Verification Flight Test One

Abstract

Four days past Thanksgiving, on 28 November 1983, six men in bright blue flight suits strode from KSC’s Operations and Checkout Building into a bewildering blaze of media flashbulbs. Leading the sextet was John Young, chief of NASA’s astronaut corps, veteran Moonwalker and the first human to leave Earth a sixth time. His pilot was Brewster Shaw, an excited rookie’s grin cleaving his face from ear to ear.

SELECTING SPACELAB’S FIRST CREW

Four days past Thanksgiving, on 28 November 1983, six men in bright blue flight suits strode from KSC’s Operations and Checkout Building into a bewildering blaze of media flashbulbs. Leading the sextet was John Young, chief of NASA’s astronaut corps, veteran Moonwalker and the first human to leave Earth a sixth time. His pilot was Brewster Shaw, an excited rookie’s grin cleaving his face from ear to ear.

These two military pilots—Young a Korean War aviator, Shaw a decorated Vietnam War veteran—were followed by four civilian scientists. Mission specialists were electrical engineer and former U.S. Navy electronics officer Owen Garriott and astronomer Bob Parker. And this particular flight marked the debut of a new subset of crewmember, the payload specialist: a non-professional astronaut chosen by academia or industry for specific experiments. Rounding out Young’s crew were Byron Lichtenberg, a former Air Force fighter pilot and biomedical engineer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Ulf Merbold, a West German physicist from the Max-Planck Institute in Stuttgart. Merbold, who fled East Germany as a teenager, just before the rise of the Berlin Wall, became the first non-American to fly on a U.S. spacecraft. STS-9, the ninth voyage of the Shuttle and the sixth by Columbia, was also the first to fly six crewmembers. “For the first time in spaceflight,” Young joked, “the doctors outnumber the pilots, four to two.”

On 1 August 1978, six men—four payload specialist candidates from Europe and the United States and the two NASA mission specialists—were identified for Spacelab-1. The lead mission specialist was Garriott, a Skylab veteran and deputy director of NASA’s Science and Applications Directorate since August 1974. That role saw him work extensively on Spacelab’s early evolution. Parker was a former astronomy professor from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He had not flown in space yet accrued a wealth of expertise on the ground, including ASSESS-I and chief of the astronaut corps for the Science and Applications Directorate since August 1974.

As outlined in Chapter Two, the mission specialist had crystallised into a co-ordinator for Spacelab scientific activities and a representative of the crew at high-level meetings on the ground. In November 1974, NASA noted that a high degree of usefulness existed in having astronauts who were also professional scientists to oversee experiments and address payload issues with principal investigators. In time, this leadership role would evolve into the ‘payload commander’, a common staple of later Spacelab flights. “We’re the eyes and ears and hands of the guys on the ground,” Parker said. “If they want us to turn that switch, and do this thing this way, we’ll do it for them.”

When Garriott and Parker joined Spacelab-1, their launch had shifted inexorably to the right. In May 1977, NASA outlined up to six Shuttle test flights, with Spacelab-1 “probably” on the seventh mission in May 1980, “unless another flight test was needed”. A year later, with Garriott and Parker assigned, launch had moved into “the early 1980s”—Parker privately anticipated flying in 1981—for a seven-day mission. But as the Shuttle’s maiden voyage slipped, so Spacelab-1 slipped in tight lockstep. By May 1980, launch was aimed for late 1982; by July 1980, it had moved to May 1983; and by April 1982, it was scheduled for September 1983. “To some extent, training expands to fill the vacuum,” said Parker. “To other extent, we basically had a year when we weren’t doing a whole lot of training for it. It was kind of a year’s hiatus. It didn’t mean we didn’t do anything, but we just really weren’t terribly active during that year.”

Selecting four payload specialist candidates—primes and backups from the United States and Europe—fell to an Investigators Working Group (IWG) of 35 principal investigators, one for each Spacelab-1 experiment, chaired by Mission Scientist Rick Chappell of MSFC. In September 1977, ESA chose 53 candidates from 12 European nations for ‘its’ seat, with an expectation that six finalists would be selected for testing and evaluation by NASA in January-April 1978, then reduced to three by mid-1978. One would be picked shortly before launch, with the other pair serving as backups.

Meanwhile, the United States was busy choosing its own candidates. In November 1977, 18 U.S. scientists (including NASA’s Bill Thornton) entered consideration. And on 22 December six U.S. and four European candidates were chosen as Spacelab-1 finalists. In addition to Lichtenberg, they included JSC flight surgeon Craig Fischer, physicist Mike Lampton, meteorologist Robert Menzies, astronomer Richard Terrile and physicist Ann Whitaker. Competing for the ESA seat with Merbold were Italian physicist Franco Malerba, Swiss astrophysicist Claude Nicollier and Dutch physicist Wubbo Ockels.

