by Jay Chladek
For Spacelab to maximize its potential, it required development of an improved communication and relay system. Previously, spacecraft in Earth orbit had relied on ground-based tracking stations and ships to communicate with control centers. This system had been adequate, but there were several periods when a spacecraft’s orbit would take it out of range of most tracking stations. The Skylab and Salyut programs both made use of computer tapes to record and store data collected from the experiments, which could be “data dumped” to the ground when the orbiting spacecraft got within range of a tracking station.
While Spacelab would have a similar capability for data storage, almost-continuous two-way communications would help to maximize coordination between astronauts in orbit and investigators on the ground during relatively short-duration shuttle missions. That way if a problem cropped up, a payload specialist was not sitting around idle waiting for the next communications pass to find out how to correct it. Modifications to experiments could be coordinated with the ground much more quickly as well.
With the success of the ATS-6 satellite’s use during the ASTP mission, NASA set out to create the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) network to replace the ground stations. The TDRSes are stationed in geosynchronous orbits around Earth at about 22,300 miles up, meaning they orbit around Earth at the same speed that the planet rotates. One satellite can provide up to forty-five minutes of voice and data coverage between a shuttle and the ground. Two satellites with one each stationed over Earth’s Eastern and Western hemispheres can provide 80 percent total coverage. A third satellite accommodates the final 20 percent and acts as a backup to the other two.
The first TDRS was launched on 4 April 1983 on mission STS-6 by the space shuttle Challenger. Deployment of the satellite occurred on schedule, but its inertial upper stage (IUS) rocket motor malfunctioned, stranding the satellite in a useless, high elliptical orbit. All was not lost, though. The TDRS was loaded with a large supply of thruster propellant, and a plan was developed to use the thrusters to carefully nudge it into the proper orbit over the next several months. The contingency plan worked, and TDRS-A was open for business, ready to support the first Spacelab mission. The second TDRS wouldn’t be ready to fly until after Spacelab had flown its first four missions.
Spacelab Flies
The science crew for Spacelab was originally selected in 1978 in anticipation of a mission sometime in 1980 or 1981, but delays with development of the shuttle meant that it would not fly until 1983. Owen Garriott and Bob Parker would act as mission specialists, while Ulf Merbold would be the ESA’s payload specialist. Joining them on the flight would be payload specialist Byron Lichtenberg, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with several doctorate degrees in science. In addition to his MIT role, he was also an air force reserve fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran with over two hundred combat missions to his credit. Given his background, Lichtenberg probably could have joined NASA as a mission specialist, if that had been his desire. He would be the first U.S. payload specialist to fly during the shuttle program.
The flight crew was selected in 1982. The commander for Spacelab 1’s mission was John Young, an Apollo mission veteran fresh off his command of STS-1, the first flight of the shuttle program. STS-9 would be Young’s sixth space mission. Joining Young would be shuttle pilot Brewster Shaw, an air force veteran combat pilot and one of NASA’s first class of shuttle astronauts selected in 1978. Even though the science work would take place in the payload bay, it would be up to the flight crew to make sure Columbia was flying in the proper attitudes for the required tests and data collection.
Spacelab 1’s mission would conduct a large amount of science in many fields. There were over seventy experiments in five major scientific disciplines from astronomy to life sciences. Nearly half of them would be materials-processing experiments. Garriott’s and Parker’s Skylab experiences, both in orbit and on the ground, allowed them to have a hand in selection of the first experiments to fly. The mission specialists would also take on the role of on-orbit repairmen. If Spacelab’s equipment had problems and repair was possible, it would be up to the mission specialists to do the work.
