A little goodwill for G* (see bold). Shuttle Roars Into History After Launch Problems
Friday July 23 5:09 AM ET
By Brad Liston
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The space shuttle Columbia, carrying the first female space
commander, Eileen Collins, roared into orbit early Friday after a far from perfect launch.
A raft of problems plagued Columbia during its eight-minute climb to outer space.
NASA said the problems started at liftoff when Collins noticed a problem with electrical power flowing
to the shuttle's engines, said Donald McMonagle, a shuttle program manager for the space agency.
A short circuit lasting about half a second knocked out computers that controlled two of the shuttle's
three engines.
Backup computers kept the engines working, and the loss of power should have no impact on the mission, NASA said.
More troublesome was that Columbia ran short of liquid oxygen fuel -- about 4,000 pounds short. That caused the shuttle's
engines to shut off ''less than three or four seconds'' sooner than planned, McMonagle said.
''The cause is not known,'' he said, but a review would look at how the fuel was loaded and whether mission managers'
calculations were in error.
''Keep in mind that's 4,000 pounds out of about 1.2 million pounds'' carried in the shuttle's massive external fuel tank,''
McMonagle said. He compared it to the 20-gallon gas tank of an automobile running short by half a pint.
But Columbia was left in an orbit seven miles lower than intended, a difference that can be made up using fuel carried
aboard the orbiter itself.
A video screen shared by Collins and pilot Jeff Ashby also failed, but other screens can be used for the data readouts used
during the mission.
Columbia blasted off at 12:31 a.m. EDT, with Collins, 42, at the helm, after two earlier launch attempts were halted late in
the countdown -- Tuesday because of a technical glitch and Thursday because of stormy weather.
With the shuttle racing into orbit at over 8,000 mph, Collins was in charge of the shuttle from her post in the forward
portside seat of the flight deck -- the commander's seat, always occupied by men on past launches.
NASA took 38 years to put a woman in charge of a space flight. The Soviet Union launched a woman, Valentina
Tereshkova, into orbit aboard a one-person Vostok spacecraft in 1963, but she was not allowed to take the controls, as
male cosmonauts were.
Collins was joined in the crew cabin by Ashby and mission specialists Steven Hawley, Cady Coleman and Michel Tognini, a
French astronaut.
Their mission is to launch the four-story Chandra X-Ray Observatory from Columbia's cargo bay about seven hours into the
mission. The $1.5 billion, 50,000-pound science satellite and its two-stage booster rocket are the heaviest payload ever put
aboard a shuttle.
Collins, an Air Force colonel and mother, grew up in Elmira, New York, watching ''Star Trek'' and ''Lost in Space'' on
television. [!!] She said in an interview before the flight that reading about the first female military pilots who flew cargo runs
during World War II inspired her to a career in aviation.
Tuesday, NASA halted the launch just six seconds before blastoff when managers thought there was a potential leak of
explosive hydrogen fuel. It turned out to be a false alarm.
A lightning storm Thursday moved within 10 miles of the launch site late in the countdown, causing a second scrub.
NASA officials got the chance for a third try when the U.S. Air Force and Boeing Co. agreed to postpone a commercial
launch to allow NASA one more crack at putting Chandra into orbit.
Chandra mission scientists took the delays in stride.
''When you've waited 20 years to get the X-ray telescope on orbit, one additional day isn't something to get particularly
concerned about,'' said Earle Huckins, deputy associate administrator of NASA's space science office.
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, her daughter, Chelsea, and members of the U.S. women's world champion soccer team
were present for the first two launch attempts but not for Friday's launch.
Among those who were on hand was Lalitha Chandrasekhar, the 88-year-old widow of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the
Indian-born astrophysicist known to friends and colleagues simply as Chandra, for whom the satellite was named.
Once deployed, the Chandra satellite's boosters will put it into a highly elliptical orbit that will take it one-third of the way to
the moon, where it can make observations without interference from Earth.
Chandrasekhar was the scientist who predicted an upper limit to the mass of stars, above which they either explode or form
black holes -- points in space so massive that light, energy and matter seem to disappear into them.
The observatory will spend much of its five-year mission studying black holes so dark that scientists get a better look by
studying X-ray emissions from sources near them.
Columbia is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday.
Earlier Stories
Columbia, Collins Make History With Shuttle Launch (July 23)
Space Shuttle Blasts Off, With First Female Chief (July 23)
Shuttle Columbia Launches With Female Commander (July 23)
Columbia Crew Ready For Third Try (July 23)
Third Shuttle Launch Attempt Set For Friday (July 22)
Shuttle Launch Called Off, NASA Tries Again Friday (July 22)
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