Suzy B Software 2/Suzy B Software CD-ROM 2 (1994).iso/nasa/marnews4/nasa1

Text File | 1995-05-02 | 2KB | 35 lines

WASHINGTON (MARCH 16) AP - An 11-ton satellite in orbit three years longer than
planned will be rescued by a space shuttle crew next year, just months before
it would fall back to Earth in pieces.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Tuesday included the
retrieval of the satellite - the Long Duration Exposure Facility - in a new
schedule of flights and cargoes. The rescue was added to a mission beginning
July 13.

The orbit of the satellite, which gauged the effects of space's hostile
environment on metal coatings and on 13 million seeds, is decaying and
officials fear it will crash through the atmosphere and break up if it is not
recaptured by mid-1990.

The new schedule makes no change in the date of the much-delayed first
post-Challenger flight, now set for Aug. 4. There have been no American manned
missions in space since the Challenger - the 25th shuttle mission - exploded on
liftoff Jan. 28, 1986 and killed its seven-member crew.

The six-sided Long Duration Exposure Facility - LDEF in space jargon - was
tossed overboard by astronauts in April 1984 to be hit by meteors, pelted by
cosmic rays and corroded by oxygen atoms.

The bus-size frame held 57 experiments, including one that tested 120 varieties
of vegetables, fruits and flowers to see whether cosmic radiation caused useful
genetic changes. The LDEF was to have been retrieved by another shuttle mission
10 months later and brought back in the cargo bay.

But delays in the space program combined with grounding of all shuttles after
the Challenger disaster kept the 11-ton satellite in its lonely journey around
Earth. The $14 million package has no on-board propulsion systems or ability to
transmit signals.