On 1 June 1978, Lichtenberg and Lampton were formally selected by the Payload Specialist Selection Group (PSSG), a subgroup of the IWG, as the U.S. candidates for Spacelab-1, following a two-day meeting at MSFC. “Thus, the researchers who designed and built the experiments and who are to analyse the results,” wrote Walter Froehlich, “helped select from their peers the two in-flight specialists who are to be in charge of carrying out research in orbit.” It honoured an oft-stated NASA pledge that on the Shuttle, scientists would get to operate their own hardware in space. At the same time, Merbold, Ockels and Nicollier were selected for Europe’s payload specialist place. According to Michael Cassutt in The Astronaut Maker, ESA hoped all three might fly Spacelab-1, alongside a NASA commander, pilot and mission specialist. (Certainly, physician-astronaut Joe Kerwin had long pushed for at least one NASA mission specialist to lead the payload crew on this highly complex scientific voyage.) But as the Shuttle evolved, it became apparent that a ‘basic’ crew needed two pilots and two mission specialists. The result was that ESA got not three payload specialist seats on Spacelab-1, but just one.

As well as a difficult pill to swallow for ESA, this decision proved tough, politically, for France—Spacelab’s second highest financial sponsor—as no French candidate made the cut. “The French president was very upset with that result, because France is a main contributor to ESA and half of the French space budget goes to ESA,” said French astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien. “It was the first time Europe was selecting astronauts and the express [wish was] for scientists…they were looking for pure scientists.” When the selections were made, pure scientists were picked, but the successful applicants also had flying experience. “All these guys had it,” Chrétien said, “but the guys that France had selected were pure scientists, so they were eliminated.”

Training began in October 1978, with orientation tours at various U.S. and European sites, ahead of briefings from January 1979. That June, the two mission specialists and five payload specialist candidates conducted a three-day crew station review in the Spacelab mockup at MSFC. It sought to “evaluate experiment designs, together with written procedures…[to] ensure proper crew-equipment interface, especially the location of switches, controls and displays”. And in July 1980, the United States and Europe agreed to train Nicollier and Ockels as fully fledged mission specialists, with ESA reimbursing the costs. This decision was induced by the Spacelab-1 delays and “in recognition of ESA’s contribution to the STS in funding Spacelab development”. However, NASA Administrator Robert Frosch made clear to ESA Director General Erik Quistgaard that Spacelab-1 took priority over the mission specialist training program. The pair concluded their training in September 1981. Ockels resumed his Spacelab-1 payload specialist duties in January 1982, but Nicollier remained on the mission specialist ‘track’.

“These were essentially payload-operating people, but they were also going to operate a lot of the Spacelab equipment,” remembered Mel Brooks. “I argued like crazy with the Europeans that they should define the requirements according to the mission specialists, because that’s the only way you’ll ever get them to be considered as astronauts…if you get them into the mission specialist training and get their wings. Otherwise, they will be forever passengers and scientists.” Brooks got Nicollier and Ockels into mission specialist training, but not Merbold, an eventuality he ascribed to George Abbey, JSC’s director of flight crew operations. According to Cassutt, ESA’s willingness to pay for the mission specialist training left Abbey with little choice but to agree. Ockels did not stay on the mission specialist track for long. “When I had to make the [payload specialist] selection for…the first Spacelab flight, we had to bring one of them back,” Brooks said. “Wubbo and Claude decided that Claude should stay, because he was a pilot and more acceptable to the NASA people”. And Merbold, wrote Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas in Come Fly With Us, “could not meet the medical requirements to become a mission specialist” (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1:

Spacelab-1 prime and backup payload specialist candidates inspect a model of the module and pallet combination. From left to right are Wubbo Ockels, Ulf Merbold, Mike Lampton, Claude Nicollier and Byron Lichtenberg.

Spacelab-1 training expanded on 20 April 1982, with Young and Shaw named as commander and pilot. And the following 20 September, Merbold and Lichtenberg were picked for the European and U.S. payload specialist seats. “Winners,” noted MSFC, “were chosen in secret ballot by a panel of 36 U.S. and European scientists.”

“I was thrilled to have a flight assignment,” said Shaw. “I was more thrilled to be able to fly with John Young.” But there was uncertainty from the scientists. “He’s motivated differently,” Garriott said of Young. “Standard sort of prototypical test pilot.” But Young “really jumped in and assisted with the conduct of the science…we all really enjoyed having him on board”. A lesser man than Shaw might have felt a pang of intimidation flying with America’s premier astronaut, but the pair knew each other’s capabilities. “John knew I could fly airplanes,” Shaw said, “and I figured that wasn’t an issue.”

A SCIENTIFIC BONANZA

As the crew gelled, so too did an ambitious mission. A collaborative venture between NASA and ESA, Spacelab-1 comprised a pressurised ‘long’ module and single pallet with five scientific focuses: atmospheric physics/Earth observation, space plasma physics, materials science/technology, astronomy/solar physics and life sciences. In March 1976, NASA issued a request for proposals and the following July identified an 80-strong academia/industry team to examine the tendered responses, after which the Space Science Steering Committee selected a group of investigations for Spacelab-1. In February 1977, after evaluating 2,000 proposals, NASA and ESA chose 222 scientists from the United States and 14 other nations (including India, Canada, France, Belgium, Austria and Norway) to participate in the mission. By August 1978, when Garriott et. al. were named, the mission featured “about 40 experiments”. This figure tightened by May 1980 to 37 experiments—13 from NASA, 24 from ESA—with each agency allocated 3,000 pounds (1,400 kilograms) of hardware. Another experiment was added by September 1982, bringing the total to 38, supporting 71 investigations. Managing the U.S. share of the mission was the Solar Terrestrial Division of the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, with ESA’s share overseen by the Spacelab Payload Integration and Co-ordination in Europe (SPICE), based at Porz-Wahn, southeast of Cologne in West Germany.

