Discovery Gives Up on Launch of Satellite

After three frustrating days, Discovery’s crew gave up Monday on casting a satellite into space, one of the main purposes of the shuttle mission.

Astronaut Ronald Sega, who is in charge of the trouble-plagued satellite, had little to say when Mission Control informed him that flight directors were calling it quits. But the tone of his voice said it all.

“Yeah, we copy,” Sega said quietly.

Sega and Discovery’s five other crew members, including Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, had been trying since Saturday to deploy the Wake Shield Facility, a $13.5-million steel disk on which physicists hoped to manufacture pure semiconductor film. Researchers said high-quality samples, if obtained, could have led to more advanced electronics, including faster computers.

The crew encountered one problem after another: glare from the sun, radio interference and, finally, a failed guidance sensor. After hours of debate by flight controllers over whether to release the Wake Shield as is, time ran out. Monday afternoon was NASA’s last chance; the shuttle mission is scheduled to end Friday.

Controllers could not be certain the Wake Shield would remain steady in flight, given the bad horizon sensor. An unstable satellite would jeopardize whatever growth of gallium arsenide film could be achieved and possibly prevent the crew from retrieving the craft for the trip home.

With the Wake Shield shelved for this voyage, Discovery’s crew turned to other experiments: U.S.-Russian medical and radiation tests, Earth observations, laboratory work and another satellite release. A German science satellite is to be deployed Wednesday; six metal balls also are to be ejected for tracking by space debris experts on the ground.