Shuttle Is Rolled to Launch Pad for Spacelab Flight Next Month

The shuttle Discovery, set to fly an international Spacelab mission next month, was rolled from an assembly hangar to the launch pad Thursday.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials hope to launch the shuttle during the third week of January. It would be the 45th shuttle mission and the first of eight scheduled for 1992.

Discovery is tentatively set to lift off Jan. 22, but it will undergo a variety of electrical and mechanical tests at the launch pad before NASA officials set a definite launch date.

While the shuttle is in space for seven days, a pressurized cylinder tucked in Discovery’s cargo bay will serve as an orbiting science laboratory.

The crew of researchers will include a German physicist, a Canadian neurologist and five U.S. astronauts. They have scheduled about 55 experiments in a variety of disciplines including physics, biology and medicine.

They will grow crystals of protein used in making drugs and will study how the absence of gravity affects physical properties of materials, gene development and human body functions.

The crew includes commander Ronald Grabe, pilot Stephen Oswald, payload specialists Ulf Merbold of Germany and Roberta Bondar of Canada and mission specialists Norman Thagard, William Readdy and David Hilmers.

Discovery will reach orbit in less than 10 minutes after liftoff, but the eight-ton spaceship took about six hours Thursday to make the 3.7-mile trip to the launch pad atop a giant tractor.