The principal investigators on the ground and the support teams would occupy a room at the Johnson Space Center known as the Payload Operations Control Center (POCC). This way, they could get real-time data from the lab and maintain two-way voice contact for experiment matters that didn’t require a mission control capsule communicator, or CAPCOM. During Spacelab’s early days, there was back-and-forth discussion between the NASA centers as to who would host the scientists, since both Houston and Huntsville wanted a stake in that area. For the first missions, only JSC would have a POCC, as the program had a limited budget. But with the sheer number of people crammed into the facility to support the first missions (which required twenty tons of air-conditioning to keep both the ground computers and the people from overheating), it was finally concluded that the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville should have its own POCC as well. Known later as the Payload Operations Center (POC), Marshall’s facility still operates today in support of the International Space Station program.
35. The Spacelab 1 crew in orbit. Pictured (clockwise from the top) are Parker, Young, Merbold, Garriott, Shaw, and Lichtenberg. Courtesy NASA.
After a few minor delays, launch day finally came on 11 November 1983. The VIP crowds for this launch were a little larger than others, given that many representatives from the ESA and NASA, both active and retired, were on hand to witness it in person in addition to the thousands of spectators that lined the roads and beaches around KSC. This would be Columbia’s fifth trip into space and its first after a minor refit at the conclusion of its first four test missions.
At precisely 11:00 EST, Columbia rose from Launch Complex 39A; after an eight-and-a-half-minute ride into orbit, it injected itself into a fifty-seven-degree orbital inclination 187 miles high. At launch, the Spacelab module and its pallet loaded with experiments weighed a little over sixteen tons. It was the heaviest shuttle payload to date. Data collection began immediately as Lichtenberg and Merbold were both wired up with bio-medical headgear to monitor their eye movements during liftoff and ascent. The lab itself was open for business within three hours of reaching orbit.
For missions like this, where around-the-clock observations would be conducted, the crew was divided up into two teams. There would be some overlap, but mostly it would be one team doing experiments in the module with a pilot-astronaut flying the shuttle while the other crew would rest on the shuttle’s middeck. The red team consisted of astronauts Young, Merbold, and Parker, while the blue team was made up of astronauts Shaw, Garriott, and Lichtenberg. To do this, the teams had their sleep cycles adjusted on the ground a few days before the mission. Dividing the crew up into two teams and adjusting sleep schedules would become standard practice for future shuttle missions involving around-the-clock science.
During the mission, the science gathering went well, although it was marred from time to time by problems primarily with the Spacelab’s computer when it ran too hot. Bob Parker also had to play orbital mechanic when the high-rate data recorder jammed. Without the recorder, data collection for most of the scientific experiments would have been severely hampered, other than the results transmitted to the ground during communications passes (which were limited by the lack of total TDRS coverage). Parker managed to carefully disassemble the recorder, remove the jam, and return it to normal functioning. Experiments early in the mission primarily focused on Earth observation, with the shuttle’s payload bay pointed downward, and medical studies into space adaptation syndrome.
The second phase of the flight had the Spacelab oriented toward space and cold soaked to see if any problems would develop during the astronomy experiments. All systems continued to work well, although the lab did make some popping noises as it underwent oil-canning expansion and contraction in the changing temperatures. This startled its occupants somewhat. In his downtime,
Owen Garriott performed an experiment of his own, using a ham radio to contact amateur radio operators on Earth, including King Hussein of Jordan.
The mission was originally scheduled to last nine days, with eight of them scheduled for Spacelab experiments. But since the consumables loaded were lasting longer than expected, it was decided to extend the flight by one day to help finish some of the experiments that were running behind and to perform additional experiments with the equipment on board. On the eighth day of the flight, the Spacelab was hot soaked to conduct solar-observation experiments, with Columbia’s cargo bay pointed toward the sun. After a day of this, the bay was again pointed toward Earth to finish up the Earth-observation experiments. The final day on orbit before landing consisted of additional engineering checkouts of the lab complex. It performed better than expected.
Columbia itself had some problems on its return to Earth. During a hot-fire test of the shuttle’s reaction control system in preparation for reentry, two of the shuttle’s general-purpose computers crashed due to a ball of loose solder inside causing a short. One general-purpose computer was restarted successfully; after a delay of a few hours to verify that it would work properly, Columbia executed a normal reentry and landed safely. However, two additional problems were discovered after landing.
