sjb (07/02/82)
The doors are closed. After they were closed, mission control said that the ship could not land with them ajar (as I had said earlier) Wind turbulence, they said, would have torn the ship apart. The astronauts were then told that, if they had to make an emergency landing at any time, they should turn the ship top-towards-the-sun to bake the doors for as long as possible to ensure that they could close. The space shuttle Challenger was formally given to NASA yesterday, and today it made its first voyage: from its hangar to EAFB. There it will meet its sister, the Columbia, on Sunday.