“The whole mission was oriented towards making clear that the Spacelab…was useful for the whole range of scientific disciplines,” said Garriott. “My interest is interdisciplinary work, so not only a lot of biomedical work, but also astronomy, fluid physics, materials processing, atmospheric sciences: all were represented with differing experiments. I found that quite interesting and I think it does relate to the fact that you need an interdisciplinary background to try to conduct experiments. You need somebody who has got some degree of competency in all of the variety of areas.”

Garriott, Parker, Lichtenberg and Merbold spent a lot of time in West Germany, where most experiments were based. Spacelab-1 represented Europe’s first foray in human spaceflight, a fact not lost on the ESA member-states who had spent a decade making it happen. “Owen and I spent a lot of time going to Europe,” Parker said. “First European mission, so we had to go to every European country that had a piece of it in ESA.” They travelled to Denmark and France, too, but West Germany was the nexus of everything, “so we spent most of our time in Germany”.

Four experiments emphasised atmospheric physics. The Imaging Spectrometric Observatory (ISO), provided by Utah State University, had five spectrometers to investigate oxygen, nitrogen and sodium abundances in the mesosphere and measure atmospheric airglow spectra across extreme ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths. ISO also worked with Spacelab-1’s space plasma physics suite to examine the atmosphere’s vertical structure. The Grille Spectrometer (which used a grille for part of its optical system and a mirror for the other) came from Belgium’s Institut d’Aeronomie Spatiale de Belgique and France’s Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales and sat on the pallet. It studied atmospheric trace constituents (including carbon dioxide, water vapour and ozone) involved in photochemical processes at altitudes between 9-93 miles (15-150 kilometres). And a pair of experiments, both supplied by France’s Service d’Aeronomie du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, photographed cloud-like ‘waves’ in the oxygen-hydrogen emissive layer of the middle atmosphere at 50 miles (85 kilometres) and examined sources of Lyman-alpha emissions using a spectrophotometer (Fig. 3.2).

Fig. 3.2:

View of part of the pallet hardware, as seen through the small window in the Spacelab-1 module’s end-cone. The aft bulkhead of Columbia can be seen behind.

Two Earth observation experiments, provided by Germany and the Netherlands, included the large-film Metric Camera to evaluate high-resolution imaging in space. Mounted by the crew into an optical-quality window in the Spacelab module’s roof, it was operated remotely by ground controllers, with the crew periodically changing its black-and-white and infrared film magazines and filters. And the Microwave Remote Sensing Experiment (MRSE) furnished all-weather radar imagery of Earth’s surface in support of applications from agriculture to fishing and shipping to crop monitoring. It comprised an antenna on the pallet and systems inside the Spacelab module.

Six pallet-based experiments explored space plasma physics. Of these, the most complex was Space Experiments with Particle Accelerators (SEPAC), developed by Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS) and the University of Tokyo. Its ‘electron gun’ investigated ionospheric dynamics, firing pulses of gas and high-intensity electrons to understand atmospheric aurorae, Earth’s magnetic field and charged-particle environment and plasma effects on the Shuttle. Despite the failure of its electron beam assembly in high-power mode, SEPAC achieved almost all its allocated tasks. Another gun, provided by France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, was the Phenomena Induced by Charged Particle Beams (PICPAB), which included an ‘active’ unit on the pallet and a ‘passive’ recorder in the module. Like SEPAC, it produced artificial aurorae and although some data was lost when one of its gas bottles failed, PICPAB’s overall success topped 60 percent. Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories supplied the Atmospheric Emissions Photometric Imaging (AEPI) sensor to observe faint emissions from natural and artificially induced phenomena using a low-level camera/photometer, whilst two German experiments from the Max-Planck Institute and the University of Kiel measured heavy cosmic ray nuclei and low-energy electron ‘echoes’ and a study from the Austrian Academy of Sciences examined magnetic fields in the Shuttle’s environs.

Spacelab-1 also featured three astronomical investigations. The University of California at Berkeley’s Far Ultraviolet Space Telescope (FAUST), situated on the pallet, was a wide-field-of-view instrument tasked with observing faint ultraviolet emissions from distant sources to understand the lifecycles of stars and galaxies. During STS-9, fogged film ruined most of FAUST’s images and a post-flight investigation recommended that its next mission should record incoming photons electronically. But it achieved 95 percent of its planned objectives, including the first far ultraviolet image of the Cygnus Loop, a relatively ‘local’—at 2,400 light-years away—supernova remnant. Both the space plasma physics and astronomy experiments benefitted from a Scientific Airlock (SAL) in the Spacelab module’s roof, which could expose up to 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of hardware to vacuum. At alternate intervals during STS-9, the SAL housed PICPAB’s ‘passive’ detector and the Very Wide Field Camera (VWFC) from France’s Laboratoire d’Astronomie Spatiale in Marseilles, which imaged ten astronomical sources, yielding ultraviolet views of a ‘bridge’ of hot gas between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The third astronomy experiment, a spectrometer from ESTEC in the Netherlands, examined X-ray sources using a gas scintillation proportional counter.

