Navigational Problem Solved, Shuttle Crew Goes Back to Bed

Ground controllers awakened the space shuttle Columbia’s astronauts Wednesday night to have them shut down a small rocket thruster that kicked on.

After several tense moments and instructions from mission control, commander Daniel C. Brandenstein was able to manually return his ship to its proper orientation to Earth and the crew was allowed to return to sleep.

“We’re sorry we had to awaken you about this and we’d like you to go back to bed,” astronaut Don McMonagle radioed from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Although the problem did not appear to be serious, NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said that flight engineers were investigating what caused the forward thruster on the spacecraft to ignite.

It was the second middle-of-the night alert for the sleeping crew. A navigational aid set off an alarm Sunday that awoke the crew members. Earlier Wednesday, they encountered a false fire alarm that was blamed on a faulty smoke detector.

The annoyances, however, were the only blemishes for the flight, which is scheduled to end with a 2:55 a.m. landing Friday at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Good weather is expected for the landing, but snow is possible today in the Mojave Desert, and Air Force forecasters were closely monitoring two low-pressure systems that could cause problems.

With their main objectives achieved, Brandenstein, co-pilot James D. Wetherbee and mission specialists Bonnie J. Dunbar, Marsha S. Ivins and G. David Low wrapped up studies on materials processing, crystal growth, human adaptation to weightlessness and other topics.

Last week, the astronauts launched an 8-ton Navy Syncom 4 communications satellite and used the shuttle’s robot arm to retrieve an 11-ton science satellite.