Shuttle Scoops Up Satellite Before It Falls to Earth After 6-Year Orbit

Columbia’s astronauts snared an 11-ton science laboratory floating 200 miles high in a dramatic rescue mission today that saved the satellite from a fiery plunge to Earth.

Racing alongside the satellite at more than 17,400 m.p.h., shuttle commander Daniel C. Brandenstein inched the space shuttle toward the spacecraft and then held steady as the orbiter’s robot arm latched on to the satellite, called long duration exposure facility.

“The rendezvous just went famously,” flight director Al Pennington said after the morning rescue. “It looks like we really have a valuable piece of science in our grasp.”

“You’ve made several scientists quite happy,” Mission Control told the space shuttle crew. “LDEF is finally coming home.”

Brandenstein steered the shuttle so close to LDEF that mission specialist Bonnie Dunbar had to move the 50-foot mechanical arm only about two feet to grasp a grappling device on the satellite, Pennington said.

“He was creeping,” Pennington said, estimating that the shuttle moved about 1/10th of a foot per second during the final approach.

After Dunbar secured the wiry fingers of the robot arm to LDEF, she turned the satellite slowly above the cargo bay so it could be extensively photographed for about four hours before being stored for the trip home next week.

The astronauts reported that the nearly six-year stay in the harsh space environment has taken its toll on several of the 57 experiments in trays attached to LDEF’s multi-side exterior.

“Some pretty interesting things on the space end. Some of the panels . . . that had aluminum foil over them look like they’ve almost exploded. I mean they’re just peeled back like a sardine can,” Brandenstein said.

The satellite, which is the size of a small school bus, was being pulled to Earth by atmospheric drag. It has been pounded by micrometeoroids, blasted by cosmic rays and corroded by atomic oxygen.

“Looks like a couple panels have some loose foil--loose foil pulled away from the side,” Dunbar said. “A lot of coatings look like they may be gone.”

Scientists are eager to learn how the various experiments and materials have withstood the stay in space to help them design the U.S. space station Freedom and other future long-duration spacecraft.

The capture ended a celestial chase that began with liftoff Tuesday. Columbia covered 1.3 million miles and circled the globe 50 times before making the retrieval. If the astronauts were unable to catch LDEF, it would have burned up in a fiery plunge to Earth on March 9, its experiments destroyed.

LDEF had traveled 854 million miles since it was launched by another shuttle crew in 1984. It was scheduled to be retrieved 10 months later, but scheduling problems and the 1986 Challenger disaster combined to delay the rescue.

Other orbiting satellites have been recovered before by astronauts, but none as big as the 30-foot-long LDEF.

When the shuttle lands Jan. 19 at Edwards Air Force Base, the satellite will be taken to a building at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., for analysis by four teams--experts in materials, spacecraft systems, radiation and space debris. Then the experiments will be distributed to their designers.

The satellite carries 21 materials, coating and thermal systems experiments; five power and propulsion experiments; 17 science experiments, and 14 electronics and optics experiments.

The experiments represent more than 200 investigators, 33 private companies, 21 universities, 7 NASA centers and 8 foreign countries.

As Brandenstein and pilot Jim Wetherbee made the final approach this morning, television pictures from the shuttle showed striking images of a stable LDEF silhouetted against a blue Earth, the sunlight gleaming off the trays.

The astronauts first spotted LDEF Thursday night when it was nearly 200 miles away. When the five crew members awoke Friday, LDEF was 108 miles in front of them, and Brandenstein and Wetherbee gradually narrowed the gap with a series of intricate engine-firing maneuvers.

Earlier this week, the astronauts released a Navy communications satellite from the cargo bay. They will stay in space a week to conduct several other experiments and observe Earth.

Landing is scheduled Jan. 19 at 2:27 a.m. at Edwards Air Force Base.