3 Astronauts Grab Marooned Satellite in a Dramatic Rescue : Space: The manual capture ends days of frustration. The shuttle crew clamps on a new rocket motor, fixes a wiring glitch and releases the communications craft.

In a decidedly low-tech maneuver, three jubilant space shuttle astronauts made history Wednesday as they rescued a stranded communications satellite by reaching out and grabbing it with their hands.

The manual capture, accomplished after two frustrating days of failure, was the biggest step in an hours-long procedure to boost the 17-foot-tall Intelsat 6 in its intended orbit 22,300 nautical miles over the Atlantic Ocean.

During the 4 1/2 hours after the satellite retrieval, the astronauts clamped it to a new, 23,000-pound rocket motor built by Hughes Aircraft Co. of El Segundo. Then, after fixing a wiring glitch, the shuttle crew used four pre-loaded springs in the cargo bay to gently push the satellite and the rocket back into space at 9:53 p.m. PDT. Intelsat flight controllers planned to fire the rocket at 10:25 a.m. PDT today.

As the satellite drifted slowly away from the shuttle, one of the NASA flight controllers said: “I think now we’re probably in touch with most of the saints.”

NASA later extended the mission for a second extra day, until Saturday, to give the crew time to rest.

To a nation accustomed to watching shuttle crews perform countless routine functions in space, the Intelsat 6 rescue offered unexpected excitement and frustration. While viewers had watched on live television Sunday and Monday, astronaut Pierre J. Thuot repeatedly stood within arms length of the satellite but could not retrieve it because a special “capture bar,” designed and developed at a cost of $7 million, failed to work as intended.

So NASA brainstormed and arrived at a quaint plan. The 4 1/2-ton satellite would be surrounded with three astronauts whose capturing devices would be their fingers.

“Real easy, guys, real easy,” cautioned Endeavour commander Daniel C. Brandenstein, 49, as he flew the 173,000-pound shuttle within an arm’s length of the slowly pitching satellite Wednesday afternoon.

“Don’t bring us any closer, Dan,” said astronaut Richard J. Hieb, who was strapped to a foothold on the side of the orbiter’s open cargo bay. At 4:59 p.m. PDT, Hieb gave the command to fellow spacewalkers Thuot and Thomas D. Akers: “Let’s do it.”

As the Endeavour and the $150-million Intelsat 6 streaked over the South Pacific at 17,500 miles an hour, the three astronauts simultaneously caught hold of it and ended a daunting chase that had threatened to seriously embarrass the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“Got it,” shouted a triumphant Thuot.

Applause broke out at the Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control. “We got a lot of smiles down here . . . “ said Sam Gemar, a NASA flight officer.

At the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, the 122-nation consortium that owns and operates the satellite, 50 technicians began clapping. Intelsat paid NASA $93 million for the mission, and the consortium would not get its money back if the effort failed.

Outside the Intelsat center, about 300 journalists from around the world and a handful of company executives watched on three, big-screen televisions, as if the event were NASA’s version of the Super Bowl.

Some foreign journalists said they were interested because of the potential embarrassment to NASA.

The Intelsat rescue involved the first three-astronaut spacewalk and marked the first time that astronauts used nothing but their hands to retrieve an orbiting satellite, according to NASA spokesman Ed Campion.

The mission also was the first time that astronauts had carried aloft a rocket motor to boost a stranded satellite into high orbit. The motor cost Intelsat an additional $50 million.

The hand-capture involved significant risks for the $2-billion Endeavour, the Intelsat 6 and the astronauts, who had to be careful to prevent the massive satellite from crashing into the orbiter.

Even a light collision damaging the open cargo bay doors could have been disastrous, because the doors must be closed for the shuttle’s return to Earth. Damage to the shuttle’s tail section, which guides the orbiter on its descent, also could have proved fatal.

In addition, the astronauts could have been killed had a sharp edge on the satellite sliced through the five layers of material on their gloves and released the oxygen from their spacesuits.

But the virtually flawless flying by Endeavour commander Brandenstein, who controlled the shuttle by hand during the last 90 minutes before the rendezvous, averted disaster.

NASA flight controllers delayed the beginning of the rendezvous for 90 minutes--one orbit of the Earth--when they discovered a problem with the computer software aboard the shuttle used to track the satellite and aim the Endeavour toward it.

In the end, controllers at the space center transmitted their own targeting information to Endeavour pilot Kevin P. Chilton, 36, rather than rely on the suspect targeting data from the shuttle’s computers.

About 2:15 p.m. PDT, Thuot, Hieb and Akers climbed out of the airlock into the open cargo bay and began preparing for their final attempt at a rescue. Low propellant levels aboard the shuttle almost certainly ruled out another attempt.

At 3:15 p.m. PDT, Brandenstein moved to the shuttle’s aft cockpit to take manual control of the spacecraft as he pulled it within a mile of the satellite. As the spacecraft dashed over Texas, Brandenstein flew below the satellite and then slowly pulled up in front.

The maneuver aligned the open shuttle cargo bay with the bottom of the satellite. When the Endeavour emerged from darkness into daylight, the three astronauts took up positions below Intelsat 6.

Brandenstein pulled the shuttle to within a few feet of the satellite and told the three spacewalkers: “All we can do is sit here and wait for the right opportunity.”

Hieb replied: “I haven’t got anything else on my dance card.”

After the rescue, Hieb, Thuot and Akers slowly rotated the satellite, hand over hand, until it was in position. First Hieb and then Thuot latched the troublesome capture bar to the bottom of the satellite, and then hooked the bar to the robot arm.

Working at the arm’s controls inside the shuttle, astronaut Bruce E. Melnick slowly moved the Intelsat 6 to the rear of the cargo bay. Then Thuot, Akers and Hieb connected electrical umbilical cords and clamped the satellite to a frame housing the new rocket motor.