Shuttle, Weather on Track for Launching Early Today

Preparations for launching the space shuttle Discovery were going so smoothly Sunday that officials here were worrying about the fact that they seemed to have nothing to worry about.

“Sometimes it seems a little scary that it’s going this well,” Chuck Henschel, test director at the space center, said Sunday as workers breezed along ahead of schedule to get the Discovery ready for the liftoff, scheduled for 5:07 a.m. PST today.

Weather conditions were considered ideal and there have been no major problems, although a few minor glitches have caused several slips from the original flight date of Feb. 18. The Discovery launching will be the first this year and the third since the shuttle Challenger exploded three years ago.

Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said those slight setbacks were a small price to pay as they sought to portray a space agency that is returning to routine operations in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster.

‘Great Day to Fly’

“It’s a great day to go fly,” Rear Adm. Richard H. Truly, head of the shuttle program, told reporters Sunday afternoon. “The weather’s just been getting prettier and prettier.”

Weather is nearly always the primary uncertainty here on the day before a launching. There was some concern Sunday that high winds could place too much stress on the vehicle as it is lifted skyward, but generally, the forecast was very favorable.

This flight of Discovery is to be almost a carbon copy of the Discovery mission last September, when the nation returned to space after what is now euphemistically called the “stand-down time” after the loss of Challenger and its crew of seven.

Delivering a Satellite

As in the September flight, the primary mission will be to deliver a huge communications satellite to orbit. The $100-million Tracking and Data Relay Satellite will be the third such device in orbit and the backbone of NASA’s communications network.

Discovery’s five crewmen had an easy day Sunday as they went through final preparations for the flight.

Navy Capt. Michael L. Coats, 43, will skipper Discovery for the five-day mission. The co-pilot is John E. Blaha, 46. James P. Bagian, 37, Robert C. Springer, 46, and James F. Buchli, 43, are mission specialists who will carry out experiments during the flight.

The shuttle is to land at Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles, on Saturday morning.