Three other pallet-mounted experiments were devoted to solar physics. JPL’s Active Cavity Radiometer (ACR) measured the Sun’s total ‘irradiance’ (a phenomenon termed the ‘solar constant’) using three detectors spanning far ultraviolet to far infrared wavelengths. The Solar Spectrum (SOLSPEC) from the Service d’aéronomie of France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, tracked the Sun’s output across the electromagnetic range. And the Measurement of Solar Constant (SOLCON), supplied by Belgium’s Institut Royal Météorologique de Belgique, used a high-resolution radiance sensor to trace absolute values of the solar constant.

With these experiments sitting externally atop the pallet, 15 life sciences investigations provided by researchers in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and Switzerland resided inside the module for hands-on interaction from the crew. Spacelab-1 flew a ‘long’ module of two halves. Its ‘core’ segment housed data-processing equipment, a workbench, air-cooled research racks lining its port and starboard walls and a 0.9-foot-wide (30-centimetre) optical-quality Scientific Window Adapter Assembly (SWAA). And its ‘experiment’ segment supplied room for additional research racks and the deployable SAL to expose payloads to space.

Experiment racks were a ‘standard’ 48.2 centimetres (19 inches) wide, roughly refrigerator-sized, and assembled outside the module, checked out as a unit, then slid into the cylindrical shell for integration with subsystems and the primary structure. Between the two walls of racks, a central aisle offered additional floor and ceiling room for experiments. “The racks were pretty much standard,” said Gene Rice. “You either had a drawer in a rack or you had a whole rack or…a double rack, depending on the magnitude or size of the experiment. We would help [customers] through the process of designing their experiment, integrating it into a Spacelab rack, doing the testing that they needed to do. They would have to show that they met the safety requirements to put it into the Spacelab and to fly it.”

Although the core segment could fly alone as a ‘short’ module—usually with pallets—this exceptionally heavy configuration was never used and all module-based missions employed the longer format. With each segment measuring 13.1 feet (4.2 metres) in length, the long module extended to 23 feet (7.5 metres) and its diameter of 13 feet (4.1 metres) snugly fitted the width of the Shuttle’s payload bay. It provided a pressurised volume of 2,600 cubic feet (75 cubic metres). The system was covered with white passive thermal insulation to guard against the temperature extremes of low-Earth orbit and secured by three longeron fittings on the payload bay walls and one keel fitting in the floor. Its truncated end-cones measured 2.6 feet (0.8 metres) deep, with a ‘large’ end of 13.5 feet (4.1 metres) in external diameter and a ‘small’ end of 4.3 feet (1.3 metres). Each cone had three ‘cutouts’, 1.4 feet (0.4 metres) wide: one at the top for a viewport and two at the bottom to support feedthrough plates for utilities.

Connecting the module to the Shuttle’s cockpit was a flexible tunnel, available in two lengths: 8.7 feet (2.7 metres) for short-module missions and 18.9 feet (5.8 metres) for long-module missions. The tunnel had an internal, unobstructed diameter of 3.3 feet (1.1 metres). On short-module missions, the Spacelab sat ‘forward’ in the payload bay (hence the shorter tunnel), but for long-module missions centre-of-gravity constraints dictated it reside further aft. Work on the tunnel started in April 1975, when an early conceptual design from Goodyear, was evaluated; it folded out like an accordion from a stowed length of 1.9 feet (0.6 metres) to a full extent of 14.1 feet (4.3 metres). Rigidised by steel rings, the Goodyear proposal was made from layered aluminium foil, Capran film and nylon, coated with a spongy outer shield to guard against micrometeoroid impacts. These tests validated the strength, airtightness and behaviour of tunnels in space-like environments. Ultimately, McDonnell Douglas was picked to build the tunnel. In April 1977, JSC signed a $3.1 million contract with Rockwell International for tunnel design changes and a subsequent $5.2 million contract covered eight engineering adjustments (Fig. 3.3).

Fig. 3.3:

Close-up view of the tunnel adapter which connected the Spacelab module to the Shuttle’s middeck. Notice the raised ‘joggle’ section, which was incorporated to raise the tunnel to the same level as the module’s access hatch.

Since the access hatch into the Spacelab module sat 3.3 feet (1.1 metres) ‘above’ the level of the Shuttle’s cockpit airlock hatch, a ‘joggle’ section was built into the tunnel to resolve this vertical offset. “The joggle also permitted a small amount of longitudinal movement,” explained Shayler and Burgess, “during the ascent and descent phases of the flight, helped absorb movements caused by the differential expansion rates of the orbiter and Spacelab module and minimised any overstressing that might have occurred in a ‘straight’ tunnel/adapter configuration.”

But this posed another problem. If Young and Garriott needed to go outside on an Extravehicular Activity (EVA)—perhaps to manually close the Shuttle’s payload bay doors in an emergency or retract the SAL if it malfunctioned—the tunnel connected directly to the cockpit, bypassing the airlock. “That changed all our profiles and we had to have another way to do EVA once this tunnel adapter made it to the airlock outer hatch,” remembered tunnel adapter project manager Hank Rotter. An EVA hatch, ducting and pipework was therefore built into the tunnel’s roof to allow spacewalkers to get outside if needed. In such cases, the module would be vacated of crew and its hatch closed—as would the hatch into the Shuttle’s cockpit—allowing Young and Garriott to depressurise the whole tunnel. “We essentially doubled the volume of the airlock by having these two modules…mated together,” said Rotter. “We did those pressure profiles, so we could know how long it would take to depress and repress.”

