alb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) (07/13/84)
NASA today announced that it will combine the aborted mission and its successor into one flight of the Discovery. That flight is now scheduled to launch on 24 August. On Saturday, the shuttle is to be rolled back to the hangar so that two satellites from the second mission can be loaded aboard. The Star-48 nozzle failure earlier this week was attributed to test conditions and was ''probably not due to the nozzle itself,'' said a McDonnel- Douglas statement. Thus, the two satellites will fly; if it is found that the nozzle was indeed at fault, they can always be removed. One Leasat satellite from mission 1, in addition to the space solar panel and pharmaceutical experiments, will be retained; a second Leasat satellite will be moved to the 1 October launch of the Challenger (beginning with the 1 October launch, shuttle are scheduled to fly at least once a month.) The crew for the combined mission will be the crew from mission 1, commanded by Henry Hartsfield; the crew from mission 2 will be reassigned as soon as possible.
rjnoe@ihlts.UUCP (Roger Noe) (07/13/84)
I had heard that Leasat-2 would be added to mission 51A, currently set for launch Nov. 2 and that SPARTAN-1 would be put with 41G, to launch Oct. 1. What's the real scoop? And have they made a decision whether or not 51A will really be used to rescue Westar 6 and/or Palapa B-2 or will it just deploy its Telesat of Canada comsat and run its experiments (including the GAS stuff)? -- Roger Noe ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe
alb@alice.UUCP (07/13/84)
Conflicting reports are not new. I'll try to get more information on Leasat-2. 51A will only rescue Westar-6 and Palapa-B if the owners pay for the rescue mission. So far, I've not heard that they intend to do so.