Columbia Successfully Deploys Navy Satellite : Space: Syncom F5 will provide contact with ships, planes and submarines. The shuttle’s performance is called near perfect.

The space shuttle Columbia successfully launched a Navy communications satellite on its second day in orbit Wednesday morning, flinging it out of the payload bay like a giant Frisbee.

“We had a good deploy. . . . It looks real pretty,” rookie mission specialist G. David Low radioed Houston shortly after the ejection.

Shuttle commander Daniel C. Brandenstein then began a series of orbital maneuvers that will help Columbia catch up with the failing Long Duration Exposure Facility and rescue it before it falls into the atmosphere.

Columbia has been performing nearly perfectly so far on its 10-day mission. “We have a very clean vehicle, it’s working very well,” said National Aeronautics and Space Administration commentator Jeff Carr. “Day Two was very productive.”

However, the astronauts did have a problem with the protein crystal growth experiment, which was inadvertently left unpowered overnight. Two of 10 samples in an experiment that should have been refrigerated may have been lost.

And Columbia did have one “minor annoyance” with its fax machine, used to receive written messages from mission control. An electronic problem was repaired Tuesday, but then the paper started jamming.

The astronauts, however, are still able to receive messages through a teleprinter on board.

Low launched the $85-million Syncom F5, also known as Leasat 5, at 5:19 a.m. PST. Forty-five minutes later, after Brandenstein had fired Columbia’s orbital maneuvering system rockets to move away from it, the satellite fired its liquid-fueled motor for 61 seconds to start its journey into synchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific.

Leasat 5 is the final of a series of equally spaced satellites around the Equator, built and owned by Hughes Aircraft Co. and leased to the Navy (for $16.75 million per year apiece) for communications between land-based commanders and ships, planes and submarines.

Two of the four earlier satellites in the series ran into problems. The rocket motor on Leasat 3 did not work properly. It was repaired by shuttle astronauts in September, 1985, and successfully boosted into orbit. Ironically, Leasat 4, launched on that same mission, failed to transmit messages after it got into geosynchronous orbit, where it was beyond the reach of the astronauts.

The Navy plans more satellites in the series, but they will be purchased rather than leased.

Wednesday, the astronauts watched the satellite motor’s ignition with a television camera attached to the $100-million remote manipulator arm, which mission specialist Bonnie J. Dunbar will also use to grapple LDEF when Columbia catches up with it Friday.

The 30-by-14-foot, 21,393-pound satellite is designed to test the effects of long-term exposure to the harsh environment of space on materials used in constructing satellites and spacecraft. Among the experiments on board is a package of 12.5 million tomato seeds and 1.5 million seeds of other vegetables, flowers and herbs.

Once LDEF has been returned, NASA biologists will test some of the tomato seeds to determine if they will germinate, according to LDEF project director William Kinard. The seeds will then be divided up and sent to 40,000 teachers around the United States by April, along with control seeds stored since 1984 on the ground.