Computer Buffs, Endeavour Crew Link Up for a Q&A; in Cyberspace

A few lucky computer users soared to new heights Thursday as Endeavour’s crew members began to answer questions submitted to them via the Internet.

Endeavour’s March 2 launch from Florida coincided with NASA’s launch of a home page--a collection of information and directions--on Internet’s World Wide Web, where computer users can take a virtual reality tour of the space shuttle or see what celestial target the astronauts are observing at any given moment.

“Response to the home page has been phenomenal,” flight commentator Kelly Humphries said at NASA Mission Control in Houston. The page at https://astro-2.msfc.nasa.gov had logged more than 600,000 visits by computers in 49 countries by Wednesday, ground controllers reported.

One of the cybertourists was identified as Kevin Kelly of Hellertown, Pa., who wanted to know whether the astronauts were permitted to name any stars they might discover.

“They’re just numbers out of catalogues, usually,” payload specialist Sam Durrance responded. “Even though we don’t get to name them, we still have a fondness for them.”

Another question came from 9-year-old Thomas Maier Jr. of Decatur, Ga. “Why did they schedule the liftoff for 2 a.m.?” he asked “I like to watch and it is past my bedtime.”

Astronaut Tamara Jernigan assured Thomas that “we had a very good reason for launching early in the morning,” a time that was dictated by the shuttle’s astronomy studies.

The seven astronauts were at the midpoint of a marathon astronomy mission expected to stretch nearly 16 days and become the longest of 68 shuttle flights to date.

The shuttle’s telescopes, which can detect ultraviolet light, have revealed a bevy of cosmic events normally hidden from human eyes--exploding stars, colliding galaxies and even a plume from an erupting volcano on the Jovian moon Io.