rabahy%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (10/27/84)
From: rabahy%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (David Rabahy) Associated Press Thu 25-OCT-1984 11:50 Space Shuttle Successful Practice Countdown For Discovery's Next Launch CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - A successful practice countdown was conducted today for the space shuttle Discovery's Nov. 7 launch on a mission to deploy two communications satellites and retrieve two others from incorrect orbits. The four men and one woman who will fly the mission climbed aboard the shuttle for the final 21/2 hours of the test, which ended at the time Discovery's rocket engines would have been ignited had the launch been real. ``Everything proceeded very well in this dress rehearsal,'' reported Jim Ball, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Spae Administration. ``We're now ready to proceed toward Discovery's second journey into space.'' Astronaut Rick Hauck commands the crew, which also includes pilo David Walker and mission specialists Anna Fisher, Joseph Allen and Dale Gardner. Early in the eight-day flight, the astronauts will release commercial communications satellites for Telesat of Canada and Hughes Communications Services Inc. Then Allen and Gardner, wearing jet-propelled back packs, will fly free of Discovery to recover the Palapa B2 and Westar 6 satellites, which were fired into useless orbits by faulty rockets after they were deployed by another shuttle crew last February. Insurance underwriters are paying NASA $5.5 million to retrieve the satellites and return them to Earth for refurbishment.