First, leaking hydrazine from one of the shuttle’s auxiliary power units produced a small fire about fifteen minutes after touchdown. A second and potentially more serious problem, which wasn’t reported at the time, involved Columbia’s left-hand orbital maneuvering system (OMS) pod. The pod experienced a breach in its thermal protection during reentry as a hole was burned through it down to the graphite structure. Just behind the skin at the front of the pod sat the hypergolic fuel and oxidizer tanks for the OMS engine and thrusters on that side. If those tanks had been breached during reentry, the entire pod could have caught fire and perhaps exploded, potentially dooming the shuttle with critical damage.
Wind tunnel analysis after the flight determined that ice buildup on the shuttle’s waste-water discharge chutes might have caused a disturbance to the shuttle’s plasma flow on reentry, which resulted in a localized hot spot on the front of the left OMS pod. To remedy this, engineers replaced the white tiles in spots on the front of both OMS pods with higher-temperature black ones for future shuttle missions.
Overall, Spacelab performed better than expected. The engineering evaluation of the lab complex achieved 100 percent of its test objectives. Science goals in the various disciplines studied on orbit ranged from 65 percent to over 90 percent depending on the experiments themselves. The low percentage on some of the mission goals were due to some small glitches and equipment failures, but this was to be expected, given that it was the first flight of a new system. NASA judged the mission an overwhelming success.
Spacelab 3, the Second Spacelab Mission
Due to delays in the development of the IPS, a major piece of equipment needed for the pallet-only Spacelab 2 mission, it was decided to fly the second pressurized laboratory mission next. This flight would be a NASA-only mission with no ESA participation, although the French agency CNES would have some experiments flying on board. While Spacelab 1 was a jack-of-all-trades mission to test out the shuttle and Spacelab in many different disciplines, Spacelab 3 would focus more heavily on only five specific fields: materials science, life science, fluid mechanics, and atmospheric and astronomical observation.
MOL veteran Robert Overmyer was in command of the mission, with Fred Gregory as pilot. Class of 1967 scientist-astronauts Don Lind and Dr. William Thornton would fly as mission specialists. Lind had a nineteen-year wait after astronaut selection before flying, while Thornton had flown on a previous shuttle mission. They were joined by another mission specialist, Dr. Norman Thagard. Thagard was a medical doctor and a physicist. Thagard also served as a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps Reserve, and his résumé included combat missions flying F-4s during the Vietnam War. He was selected as part of the first class of shuttle astronauts in 1978.
Joining them for the flight would be payload specialists Taylor Wang and Lodewijk van den Berg. Wang was the first Chinese American astronaut, as he was born in mainland China in 1940 before his family moved to Taiwan in 1952. After achieving his doctorate in low-temperature physics, or superfluid and solid-state physics, Wang joined Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a center operated in partnership with NASA) in 1972 as a senior scientist and became a U.S. citizen in 1975. For Spacelab 3 he performed several experiments in the behavior of fluid spheres in a zero-g environment.
Lodewijk van den Berg at first glance did not look like the typical astronaut as he was fifty-three years old (making him the oldest space rookie at the time), had a rather skinny build, and wore thick glasses. Van den Berg held both a master’s degree and a PhD in applied science, and he was the first astronaut born in the Netherlands to fly in space, although residents of the country consider Wubbo Ockels to be their first astronaut since van den Berg was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of his flight.
While working for U.S. defense contractor EG&G Energy Measurements, van den Berg created a vapor-crystal growth experiment that caught the eye of NASA. He was asked to select eight scientists who were familiar with the experiment to become candidates for payload specialist to run the experiment on orbit. It was felt that it would be easier to train a scientist familiar with crystal growth to become an astronaut than to do the reverse. Van den Berg could only come up with seven candidates; so at the urging of a colleague, he put himself on the list as well to fill out the roster. No one, not even van den Berg himself, figured he would be picked. Surprisingly, van den Berg along with one other EG&G scientist made the cut. After months of training, van den Berg was told that he was a prime crewmember for Spacelab 3.
