Solar Satellite Released by Shuttle Malfunctions

A sun-watching satellite malfunctioned Friday, moments after its release from the shuttle Columbia, and astronauts struggled in vain to recapture the craft as it spun uselessly in space, NASA officials said.

The space agency lost any chance of conducting solar observations with the satellite during this mission but was considering a spacewalk Monday night to grab the 3,000-pound Spartan spacecraft by hand. The crew’s two designated spacewalkers trained before the flight for just such an emergency.

The orbital drama began a few minutes after astronaut Kalpana Chawla released the satellite.

Realizing it wasn’t turning the way it should, Chawla tried to grab the satellite with Columbia’s 50-foot robot arm. But the arm would not latch onto the satellite, and when she pulled back on the arm, she inadvertently sent the $10-million reusable craft into a slow spin.

After an hour, flight controllers instructed the six astronauts to give up trying to retrieve the satellite, at least for the day.

By that time, NASA had lost any chance of performing solar observations later in the flight: An internal clock shut down the pointing system for good 60 minutes after the satellite’s release.

The cause of the malfunction was not immediately known.

Spartan was supposed to observe for two days the sun’s ionized outer atmosphere, known as the corona, and the solar wind, the charged particles hurtling from the sun. The solar wind can disrupt radio communications and power stations on Earth.

If all had gone well, Columbia’s U.S., Japanese and Ukrainian crew would have retrieved Spartan with the shuttle robot arm on Sunday night and then geared up for a spacewalk on Monday night to test equipment for the future international space station. The 16-day mission ends Dec. 5.

Spartan has flown several times before in space without any major problems.