Shuttle Crew Chats With Schoolchildren Via Radio

The five astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis spent Saturday preparing for two days of intense activity, including the first spacewalk in more than five years, and took a few minutes off to talk with schoolchildren about the adventures of space flight.

Today, physicist Linda M. Godwin, 38, will use the shuttle’s robotic arm to lift a $617-million observatory out of the Atlantis’ cargo bay. The 35,000-pound observatory will dangle on the end of the arm for several hours until all of its systems have been checked, and then Godwin will set the instrument free to study the universe in ways that it has never been studied.

The Gamma Ray Observatory has been designed to spend two years examining objects that emit gamma rays, the most powerful form of radiation in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but scientists expect it to operate for much longer than its design life--possibly as much as eight years. Gamma rays can only be studied from space.

Atmospheric pressure in the interior of the Atlantis was lowered Saturday from about 14.7 pounds per square inch, which is sea level pressure, to 10.2 psi to pave the way for a spacewalk today if anything goes wrong during deployment of the observatory. It is necessary to reduce the pressure inside the vehicle to prevent the astronauts after they re-enter the shuttle from going through the bends, similar to what happens to deep sea divers when they surface too quickly.

Even if they do not have to leave the shuttle today, astronauts Jerry L. Ross, 43, and Jay Apt, 41, will go out Monday to test equipment that could be used later this decade in the construction of the planned Space Station Freedom.

The Atlantis has been enjoying a near perfect mission since its launch Friday morning.

“This has been a really clean flight,” said mission director Charles Shaw.

The astronauts took time to chat with schoolchildren by way of amateur radio linkups, and they got at least one question that revealed that even the very young can wonder about the meaning of it all.

“Do you tend to re-evaluate your life when you look at the Earth?” a young boy asked the shuttle’s pilot, Kenneth Cameron, 41.

“When you float up here above the Earth in a little spacecraft and look down at the big spacecraft that we all fly on, it makes us all think about what our priorities are,” Cameron answered.

The flight is scheduled to end Wednesday with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California at 6:34 a.m. PDT. The Atlantis is commanded by Steven R. Navel, 44.