36. The Spacelab 3 crew inside a training mock-up. Standing (back row, left to right) are Lind, Wang, Thagard, Thornton, and van den Berg. Sitting (in front) are Overmyer and Gregory. Courtesy NASA.
In addition to the seven astronauts, Spacelab 3’s science payload included cages filled with twelve squirrel monkeys and twenty-four rats to measure their adaptation to space. This live cargo was loaded the day before launch, using an elaborate chair rig erected vertically in the lab at the launchpad. This mission would last seven days, with six of them devoted to science.
Spacelab 3 launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle Challenger for mission STS-51B on 29 April 1985. Again the mission was very successful, with most of its scientific goals being achieved. Some highlights included using a laser spectrometer to analyze Earth’s ozone layer. Taylor Wang’s fluid-drop experiments got off to a slow start due to equipment failures, but he lobbied NASA to try to fix his equipment and was successful in repairing the problems. Van den Berg’s crystal growth experiments seemed to perform quite well also.
The monkeys and rats stole most of the headlines, though, as the crew spent a lot of their time cleaning up food particles and feces that leaked from the animal cages when their supply troughs were opened for feeding and cleaning. Two of the monkeys got sick once they reached orbit. One recovered after a day, but the second one wasn’t doing so well and would not eat. William Thornton successfully nursed it back to health by hand-feeding it during his off-duty time until it was healthy again. Problems were also encountered with the lab’s scientific airlock. And the primary experiment computer crashed, but the backup computer worked without any problems. The space shuttle Challenger itself also performed with no problems and landed successfully with the 213,000-pound Spacelab in its cargo bay, encountering none of the reentry problems experienced by Columbia on STS-9.
After analyzing the data, NASA judged the science gathering during the Spacelab 3 mission to be a total success. But due to the problems encountered with the animal cages on this flight, it was decided not to fly any more live animals above a certain size, because the cages were apparently not up to keeping the contents inside. Part of the problem apparently was due to the animals’ som
ersaults inside the cages, causing turbulence that overwhelmed the system’s containment fans. The astronauts were also not too keen on having to spend hours cleaning up monkey and rat poop. From that point on, typically only small biological samples or insects would fly on life science missions.
Spacelab 2
The first Spacelab flight to feature an all-pallet configuration with the long-delayed Instrument Pointing System was finally ready to fly in July of 1985 aboard space shuttle Challenger as part of shuttle mission STS-51F. The IPS was delivered in November of 1984 with a number of tasks still left unfinished (mostly software related). The IPS had an X-ray telescope mounted in it. The other two pallets were outfitted with plasma detectors, a helium-cooled infrared telescope, and a superfluid helium experiment.
A plasma diagnostics package that could be grappled by the shuttle’s RMS (remote manipulator system) was also fitted. This package had originally flown on STS-3. By using the RMS, the shuttle could move the package around the orbiter to measure the plasma interactions between the orbiter and the trace gases surrounding it. An electron-beam gun was also fitted to fire arcs at the diagnostics package as well to see how the energy wave would react in space. The crew would also conduct their fair share of biomedical experiments on the shuttle’s middeck.
STS-51F’s crew consisted of STS-3 veteran Gordon Fullerton as commander and rookie pilot Roy Bridges Jr. Joining them were mission specialists Story Musgrave and Karl Henize from the 1967 XS-11 class, along with rookie mission specialist Anthony England. The payload specialists were Loren Acton and John-David Bartoe. As with the other Spacelab flights, the crew would be divided into red and blue teams, but with Fullerton being available for any major changes to the shuttle’s orientation. This would be a bit different from the other Spacelab flights, though, given that the flight deck and middeck would both be utilized for experiments. The medical data collection was scheduled for when both sets of crews were awake so as not to interfere with scheduled sleep periods.