Atlantis Blasts Into Orbit With Space Lab, Satellite : Shuttle: The mission is touted as a peek into the future of manned flight. The EURECA facility will conduct experiments over months undisturbed.

In an auspicious beginning to its 12th space voyage, the shuttle Atlantis hurtled into orbit Friday on a mission touted as a bold peek into the future of manned space flight.

Stowed in its cargo bay was a 4.5-ton European laboratory, plus a satellite belonging to the space agency of Italy. Joining five U.S. astronauts aboard the orbiter were a payload specialist from Switzerland and a physicist from Italy.

The vehicle lifted from its launch pad at 6:56 a.m. PDT, just 48 seconds behind schedule and after a virtually trouble-free countdown. Rising atop a familiar column of fluffy, white vapor, it arched southeastward on a course that will keep it to the south of the United States on nearly all of its 111 orbits.

Over the Indian Ocean 40 minutes after the thunderous departure, astronauts fired a set of maneuvering thrusters, accelerating by an additional 239 m.p.h. and creating a circular orbit 230 nautical miles above the Earth. That put them at the altitude where they wanted to be early today when they were scheduled to release a 4.5-ton micro-gravity laboratory belonging to the European Space Agency.

Their most challenging task begins on Monday, when the crew flies for 30 hours with a satellite five feet in diameter tethered to the shuttle on the end of a 12.5-mile-long cord.

“You think it will be a tiger by the tail,” said former astronaut Brewster Shaw, now deputy shuttle program manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “I think it will be a pussycat. Everything will go so slowly that it will be hard to tell that anything is happening.”

As they completed their first trip around the Earth on Friday, the six-man, one-woman crew swung open the doors to Atlantis’ cargo bay, and mission control in Houston reported that they were ahead of schedule checking out their payload and preparing for their orbital operations. Because of the heavy workload ahead of them, the crew was split into teams so operations can continue around the clock.

Two and one-half hours after liftoff, Marine Maj. Andrew Allen, the Atlantis pilot, Swiss mission specialist Claude Nicollier and Italian mission specialist Franco Malerba slipped into sleeping restraints and turned in for their first nap in space. Left on duty were Air Force Col. Loren J. Shriver, the mission commander, and payload specialists Marsha Ivins, Jeff Hoffman, and Franklin Chang-Diaz.

Plans called for the “blue team” to return to duty to handle the release of the European Retrievable Carrier, or EURECA, in the wee hours this morning.

Lifted from the cargo bay by a remote-controlled boom, the laboratory, loaded with a variety of experiments requiring long-term exposure to micro-gravity conditions, was due to be released at 12:51 a.m. PDT.

A command from the European Space Agency’s control center was to boost it into a 326-mile-high orbit, where it will operate until it is recovered by another shuttle six to nine months from now. EURECA’s owners--principally Germany, France and Italy--say the laboratory can be outfitted with a new set of experiments and ready for another flight two years after its recovery.

Because it is free-flying, the technique provides an opportunity to conduct experiments without disturbance from orbital maneuvers of a manned spacecraft. More than that, it provides a way to conduct long-duration micro-gravity research during the 1990s while work continues on the United States’ planned space station Freedom.

As the Atlantis crew prepared for the EURECA launch Friday afternoon, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, who had ordered an additional safety review of next week’s Tethered Satellite operation, called from Washington with congratulations on the mission’s successful beginning. The crew, he said, had done “a terrific job of getting ready” for a mission that promises to be “very, very exciting.”

Late in the afternoon Friday, Hoffman exercised the mechanical arm that was to lift the EURECA laboratory out of the cargo bay.

He also tried out the six latches around the docking device holding the Italian satellite. He left three of the six latches open so that only three will have to be opened on Monday when the Tethered Satellite is released.

Atlantis came close to being the first shuttle since the Challenger accident to lift off precisely on schedule. But with four minutes left on the countdown clock, there was an unplanned delay of 48 seconds because the flight crew had yet to set a switch when the setting was checked by a computer racing through final checkout.

Satellite on a String

One of the the shuttle crew’s main mission is to launch a satellite tethered by a spaghetti-thin electrical cord. In an experiment reminiscent of Benjamin Franklin’s kite, the satellite will pick up energy from Earth’s magnetic field and shoot it down the cord to the shuttle.

Casting It Out Into Space

1. 41-foot boom moves satellite beyond the payload pay

2. A thruster maintains tension on the tether until the satellite is three-quarters of a mileaway

3. At that point, the satellite’s higher orbit is expected to exert an upward force and--along with the shuttle’s natural tendency to drop--maintain tension on the tether until it is 12.5 miles out.

4. At about 3.7 miles out, the satellite will start spinning to facilitate experiments

5. Tether becomes taut when satellite reaches 12.5 miles out

The Goal

If the experiment works, such tether-satellite arrangements could be used in the future to recharge space stations or dispatch robot explorers on interplanetary voyages.

The Danger: Too Much Slack

The satellite has the potential to bob up and down like a yo-yo. The options:

1. Crew can make adjustments in the shuttle orbit

2. Since current is flowing through the cord, adjustments can be made in the flow to offset movements

3. If satellite gets dangerously out of control, two explosive devices can be set off to cut the cord and free the shuttle from the satellite

The Tether

Materials: copper, Teflon, Kevlar, Nomex

Weight: 18 pounds

Maximum pull cord can endure: 400 pounds

Force on cord during mission: 10-13 pounds

Sources: NASA, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, AP