Spacelab-1’s life sciences haul included dosimeters to measure the extent to which neutrons, protons and highly charged particles penetrated the Spacelab module, an advanced ‘biostack’ of biological materials to assess cosmic radiation effects and 300 microorganisms in four containers for direct exposure to the space vacuum environment.

An MIT-furnished set of vestibular experiments sought to examine the role of body and eye movement and vestibular control in triggering space sickness. It included body restraints, cameras, tape recorders and other tools for visual stimulation and recording of crewmembers’ responses. The experiments proved insightful by linking head movements to space sickness; indeed, three of Spacelab-1’s four scientists suffered varying degrees of the malaise, although, as Douglas Lord commented, many tests sought to drive them to the brink of sickness, “so a high percentage of such problems in this mission would not have seemed unusual”. Other experiments investigated spinal reflexes and the effects of weightlessness upon the inner ear, specifically the ‘otolith’, an organ which helps to maintain humans’ upright posture. Instrumented backpacks holding miniature accelerometers and electrocardiographs assessed heart and respiratory rates and voluntary limb motions during physical activity, whilst belt-worn recorders and head-worn electrodes measured sleep patterns and physiological responses to the rigours of ascent and re-entry.

Blood samples were taken before, during and after the mission to assess immune-system responses, changeability in antibody levels, reductions in circulating red and white blood-cell masses and hormones. Lichtenberg and Merbold measured each other’s central venous pressure using sterile needle strain gauges to record bodily functions known to undergo change in space. Owing to Young and Shaw’s responsibility to land the Shuttle, they were immune to blood draws. “They weren’t supposed to take our blood,” Shaw said, “and I don’t think anybody took any of my blood.” Young joked that whenever he entered the module, he was at risk from needle-toting scientists. “Everytime I came down there, they wanted to draw my blood,” Young drawled, “so I had to leave.”

Closing out Spacelab-1’s life sciences suite was the University of Pennsylvania’s Helianthus annuus experiment, whose dwarf sunflower seedlings flew in a smaller format on STS-2. The State University of New York sponsored an experiment to grow fungus in nutrient-filled tubes, and in complete darkness, to determine if Earth-like day/night circadian rhythms persisted in space-grown plants; it found that they did. And a particularly fond memory for Shaw was the Mass Discrimination During Weightlessness Experiment—provided by psychologist Helen Ross of Scotland’s University of Stirling. This comprised a 20-minute series of tests before, during and after the mission, using 24 small steel balls of equivalent size, but differing mass.

“Helen’s Balls,” exclaimed Shaw, clearly savouring the memory. “She had a bunch of little yellow balls that had different mass, different weight. Since there’s no weight, there’s only mass in zero-gravity, we had to try and differentiate between the mass of these balls. You would take a ball in your hand and you would shake it and you would feel the mass of it by the inertia and the momentum of the ball as you would start and stop the motion. They were numbered as to which was the most massive to the least massive.”

Spacelab-1’s materials science haul came from West Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark. Spearheading the payload was West Germany’s refrigerator-sized Materials Science Double Rack and four furnaces: an isothermal heating facility for 14 solidification, diffusion, metal and composite casting experiments, a gradient heating facility for five crystal growth and unidirectional solidification experiments, a mirror heating facility for four crystallisation experiments featuring silicon and cadmium telluride and a fluid physics module for seven studies on damping, spreading, convection and stability of liquids in weightlessness.

Mel Brooks, who managed the double rack for NASA, recalled a troubled evolution, with issues pertaining to toxicity of its samples, limited clearances and high operating temperatures of 1,600 degrees Celsius (3,000 degrees Fahrenheit). “The more I met with the [MSFC] people, I could see that they were already planning some backup, in case this thing doesn’t fly,” he said. “I had to pull it out of the fire and go through all those gates to get it accepted by NASA and the safety people and all the design reviews. It had everything that would attract the attention of the safety guys and it was a real challenge to get that developed [and] qualified to our own satisfaction that it would work.” Years later, Brooks derived “tons of pleasure” as it performed admirably on Spacelab-1.

But as Bill Thornton found on SMD-III, the astronauts considered themselves little more than laboratory technicians, riding an ever-revolving hamster wheel. “We put materials sealed in cartridges into furnaces, heated, melted, solidified the materials, pushed buttons and started computer programs,” recalled a non-plussed Merbold. But Spacelab-1 comprehensively underscored the need for a ‘man-in-the-loop’. The double rack was a great success, although both the isothermal and mirror heating facilities suffered partial power failures. (“Probably some air in the water loop,” mused Merbold.) Fortunately, the mirror heating facility was later recovered, thanks to maintenance inputs by the crew (Fig. 3.4).

