Columbia Astronauts Launch Navy Satellite

The Columbia astronauts launched a Navy communications satellite today, dispatching the relay station like a giant Frisbee, and closed in on a falling science satellite for a space rescue Friday.

“It was an outstanding morning,” said flight director Granvil Pennington. He also had praise for Columbia, the oldest shuttle in the U.S. space fleet. “It’s a great ship up there they’re flying in and it continues to perform beautifully.”

As Columbia approached the Equator east of Africa, astronaut David Low launched the Syncom F5 satellite at 5:19 a.m. PST by pressing “arm” and “fire” switches in the shuttle’s cockpit after a series of checks to make sure the costly spacecraft was ready for departure.

On Low’s command, powerful springs pushed against one side of the 15,286-pound satellite, forcing it out of Columbia’s cargo bay like a slowly spinning Frisbee.

“And Houston, we had a good deploy,” Low radioed mission control as the satellite slowly rolled away into space.

Forty-five minutes later, with the shuttle a safe distance away, an on-board solid-fuel rocket ignited and burned for 61 seconds to begin the relay station’s journey to its final orbit 22,300 miles above the Equator.

Low, 33, and his crew mates--commander Daniel Brandenstein, 46, co-pilot James Wetherbee, 37, Bonnie Dunbar, 40, and Marsha Ivins, 38--were launched Tuesday on a 10-day flight to deploy Syncom and to rescue the Long Duration Exposure Facility, an 11-ton science package that is falling back to Earth.

Columbia is chasing the LDEF through space toward a planned Friday morning rendezvous. By midday today the shuttle was about 880 miles behind the satellite and closing in at a rate of 62 miles per orbit, NASA officials said.

When the shuttle catches up to the satellite, it will grab it with a robot arm and bring it into the payload bay for return to Earth.

The scientific satellite was put in space by a shuttle crew in April, 1984. NASA scientists consider its rescue crucial because it carries 57 experiments testing the effects of prolonged exposure to space on everything from tomato seeds to spacecraft materials.

“I think we’re in excellent shape for a Friday meeting,” said NASA’s Robert Castle. “The vehicle’s in good shape, the trajectories are all lining up” and Isaac Newton “would have been very happy” with the shuttle’s performance.

Columbia is scheduled to glide to a night landing Jan. 19 at Edwards Air Force Base.