Astronauts Set to Try Daring Satellite Rescue
Astronauts on the shuttle Columbia will attempt a daring satellite rescue--the first in 5 1/2 years--under a plan approved by NASA on Sunday.
More than anything, the space agency wants to avoid a collision. The slowly spinning, 3,000-pound satellite could do serious damage if it struck the shuttle or the two spacewalkers during tonight’s salvage effort.
Bob Castle of mission operations told reporters the risk of a collision is “very, very small.”
“We feel very confident that this is going to work,” Castle said at a news conference. “The crew is quite capable of doing this.”
The $10-million reusable science satellite, called Spartan, has been tumbling out of control since Friday, when Columbia’s crew released it, saw it wasn’t working and then failed to recover it.
When the six astronauts last saw it, before the shuttle backed off to a safe distance, Spartan was spinning at a rate of 2 degrees a second. It’s a 5-foot cube with the ends of an 11-foot telescope protruding from opposite sides.
Castle said engineers are confident the satellite won’t be spinning any faster when astronauts Winston Scott and Takao Doi try to catch it with their gloved hands.
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