Fig. 3.4:

U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush welcomes the arrival of the first Spacelab flight unit in Florida in February 1982. From left to right are Claude Nicollier, Ulf Merbold, Bush, Wubbo Ockels and Bob Parker. Standing in the background is Owen Garriott.

The Spacelab-1 module and pallet totalled 33,252 pounds (15,265 kilograms), the heaviest payload lifted by the Shuttle at that time. Science operations were co-ordinated from the 4,000-square-foot (370-square-metre) Payload Operations Control Center (POCC) at JSC. For the first time, the POCC enabled principal investigators to talk directly to the astronauts, rather than relaying messages via a CAPCOM in Mission Control. Led by a payload operations director, its team included alternate payload specialists Lampton and Ockels to troubleshoot issues. Instructions from the POCC were sent to the Shuttle’s on-board text and graphics machine or directly to the experiments. Astronaut Bryan O’Connor was lead CAPCOM in Mission Control during STS-9. “It was part of my responsibility to make sure that the CAPCOMs and the equivalent, the folks that were in the POCC talking to the science crew, were co-ordinated,” he said. “We practiced what happens if there’s an emergency or we have to use that communications loop to solve an orbiter problem and the protocols that are used for that: handing off back and forth between them, writing the rules for how we’re going to do that…a lot of planning and co-ordination.”

Generally speaking, the process worked well, although on occasion the crew found themselves overloaded with requests. Parker once lost his patience when the POCC asked him to adjust a medical procedure, recharge a battery, restart a furnace and check an experiment on the pallet, all at the same time. “If you guys would recognise that there are two people up here trying to get all your stuff done,” he snapped, “I think you might be quiet until we got one or the other of them done!”

PREPARING FOR SPACELAB-1

Spacelab-1’s hardware began arriving at KSC in October 1981, when a double-rack-sized life sciences mini-lab was delivered to the Operations and Checkout Building. Modification of this 320,000-square-foot (29,700-square-metre) building for Spacelab started in April 1976, with contracts to Pan American Technical Services for changes to its gaseous nitrogen, helium, high-pressure air, water and air conditioning infrastructure and installation of ESA-provided ground support equipment. Early the following year, NASA contracted with McDonnell Douglas to assemble Spacelab in the building. And in December 1978, NASA announced its intent to physically integrate all Spacelab experiments at KSC.

The mission’s showpiece, the long module and pallet, arrived in Florida on 11 December and an official unveiling ceremony in February 1982 was attended by Vice President George H.W. Bush. “More than 300 invited guests from Europe and the U.S. gathered in the high bay area,” wrote Douglas Lord, “where they could see in the background both the engineering and flight-unit hardware of the Spacelab work stands.” Bush lauded Spacelab as “the fruit of a lot of hard work” and praised Europe’s role in “the largest co-operative space project ever”. He added that “if today can be considered Spacelab’s birthday, then there are a great many proud parents celebrating…let us continue to be partners”.

Elsewhere, Spacelab-1’s research facilities continued to arrive. The high-voltage power supply for SEPAC marked the first major piece of experiment hardware installed onto the pallet. “The experiments were brought in by their various scientific teams,” remembered Spacelab-1 Mission Manager Harry Craft of MSFC. “We would let them check the experiments out initially in an off-line capability and then we’d bring them into a room and just make sure the instrument had met the transportation environment and still worked, [then] they’d turn it over to us.”

By the late summer of 1982, all experiments were installed and a mission sequence test in November verified their compatibility with on-board systems. Seventy-nine continuous hours of the week-long flight were simulated, with ground-support equipment taking the role of Shuttle systems to demonstrate high-data-rate recording and playback functions. In May 1983, the payload was hooked up to cargo interface test equipment, which duplicated the Shuttle’s systems in high-fidelity mode to validate their integrated performance, and in July a closed-loop test was conducted with the POCC. Finally, on 16 August 1983 Spacelab-1 was moved to the OPF and loaded aboard Columbia. The tunnel was installed and compatibility testing was conducted remotely with the POCC. But major design deficiencies cropped up in the command and data-management system, following tests in September 1982. Although these problems were remedied, some U.S. engineers derided Spacelab-1’s computers as “marginal, if not obsolete technology”.

STS-9 was Columbia’s sixth space voyage. Following her fifth flight in November 1982, she was stood down for several months of ‘Spacelab Only’ modifications. In addition to Young and Shaw’s seats, a third (collapsible) seat was added for Parker, who served as flight engineer during ascent and re-entry, assisting the pilots with any anomalies. Three more collapsible seats resided on the middeck for Garriott, Lichtenberg and Merbold. “Seat floor beef-up at attach point of mission specialist and scientist operational seats on crew compartment flight and middeck floor to support 20G crash-load requirements,” noted NASA’s summary of the Spacelab Only modifications. Parker’s dual role as flight engineer enabled him to build a tight relationship with Young and Shaw. “At the same time as we were training on the experiments, I was training, particularly the last year, with Brewster and John on ascents and entries,” Parker said. “For a good last six months or so, I’d be training on Mondays with them doing ascents and entries, fly to [MSFC for] experiment training, fly back and do ascents and entries on Wednesday, back and forth. I got to…keep in touch with them, maybe a lot better than the others.”

