rjnoe@ihlts.UUCP (Roger Noe) (10/10/84)
Space shuttle mission 41-G may be extended by one day so that Challenger can land at Kennedy Space Center. Hurricane Josephine is still slowly moving toward the Florida coast. NASA officials will decide today whether or not to extend the mission. If the decision is made to extend, the EVA scheduled for tomorrow will be delayed another day, to Friday. David Leestma and Kathryn Sullivan are currently scheduled to perform their extravehicular fuel transfer experiment Thursday, October 11 beginning about 11:00 a.m. EDT. Current landing time is set for 12:25 p.m. EDT Saturday. The failure of the TDRS satellite was traced to human error on the ground, not to cosmic radiation as was first believed. Apparently some Spacecom, Inc. employees at White Sands, N.M. forgot to adjust TDRS to compensate for a lunar "intrusion" and the satellite got misdirected by the moon and strayed from its appointed position in geosynchronous orbit. This explains why it took over 8 hours to restore proper functioning. -- Roger Noe ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe