Shuttle Crew Starts Small Test Fire : Science: The astronauts’ safety experiment will help determine how flames spread in space.
Discovery’s astronauts, their primary job behind them, started a small fire aboard the space shuttle on Sunday as part of an experiment to study the spread of flames in space.
The solar probe Ulysses, meanwhile, sped safely toward Jupiter at a record-setting 34,130 m.p.h. Discovery’s five-man crew started the satellite on its roundabout journey of 1.86 billion miles shortly after liftoff Saturday.
The carefully controlled fire, the first test fire aboard a shuttle, burned about 70 seconds within a sealed aluminum container as cameras recorded the event so that it could be studied later.
The astronauts started it by activating an igniter wire woven into one end of a piece of ashless filter paper, about an inch wide and 4 1/2 inches long. The cylinder was filled with equal amounts of oxygen and nitrogen. The amounts of the gases will vary when the experiment is repeated on future flights.
Coincidentally, Discovery commander Richard N. Richards had a fire scare during his first space flight in August, 1989. A short circuit sent smoke and sparks into the cabin of the shuttle Columbia, but NASA said the crew was never in danger.
“We can never learn enough about fire safety, as far as I’m concerned, aboard the orbiter,” Richards said before Discovery’s flight.
Discovery’s crew arose well before dawn for their first full day in space Sunday. They are due to stay in orbit until Wednesday morning, when they will land at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
As part of another experiment Sunday, the astronauts extended Discovery’s 50-foot-long robot arm. Attached to the boom are two patches of material identical to that used on the solar panels of a communications satellite stranded in a uselessly low orbit.
Intelsat, an organization of countries that owns the satellite, wants to measure how much the material will decay in space before NASA sends up astronauts in early 1992 to repair the satellite.
Earlier Sunday, astronauts Bill Shepherd and Bruce Melnick reported only limited success with an experiment to control TV cameras with voice commands. Their voices were recorded prior to the mission onto computer chips that the system was supposed to recognize in space.
Saturday’s shuttle launch marked the end of months of frustration for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has suffered through problems with its shuttle fleet and the flawed Hubble Space Telescope. The shuttles Columbia and Atlantis have been grounded since early summer by hydrogen leaks.
Discovery’s smooth liftoff, NASA’s first shuttle launch in nearly six months, was followed by successful deployment of the Ulysses probe.
The $250-million European spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in February, 1992. The planet will provide a gravity assist to Ulysses, shoving it out of the ecliptic plane and under the sun.
Ulysses is to pass over the sun’s south pole in 1994 and its north pole in 1995. It will be the first spacecraft to orbit over the solar poles.
