201-mile- high orbit, kicking off the first flight in an ambitious schedule of 15 missions this year.

Satellite Deployed

Less than 10 hours into the five-day flight, the astronauts completed the bread-and-butter portion of their duties, successfully deploying a powerful RCA communications satellite that is capable of bouncing television signals down to a new generation of home satellite dishes only three feet wide. The communications giant paid NASA $14.2 million to boost the satellite more than 22,000 miles into space.

The seven-man crew, which includes Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, the first Latino astronaut from the United States, will conduct a number of medical and scientific experiments as well as make the first observations from space of Halley’s comet as it streaks through the solar system.

The mission, the 24th of the shuttle series, had been scrubbed a record six times since its original Dec. 18 launching date. The strain of those delays clearly showed when the Columbia finally did thunder up from its launching pad, lighting the pre-dawn sky with a spectacular plume of fire and smoke.

The astronauts clutched good-luck charms as they boarded the craft and one, Steven A. Hawley, wore a Groucho Marx mask. A control center spokesman said Hawley was trying to fool the balky ship into thinking another crew had gotten on. Meanwhile, ground technicians erected a large cardboard four-leaf clover over the entry hatch.

Launch director Gene Thomas said he had not heard such clapping and cheering in the control room after a blastoff since the first launching of Columbia in 1981 kicked off the shuttle program.

Columbia, the flagship of the four-vessel shuttle fleet, had been grounded in the shuttle “shop” at Palmdale, Calif., for more than two years while engineers refitted it with new equipment.

The ship is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday morning. It would be the first shuttle landing on the three-mile-long Kennedy airstrip since last April, when a tire exploded as Columbia’s sister ship Discovery touched down. Most of the shuttle flights in the past have landed on the dry lake beds of Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, where the runways are much wider and longer and, therefore, provide more maneuvering room in case of trouble.

Nelson, 43, represents the area around the Kennedy Space Center. He is the second member of Congress to ride in the shuttle, following Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), who was a passenger last April. Garn and Nelson were included on flights because they head key congressional subcommittees that oversee NASA spending.

The congressman will assist in conducting a variety of medical experiments, including serving as a guinea pig in a study of why many space travelers suffer from motion sickness.

During the mission, Chang-Diaz, a 35-year-old Costa Rica-born physicist, will broadcast a message in Spanish to audiences in the United States and Latin America. Crew members will also conduct experiments designed to study the effects of weightlessness on the storage of human blood, the growth of plant seeds and brine shrimp and the development of pests like ticks and gypsy moths.

In addition, the shuttle carries special photographic equipment to enable the astronauts to record Halley’s comet as it makes its once-every-76-year pass through the solar system. NASA officials were anxious to avoid further delays in Columbia’s takeoff for fear they would throw off a delicately balanced schedule of shuttle missions through the year, some of which have been timed to maximize observation of Halley’s.

The six postponements for Columbia already forced officials to push back by one day the projected launching date for the next mission aboard the shuttle Challenger. That flight, now scheduled for Jan. 24, will carry a New Hampshire schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe, aloft as she becomes the first teacher in space.

Next fall, a yet-to-be named journalist will fly on a shuttle mission. Also in the autumn, the flight by the shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch a $1.2-billion telescope into orbit that should enable astronomers for the first time to peer at matter believed to date back to the time of the beginning of the universe.