As well as extra seats, the Spacelab Only work saw the text and graphics machine fitted, improvements to the Shuttle’s brakes and tyres and structural/electrical upgrades. The payload bay floor was strengthened to handle the module and pallet, payload consoles were added to the aft flight deck and a fifth cryogenic tank was installed. These changes supported a mission which had expanded from seven to nine days. Flight International reported in October 1982 that this helped “relax crew workload”, but ESA had been pushing for the longer flight duration since at least September 1980.

STS-9 added one-third greater complexity to many Mission Control functions over earlier flights, specifically power distribution, life support, cooling and cryogenic consumables. “Management of cryogens for fuel cells,” NASA noted, “will be a more significant duty on this flight, in part because of the power levels to be experienced, but more because consumption must be monitored and budgeted over a longer-duration flight.” Several console occupants found their duties multiplied. The mechanical systems officer, for example, also monitored the Spacelab module’s windows and pressures and venting during the SAL deployment. And a brand-new console, the command and data-management systems officer, was responsible for Spacelab-1’s two main computers.

Three bunk-like sleep stations were fixed to the middeck’s starboard wall, containing sleeping bags and covers for eyes and ears to facilitate restful off-duty hours on a mission intended to operate around the clock for the first time in human spaceflight. Each sleep station included personal storage, a light, ventilation and a retractable privacy door. Plans called for the ‘red’ team of Young, Parker and Merbold to start their first sleep period five hours into the flight, with the ‘blues’ of Shaw, Garriott and Lichtenberg continuing Spacelab-1 activation. The blues would then go to bed 14 hours after launch (Fig. 3.5).

Fig. 3.5:

Spacelab-1’s research racks are prepared for rolling into the module’s pressurized shell in the Operations and Checkout Building.

Typical daily activities saw Young’s team manning the overnight duty from 9:30 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. EST and Shaw’s team running the daytime shift for the opposing dozen hours. Each team’s time entailed eight to ten hours of payload operations, with the remainder devoted to breakfast, lunch or dinner, shift handovers, exercise, daily planning with ground controllers and pre-sleep/post-sleep hygiene. As the mission neared its end, the shifts staggered slightly to ensure that all six men were awake, with Young’s reds finishing their last sleep period 12 hours before landing and Shaw’s blues awakening four hours before landing. “It was just a giant step ahead,” Parker said. “In the old days, [if] we wanted to observe something…we had to wake the crew up two hours early. Now there was always a crew available, so you could do that. And whoever was up, did it.”

On 23 September 1983, Columbia rolled to the VAB for stacking onto her ET and SRBs, then moved to Pad 39A five days later. After a decade of waiting, Spacelab-1 was ready to fly, with liftoff targeted for 28 October.

But fate had other cards to play.

RISE OF THE GREMLINS

On 7 September 1983, an important test—vital to Spacelab-1’s success—was conducted. Controllers in the POCC remotely commanded hardware aboard the module and pallet, which included in the loop both the ground-bound Columbia and a new NASA communications satellite in geostationary orbit. Yet that very satellite conspired to delay STS-9 until the end of 1983, threatening the mission’s scientific harvest with ruin.

An essential pre-requisite for Spacelab was NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS), intended to provide near-continuous voice and data communications between Mission Control and the POCC in Houston with astronauts in space. Positioned in geostationary orbit, at an altitude of 22,300 miles (35,700 kilometres), TDRS replaced a cumbersome worldwide network of ground stations and ships used to track human space missions. As Shuttle development accelerated in the mid-1970s, it was recognised that two satellite relays would afford astronauts reliable voice and data communications for 85 percent of each orbit.

NASA selected TRW as prime contractor to build TDRS in January 1977, with plans for the first satellite to fly in the summer of 1980, well ahead of Spacelab-1. In November 1978, the space agency announced that Spacelab-1 should fly “as soon as feasible” after the first two satellites were in orbit, noting that “an operational TDRS is required by the [Shuttle] in order to initiate the…Spacelab program”. But as the Shuttle’s launch schedule slipped, so too did the first TDRS, which by May 1980 had moved from March to September 1982. For Spacelab-1’s data downlink needs (estimated at 50 megabits per second), NASA desired two functional satellites, the first of which (TDRS-A) was deployed by Shuttle Challenger’s STS-6 crew in April 1983. Unfortunately, its Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) booster failed to lift it to its geostationary perch and left it loitering in a low orbit. Months of firings of the satellite’s tiny thrusters eventually raised TDRS-A to its correct orbit but wasted two-thirds of its station-keeping propellant. Even when operational, it did not fare well: after its communications payload came alive in July 1983, one of its Ku-band single-access diplexers failed, followed by a Ku-band travelling-wave tube amplifier. As such, TDRS-A was not fully functional until December 1984, a year after STS-9.

“Spacelab-1 needs two TDRS in orbit to ensure a complete record of the results of its experiments,” Flight International reported in May 1983. “One estimate suggests that a single TDRS will allow 60-70 percent of Spacelab-1 data to be achieved.” Even after reaching orbit, it demanded months of checkout before it could support any Shuttle mission, much less one as complex as STS-9. “Should Spacelab-1 be flown with only a single relay satellite in place,” Lord rhetorically asked, “or should it be delayed until the two-satellite system was ready?” Many scientists felt a meaningful Spacelab-1 was unattainable without dual-TDRS support. And although the ailing TDRS-A enabled some data-traffic provision, its role was limited. Having just one TDRS in place, said Lord, meant “a number of fingers would be crossed”. But even the second TDRS was no closer to launch. Following the almost-failure of its predecessor, the IUS was grounded for a year of repairs and grounded along with it were its future TDRS passengers.

