Shuttle Lands in Florida; Tether Failure to Be Studied

Heralded by a familiar sonic boom, the space shuttle Atlantis streaked over its home port Saturday, circled back and concluded eight trying days in space with a graceful landing at Kennedy Space Center. The orbiter touched down at 9:12 a.m., having passed up its first landing opportunity 90 minutes earlier because of rain showers drifting along the Florida coast.

Riding in the shuttle’s cargo bay was the $191-million Italian satellite that was rescued in a space drama last Thursday after an ambitious attempt to fly it on the end of a long tether was aborted. Also aboard and awaiting inspection was the tether control system that jammed and, by thwarting deployment of the satellite, caused one of the 11-year-old shuttle program’s major setbacks.

Jeremiah Pearson, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s associate administrator for space flight, said he hopes to have a final report “within a few weeks” from a team of technical experts assigned to determine what caused the mishap.

Pearson also said the mission will be scored as a success, even though most of the flight’s scientific objectives were dashed when the satellite could get no farther than 800 feet on a planned journey of 12.5 miles.

By reeling the Italian satellite out to the 12.5-mile distance, NASA officials had hoped to turn it and the shuttle into an huge electrical generator in space, as well as to gain an understanding of how tethered objects behave in orbit.

Despite the aborted deployment, NASA officials were heartened by the ability of the Atlantis astronauts to control the satellite while it was out on its shoelace-sized tether and their success in getting it back aboard the shuttle.

The experience tended to confirm the belief that tethered objects could be used in a variety of roles in space.

“In an experimental program, you get data points,” Pearson said, “but you don’t always get the ones you want. We got the satellite back when we weren’t sure of that when we went out.”

There currently is no plan for another attempt to carry out the satellite experiment. In September, the space agency will issue an updated list of payloads approved for future shuttle flights, but Pearson said he doubts that another Tethered Satellite mission will be on it.

Flown by Air Force Col. Loren J. Shriver and Marine Maj. Andy Allen, Atlantis started its Saturday morning descent in darkness halfway around the world from its landing site. After dropping steeply across the Florida peninsula three-quarters of an hour later, it passed over its launch site at an altitude of more than 45,000 feet, looped southward over the Atlantic and glided onto its runway.

Shriver, Allen and the five mission specialists aboard were reported in perfect condition, as was the orbiter. More than an hour after landing, the crew emerged for a brief inspection of their spaceship before being driven away for reunions with their families, physical examinations and lunch.

About midafternoon, their spacecraft was towed from the landing strip into the space center’s orbiter processing facility. There, technicians will unload the satellite and its deployment and recovery equipment, along with scientific instruments carried in the payload bay.

In mid-October, the orbiter is to be moved to the Rockwell International Corp. plant in Palmdale, Calif., to undergo major refurbishment. It also will have its air lock modified so Atlantis will be able to dock with Russia’s Mir space station in a cooperative undertaking now planned for 1994.