Lugging a Space Lab, Shuttle Blasts Into Orbit : Science: Endeavour begins an 8-day mission that will include 22 experiments in module. It will also try to retrieve a European satellite.

The space shuttle Endeavour thundered into orbit Monday, carrying the world’s first commercial space laboratory and chasing a European science satellite that the shuttle’s six-member crew will try to retrieve later in the week.

“It was a picture-perfect launch and the module is operating perfectly right now, so we’re very, very happy,” said Vice President David Rossi of Spacehab, Inc., the Arlington, Va.-based firm that owns the Space Research Laboratory. “But we still have an eight-day mission left.”

The 11-foot-tall, 10-foot-long pressurized chamber inside Endeavour’s cargo hold represents a tentative first step toward the goal of developing an economically practical commercial space industry.

Although Spacehab officials eventually hope to lease space on the flying laboratory to commercial customers, 21 of the 22 experiments on the first flight are being paid for by NASA. The 22nd is owned by the European Space Agency.

The experiments carried in the Space Research Laboratory include studies of industrial metals, in an effort to improve products, such as light bulb filaments and tool bits, and polymer membranes, which are used to filter pollutants out of drinking water, food and drugs.

Other Spacehab studies will examine human tissue growth, with an eye toward treating burns and skin disorders, and will test the water recycling system that is to be used on NASA’s proposed Space Station Freedom.

The cargo bay laboratory, with its 61 lockers, quadruples the experimental space available on the shuttle. Astronauts will move between the orbiter’s mid-deck experimental area to the cargo bay laboratory through a 9-foot-long pressurized tunnel.

Formed in 1984, Spacehab has a $184-million contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for use of the Space Research Laboratory. The agreement gives NASA the right to use up to two-thirds of the lab’s 3,000-pound experimental capacity during the lab’s first six flights.

At the same time, Spacehab agreed to pay NASA $34 million for each shuttle flight on which its laboratory flies, excluding that percentage of the experiment payload that is sponsored by NASA.

On its first flight, the Space Research Laboratory is carrying 13 biotechnology and materials processing experiments developed through NASA’s Centers for the Commercial Development of Space. The centers were created to promote the involvement of private business in the development of space experiments. NASA is directly sponsoring eight other experiments.

Two members of Endeavour’s crew--mission specialists G. David Low, 37, and Peter J. K. Wisoff, 34--are scheduled to take a four-hour spacewalk on the fifth day of the mission as part of a continuing exercise to practice construction techniques needed for assembly of NASA’s planned space station.

Other crew members include Air Force Col. Ronald J. Grabe, 47, the commander; Air Force Col. Brian Duffy, 40, the pilot; Army Capt. Nancy Jane Sherlock, 34; and mission specialist Janice Voss, 36.

Grabe, Duffy and Low are space shuttle veterans. Sherlock, Wisoff and Voss are making their first flight.

At 7:42 a.m. PDT Thursday, Endeavour is scheduled to close in on the 9,900-pound Eureca science satellite as it flies about 252 miles above Australia. Low, operating the shuttle’s robotic arm, is supposed to grab the satellite and grapple it into an open cargo bay.

The retrieval is not expected to pose serious problems, because the satellite was designed to be grabbed by the shuttle’s arm.

The Eureca (European Retrievable Carrier) satellite, launched July 31 aboard the shuttle Atlantis, carries crystal growth, radiation and materials processing experiments that require long-term exposure to microgravity.

Monday’s launch of Endeavour followed a disappointing scrub on Sunday, when low, towering clouds shrouded the emergency landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center.

But the skies cleared enough to allow the mission to proceed. “We were able to beat the clock on the weather, and get off a successful launch and get to work,” said Loren J. Shriver, assistant to the director of space shuttle operations.

The orbiter lifted off at 6:07 a.m. PDT from launch complex 39B. It is Endeavour’s fourth flight and the 56th shuttle mission.

As the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters trailed twin columns of white flame, the spacecraft gently pirouetted onto its back, disappeared behind a towering cloud and began climbing to its 289 mile-by-242 mile orbit. The shuttle reached its maximum speed of 17,500 m.p.h. about eight minutes after launch.

“We didn’t see a great deal because we had some sun looking at us straight on,” Grabe radioed as the shuttle began its first orbit.

About 10 minutes before launch, NASA reported that a small, private aircraft had intruded into restricted airspace over the Atlantic Ocean. But the plane quickly departed, and the incident delayed the liftoff by only 22 seconds. The Air Force said it will report the pilot to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The shuttle is scheduled to land in Florida at 5:03 a.m. PDT next Tuesday.