Shuttle Begins Wide-Ranging Science Mission

The space shuttle Endeavour, loaded with enough scientific experiments for a week’s work, hurtled into orbit Saturday, opening a new manned spaceflight partnership with Japan.

With Japanese astronaut Mamoru Mohri and six Americans aboard, including the first married couple to fly in space together, the shuttle climbed into a steeply inclined orbit that will take it as far north as Siberia and Sweden and as far south as the edge of Antarctica’s ice pack.

Although astronaut Jay Apt reported “an awesome pass over the U.S.” at the end of their first trip around the Earth, the crew will have limited time for sightseeing before their scheduled landing back here next Saturday.

With payload specialists conducting a sweeping variety of experiments inside Spacelab, a laboratory in the cargo bay, the shuttle will spend most of its time flying with its engines pointed toward Earth and the crew facing deep space. The so-called “gravity gradient” flight mode keeps the spacecraft stable and delicate experiments undisturbed while at the same time saving fuel.

While Spacelab was being prepared for operation, however, there was an opportunity for cameras mounted in the cargo bay to be turned toward Earth for a panoramic view of the Hawaiian Islands. But the first effort to photograph Hurricane Iniki churning across the Pacific failed because the storm was too far from the shuttle’s path.

There had been concern that the weather might delay the liftoff, but after a nearly trouble-free countdown, Endeavour rose into a clear blue sky during the opening moments of its four-hour launch window. The liftoff, at 10:23 a.m. EDT, was the first right-on-time shuttle launch in seven years.

Endeavour was still visible to the naked eye more than four minutes later as its speed approached 5,000 m.p.h. There were early indications that one of the spacecraft’s 44 maneuvering thrusters had failed and that an auxiliary power unit had overheated, but neither problem caused significant concern.

Vice President Dan Quayle, stopping off at the launch control room on his way to visit hurricane-stricken southern Florida, spoke briefly with the astronauts as they completed preparations for liftoff, wishing them “Godspeed” and expressing confidence that “it’s going to be great.”

The flight is the second for Endeavour, built to replace the Challenger, which was lost in a 1986 launch tragedy, and the 50th flight since the shuttle program began more than 11 years ago.

Most of the 44 experiments to be conducted by five scientist-astronauts aboard are forerunners of investigations to take place on a proposed U.S. space station toward the end of the decade. Japan is to be a partner in the controversial space station project, and the Endeavour mission was planned as the beginning of that long-term collaboration.

About $40 million of the mission cost is being paid by the National Space Development Agency of Japan, and 34 of the experiments aboard Spacelab are sponsored by Japanese scientists. Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly on the shuttle, is a chemist who has specialized in studies conducted in high-vacuum conditions.

Crew members wasted no time turning to their agenda in space. During the first orbit, mission commander Robert L. (Hoot) Gibson and Endeavour pilot Curtis L. Brown opened the doors of the shuttle’s cargo bay to expose radiators that will cool the laboratory during the week in space, and payload specialists went to work activating the 23-foot-long laboratory.

About 3 1/2 hours after liftoff, payload commander Mark Lee entered Spacelab through a tunnel connecting it to the mid-deck of the orbiter’s crew compartment. For the rest of the mission, experiments will be conducted around the clock, with astronauts working two 12-hour shifts.

Besides Lee, Apt and Mohri, the mission specialists aboard are Mae Jemison, a physician, and Jan Davis, a mechanical engineer. Davis and Lee, who were married in early 1991, are the first married couple to have flown together in space. Jemison, who did her medical internship at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center and briefly engaged in general practice in Los Angeles, is the first black woman to fly in space.

Besides the Spacelab experiments--which range from the behavior of molten metals in micro-gravity to the reaction of Japanese carp, frogs and hornets--the shuttle carries additional experiments in its crew compartment and in canisters at the rear of the cargo bay.

The latter, called “getaway specials,” offer opportunities for independent researchers and smaller organizations to participate in relatively inexpensive space science investigations. Those aboard Endeavour include a cosmic-ray tracking experiment developed by Explorer Scouts and funded by TRW Inc., and a bread-baking demonstration sponsored by the Canadian aerospace company that developed the cargo-handling arm used by the shuttle.

During the first hours of the flight, one of the Endeavour astronauts was to throw a switch sending water into a small container of flour and yeast and then start a mechanical mixer to turn it into dough, which would be baked into bread. The experiment was suggested by participants in a contest sponsored by Spar Aerospace Inc. in the early 1980s, the rationale being that bread is the staple food most likely to be prepared on a permanently inhabited space station.

The Space Menagerie

Some of Endeavour’s non-human passengers: * Four South African clawed frogs, a U.S. experiment.

* Two Japanese carp, or koi, a Japanese experiment.

* 180 Oriental hornets, an Israeli experiment.

* 7,600 fruit flies, a Japanese experiment.

* 30 fertilized chicken eggs, a Japanese experiment.

A BREEDING GROUND

Frogs, fish, wasps, flies and chicken eggs have flown in space before. But never before has a creature, other than an insect, been fertilized and also reproduced; that will be a first if Endeavour’s frog experiment succeeds. The frogs’ eggs will be fertilized with sperm carried up in syringes. Tadpoles should hatch in three days.

RIGHT ON THE MARK

Saturday’s liftoff, the 50th shuttle launch, was the first time since 1985 that NASA launched a shuttle on the appointed day at the appointed moment.

Source: Associated Press