Astronauts Send Holiday Greeting From Columbia

Columbia’s seven astronauts unfurled a large U.S. flag and shouted “Happy Birthday, America!” in a star-spangled salute from space on Saturday.

“Here on our 216th birthday, if we can’t spend this evening with our family and friends back in the good, old United States, we’d just as soon spend it in space,” shuttle commander Richard N. Richards said in a special Fourth of July video beamed down to Mission Control.

The five men and two women briefly interrupted their science experiments and other orbital work two-thirds of the way through NASA’s longest shuttle flight to share their views of America with America.

On cue, while floating in front of the flag, all seven cried, “Happy Birthday, America!” The video immediately switched from inside the shuttle laboratory to outside the spaceship.

Scenes of a blue Earth 184 miles below, covered by wispy clouds, filled giant TV screens at Mission Control as a recording of Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.” played.

“It’s hard to tell there, but that was our last pass over the Gulf Coast,” Richards said. “Luck was with us today, that last piece right where it ended, we were staring right at the Kennedy Space Center and the shuttle landing field.”

Except for the holiday tribute, it was business as usual aboard Columbia on Day 9 of the 13-day Spacelab mission.

There was a moment of concern when astronaut Bonnie Dunbar reported that she smelled burning wire insulation coming from the vent of a heart monitor used in a medical experiment. But smoke detectors found nothing; neither did air analyzers.

NASA officials said the heart monitor would remain off for the rest of the flight and that the experiment would continue without it.

For the second time in three days, astronaut Ellen Baker spotted a colorful barium cloud released by a canister aboard a small rocket launched from Puerto Rico just before dawn.

The chemical releases are part of a NASA project to study Earth’s magnetic fields.

Richards also exchanged greetings via ham radio with the crew of a 62-foot sailing canoe--a replica of an ancient Polynesian vessel--that is crossing the Pacific Ocean.