The Glamour of Space: Astronauts Fix a Balky Faucet

Despite such “minor annoyances” as a jammed fax machine, a stuck camera shutter and a malfunctioning control valve on a water faucet in their galley, the Atlantis astronauts entered their third day in space with no significant problems and a light workload.

Tests of a hand-held 8-millimeter Sony camcorder were particularly successful, sending back to the ground the clearest and most precise television pictures ever obtained from space, NASA officials said.

The Atlantis astronauts had a particularly light schedule because most of the payload weight available for experiments was used for extra fuel to ensure the launch of the spacecraft Magellan, which is designed to map the cloud-covered surface of Venus with a sophisticated radar mapping device.

Speeding Toward Venus

Magellan was launched seven hours after liftoff on Thursday, and by late Saturday was more than half a million miles away from Earth along its 806-million-mile roundabout path to Venus, which it will reach on Aug. 10, 1990.

The 40,208-pound weight of Magellan and its two-stage solid rocket booster, combined with the orbiter’s need to carry extra fuel, left very little room for other experiments.

4 Days in Orbit

Even though the astronauts have little to do but photograph Earth, they are remaining in orbit for four days to ensure that they are over any motion sickness before a landing is attempted. More than half of all astronauts have had some degree of motion sickness.

The spacecraft is scheduled to land at Edwards Air Force Base on Monday at 12:43 p.m. PDT.

The only sizable piece of experimental apparatus that Atlantis took along on this flight was a 128-pound furnace, about the size of a microwave oven, which mission specialist Mary L. Cleave has been using to test the possibility of growing large crystals in space. The crystals of indium and selenium could find application in the electronics industry if they prove to be large and faultless.

The crew members were awakened about 5:47 a.m. PDT by a taped medley of their schools’ fight songs. “Anchors Aweigh” was played for commander David M. Walker, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and “The Air Force Song” for pilot Ronald J. Grabe and mission specialist Mark C. Lee, both graduates of the Air Force Academy. The fight songs of Colorado State University and Florida State University were played for Cleave and Norman E. Thagard, respectively.

“Thanks for the great music . . . We’re ready to roll today,” radioed back Walker.

But the astronauts encountered their first problem while they were trying to fix breakfast. A faucet designed to deliver hot water in premeasured amounts malfunctioned, delivering water in random quantities. The astronauts solved that problem by attaching a hose and clamp to the faucet and watching for the proper amounts to be added to their freeze-dried food.

Testing Camera

During the day, Cleave and Lee took turns testing the Sony Handicam Pro Video 8, an off-the-shelf camera that NASA is testing as a potential replacement for the 10-year-old RCA cameras on board because it is much lighter and smaller. Five other brands will be tested on succeeding flights.

Capsule communicator David Low told the astronauts that spectacular pictures of the Baja Peninsula and the Gulf and Florida coasts from the miniature camera were “coming across real, real clear down here, and folks that have been around long enough say that that’s clearer than they have ever seen any downlink.”

A different camera gave Cleave a problem, however. The shutter on a 70-millimeter lens on a Hasselblad camera used for still photography stuck in a closed position, rendering the camera inoperative.

In the afternoon, in a rehearsal of procedures that would be used for a space walk, Thagard and Lee donned space helmets and breathed oxygen for an hour while Atlantis’ cabin pressure was reduced from the normal level of 14.7 pounds per square inch to 10.2 psi. Breathing pure oxygen frees the astronauts’ bodies of nitrogen, which could cause the phenomenon known as the bends under the 4.3 psi pressure of the space suits.

No space walk is planned for this mission. Thagard and Lee were simply testing the helmets, which were redesigned following the 1986 Challenger disaster, to ensure that they did not leak excess oxygen into the cabin, which could present a flammability hazard.

The same procedure will be followed on the December shuttle flight, in which the Hubble Space Telescope will be deployed, in case a space walk is needed to assist in the deployment.