NASA Plans Christmas Marathon for Next Trip of Shuttle Columbia
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to launch the shuttle Columbia on a marathon 10-day Christmas flight to pluck a giant satellite from orbit and to pave the way for routine long-duration space flights, officials said Monday.
“We can’t place too much importance on this flight,” flight director Granvil Pennington said. “It is very, very important to us.”
Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida currently are readying the shuttle Discovery for blastoff next Monday night on a secret military mission to launch a Pentagon spy satellite.
NASA plans to close out the year by launching Columbia Dec. 18 on a complex, long-duration flight, the sixth of 1989 and the eighth since shuttle missions resumed last year in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster.
The 33rd shuttle mission has three primary objectives: launch of an unclassified military communications satellite, a long-duration test of major shuttle systems and crew performance in weightlessness and retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility, known as LDEF.
LDEF was launched from the shuttle Challenger on April 7, 1984, to expose a variety of materials to the environment of space.
NASA originally intended to leave the satellite in space for a year, but a series of shuttle delays and the Challenger disaster put the recovery on hold.
“The Long Duration Exposure Facility has been up there now for almost six years,” Pennington said.
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