Maverick Satellite Still Eludes Lasso by Shuttle : Space: Target foils Endeavour’s crew on 9 different efforts. NASA may try a new rescue attempt today.

The crew of space shuttle Endeavour tried but failed nine times on Monday to recapture a stranded communications satellite that had spun out of their reach the day before, threatening to turn the mission into an embarrassment for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Navy Cmdr. Pierre J. Thuot struggled in space for 4 1/2 hours and three orbits of the globe as he sought to snag the 17-foot-tall, 8,960-pound Intelsat 6 satellite. At times he came excruciatingly close. Finally, he and fellow spacewalker Richard J. Hieb were ordered to give up.

NASA officials said Monday night they were considering another attempt today or Wednesday, during which they might instruct astronauts to literally grab the satellite with their hands. The seven-day mission, scheduled to end Thursday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, also could be extended, officials said.

Lashed to a small platform on the space shuttle’s 50-foot robot arm, Thuot almost had the $150-million satellite hooked at 4:18 p.m. PDT.

As the astronaut gently placed a 15-foot “capture bar” against the bottom of the slowly spinning satellite, astronaut Bruce E. Melnick, working in the open cargo bay, exclaimed, “I do believe . . . “

But then the satellite slowly twisted away, apparently because two latches at the ends of the capture bar failed to fire.

“You were right in there,” one of the seven disappointed crew members told Thuot as he watched the satellite inch away.

“I held it up there firm,” Thuot said. “That’s what happened, the latches didn’t fire.”

After the failure, Melnick pulled Thuot back into the cargo bay to await another chance to grab the satellite during daylight. But subsequent attempts proved equally frustrating, as the latches failed to lock onto a metal ring on the underside of the spinning satellite.

At the Johnson Space Center, spacewalk specialist Sam Gemar radioed Thuot to ask if he might have better luck without using the capture bar, which took NASA two years to develop.

“Pierre, would it be possible without the capture bar for you to grab the (Intelsat) spacecraft with your gloved hand to stabilize it?” Gemar asked. Thuot replied: “I don’t think it’s something I want to try today.”

Monday’s attempts followed Sunday’s disappointing failure, when Thuot sent the Intelsat 6 tumbling wildly out of control when he touched it with the bar.

NASA officials said the Sunday mishap occurred largely because the ground-based simulator that Thuot trained on for a year did not adequately mirror the sensitivity of the orbiting satellite.

As a result, NASA officials said that Thuot, instead of applying the planned 10 pounds of force on the satellite, actually used 90 pounds as he attempted to snag it and grapple it into the shuttle’s cargo bay.

“The system just proved to be a little more sensitive--or maybe a lot more sensitive . . . than we predicted,” said Randy Stone, NASA mission operations director. “Nobody screwed up. Nobody did anything wrong.”

Flight controllers at Intelsat’s Washington headquarters fired the satellite’s small rocket motors to halt its tumbling. They also used smaller thrusters to increase the satellite’s spin, which enhances its stability.

By early Monday, the satellite was again stable and ready for a second rendezvous with Endeavour, an Intelsat spokesman said. The goal was to capture the satellite, clamp it to a new 23,000-pound, solid-fuel rocket motor and rocket it into its proper orbit.

A successful rescue of the Intelsat 6 would mark the first time that astronauts had saved a satellite by delivering a new rocket motor and attaching it in space.

At 2 p.m. PDT, flying 225 miles over Australia, the Endeavour began closing in for its final approach to the satellite, which was less than two miles away and traveling at 17,500 miles an hour.

Seven minutes later, Thuot and Hieb left the shuttle’s air lock and entered the spacecraft’s open cargo bay.

Meanwhile, Endeavour commander Daniel C. Brandenstein, working from the shuttle’s aft cockpit, took manual control of the spacecraft as the shuttle came abreast of the satellite, flying about 2,500 feet below the target. Brandenstein slowly pulled the shuttle up in front of the satellite, with the shuttle’s tail pointed toward the Earth. Astronaut Kathryn C. Thornton, 39, used a laser gun to measure the distance between the shuttle and the satellite.

The maneuver aligned the open shuttle cargo bay with the bottom of the Intelsat 6.

As the shuttle pulled into position, Thuot attached a small platform to the shuttle’s movable robot arm, and stepped into a pair of stirrups on the platform. Tied to the platform, Thuot picked up the capture bar and began a practice session.

Hanging upside down over the cargo bay, Thuot gently bumped the bar along one of the handrails at the edge of the shuttle’s 60-foot-long cargo bay. The purpose of the session was for Thuot to get a better feel of how much force would be required to capture the satellite.

Brandenstein, meanwhile, continued to fly the shuttle in a mini-orbit, up and over the satellite, killing time until Endeavour and the Intelsat 6 emerged from the Earth’s shadow into daylight.

At 3:52 p.m. PDT, Melnick told Thuot: “OK, here we go.”

During the next 26 minutes, Melnick made five attempts to place Thuot at the center of the satellite’s undercarriage, which resembles a 12-foot-wide, rotating tin can.

He came close several times, but was thwarted by a slight wobble in the satellite, or by the proximity of the capture bar to the satellite’s small rocket motors. After waiting for the next opportunity to work in daylight, Thuot tried again, with the same result.

If things had gone as planned, Thuot was to have grabbed the bottom of the satellite. Then, gripping a wheel built into the bar, he was to have slowed, and finally stopped, the satellite’s spin, and then hooked the bar--and the satellite--onto the shuttle’s robot arm.

The plan called for Melnick to then pull Thuot and the satellite back into the shuttle bay. There, Thuot was to have unstrapped himself from the arm. Then, Thuot and Hieb were supposed to have hitched the satellite to four docking clamps on the frame that houses the new rocket motor.

After the two crew members attached electric umbilical cords linking the motor to the satellite, they were to set four pre-loaded springs designed to push the satellite and rocket back into space.

Once the spacewalkers were safely inside, the crew was to release the springs and send the satellite assembly spinning away from the shuttle at a speed of about half a foot per second.

The satellite, which is to beam video of the 1992 Summer Olympics around the world, was stranded in a useless low-Earth orbit in March, 1990, when the commercial Titan rocket that carried it aloft malfunctioned. Intelsat paid NASA $93 million for the rescue mission, and another $50 million to the Hughes Aircraft Co. for the new rocket motor.