Columbia Astronauts Scramble to Complete Tests Before Return
Forced to fly on only two-thirds power, the space shuttle Columbia’s astronauts squeezed in as many experiments as possible Monday, working by flashlight before closing their lab for an early return to Earth.
“For sure you can’t cram 16 days of work into four days, but we’re doing our best,” said astronaut-physicist Donald Thomas.
In a news conference Monday, the seven astronauts acknowledged they were surprised by Mission Control’s decision to cut short their flight. They said that while they were not consulted, they supported the move to bring them back today.
They might have been able to fly the entire 16-day science mission if NASA had halted the countdown Friday and replaced a faulty electric generator that had been giving unusual voltage readings hours before liftoff.
That generator slowly lost voltage in orbit--a situation that can cause an explosion--and forced NASA to cut short the $500-million-plus mission. The generators, called fuel cells, are so critical, supplying power for virtually all systems, that each shuttle has three. If one fuel cell goes down, a mission is cut short.
“Certainly, hindsight’s always going to be 20-20,” admitted Columbia’s commander, James Halsell Jr.
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