davy (11/18/82)
#N:pur-ee:3800006:000:2323
pur-ee!davy Nov 17 18:34:00 1982
From the Purdue Exponent 11/17/82:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - After five flights and 10 million miles,
space shuttle Columbia is going into the shop for an overhaul - giving way,
temporarily, to the second ship in NASA's fleet.
Even with Columbia out of action for 10 months, the space agency's launch
schedule is to increase to five, maybe six, next year. Challenger will
handle all but one of the 1983 missions.
Columbia will return late this week to Kennedy Space Center here where
technicians must modify the ship to make the cabin habitable for carrying a
six-person Spacelab crew. Workers will remove the bulky equipment and
instrumentation used during the ship's development flights.
At about the time Columbia is towed into its overhaul hangar, Challenger
will move next door to into the giant Vehicle Assembly Building to be mated
with twin booster rockets that will propel it into space in late January.
The next three flights are Challenger's - and the ship, like Columbia, is
scheduled to log a number of firsts for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration:
- First spaceship fleet, Challenger's debut in flight 6.
- First American woman in space, flight 7 in April.
- First genuine roundtrip - landing on the shuttle runway at the
Kennedy Space Center here, scheduled for the same flight.
- First nighttime landing, flight 8 in July.
- First black astronaut, same flight.
Suit failures forced the fifth Columbia crew to cancel a space walk on
Monday, and a top NASA official said Tuesday that it might be rescheduled
as early as Challenger's maiden flight in January.
"If we can't do it then, we'll do it on the seventh flight," said James
Abrahamson, associate administrator for space flight.
The program began with Columbia's launch in April 1981. The second flight
came seven months later, followed by three flights in 1982. Next year, five
or six, with the rate increasing to 12 in 1984 and 16 in 1985, when two
other shuttles will be flying.
On Jan. 24 (although that could slip into February), a four-person
Challenger crew is to deploy a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite to serve
as a relay station between the ground and as many as 100 orbiting
satellites, including shuttles.