STS-9 correspondingly slipped from 30 September to 28 October 1983. But more trouble was afoot. Days after Columbia reached the pad, delay struck again. During the STS-8 launch in August, an SRB sustained excessive corrosion in its nozzle ‘throat’, leaving it perilously close to rupture. The fault was traced to a ‘bad’ batch of resin used in the boosters and STS-9 was postponed for repairs. This required a rollback to the VAB on 19 October and disassembly of the boosters to allow engineers to access the nozzles. During the enforced, month-long down-time, Spacelab-1 was serviced and camera films and batteries for several experiments were replaced.

Launch was rescheduled for 28 November but flying so late in the year threatened seven astronomy, space plasma physics, atmospheric and Earth observation experiments. Some required maximum orbital darkness to work, whilst the Earth-observing instruments demanded good visibility and viewing opportunities as autumn turned to winter fell by 60 percent. Others needed darkness at northerly and southerly latitudes. One experiment called for a new Moon on the fifth day of the mission. And the Grille Spectrometer would achieve barely 16 percent of its objectives, thanks to unfavourable viewing conditions in December as opposed to September. “In general,” Flight International opined, “the scientists associated with these experiments would prefer to delay Spacelab-1 until observing conditions are more favourable.” But a later launch was unacceptable to ESA, not only due to potential losses from other experiments, but also the cost of maintaining the hardware at flight-ready levels: an estimated $300,000 for each month of added delay.

Columbia returned to the VAB on 3 November for hoisting astride her ET and SRBs. She returned to the pad on the 8th, targeting a 14-minute ‘launch window’ which opened at 11 a.m. EST on the 28th. Subsequent launch opportunities opened and closed at the same time each successive day until 5 December, after which the daily window duration narrowed to 12 minutes, on account of a requirement for daylight conditions at Columbia’s transoceanic abort landing sites.

RISE OF THE COLUMBIA

Launch morning on the last Monday of November 1983 dawned fine and reasonably dry, despite concerns about thunderstorms over Cape Canaveral. An emergency landing site in Spain, which Young and Shaw would use in the eventuality of a launch abort, was also iffy in terms of weather.

“The causeways were lined with the usual assortment of campers, cars, signs, flags, vendors, public address speakers, portajohns and sunbathers,” wrote Lord. “The VIP stands were filled with enthusiastic supporters of the Spacelab program and a scattering of dignitaries and luminaries from the entertainment, political and international arenas. A thriving business was underway in Spacelab and STS-9 mission mementoes, first-day covers, hats and T-shirts. The huge countdown clock in front of the viewing area moved ever so slowly and paused at the planned holds for what seemed an eternity. Photographers manoeuvred for the best spots and telephoto lenses looked like small howitzers aimed at the distant Shuttle launch complex. The public address announcer droned on with a running monologue of the countdown, but most people concentrated on looking around to see who they could recognise. Members of the Spacelab team not needed in the Launch Control Center...exchanged greetings and wished each other good luck” (Fig. 3.6).

Fig. 3.6:

The STS-9 crew sits down to breakfast in the Operations and Checkout Building on 28 November 1983. From left to right are Ulf Merbold, Bob Parker, John Young, Brewster Shaw, Byron Lichtenberg and Owen Garriott.

Early that morning, Young’s crew awakened, showered and breakfasted in their quarters in the Operations and Checkout Building, then headed to the pad. The six men ascended the elevator to Columbia’s middeck hatch, where technicians assisted them into their seats: Young and Shaw at the front of the flight deck, with its wraparound windows, Parker behind them. Downstairs on the darkened middeck sat Garriott, Lichtenberg and Merbold. The countdown proceeded crisply and at T-31 seconds, command and control was handed over from the ground launch sequencer to Columbia’s four computers, a pivotal moment called ‘autosequence start’. With ground computers now taking a backup role, the Shuttle’s electronic brain monitored hundreds of functions as the final seconds of the countdown sapped away.

“Coming up on the 30-second mark…and we are Go for autosequence start,” intoned the NASA launch commentator, his voice echoing across the KSC bleachers, by now brimming with excitement. “The SRB hydraulic power units have started; these move the solid motor nozzles to steer the vehicle…T-20 seconds…18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12…ten…”

In those final seconds, the gigantic ‘rainbirds’ of the sound suppression system began drenching the pad and flame trench with water, to protect the Shuttle from acoustical energy and rocket exhaust. At ten seconds, sparkler-like igniters swirled to quell unburnt hydrogen gas lurking beneath Columbia’s three main engines.

“…We have a Go for Main Engine Start…eight, seven, six…”

The engines roared alive at 120-millisecond intervals, their low growl intensifying into a thunderous crescendo. A gout of translucent orange flame gave way to three dancing Mach-diamonds, as supersonic exhaust gases surged from the engine-bells. A vast cloud of steam obscured the Shuttle from view, billowing high into the clear morning air. Strapped into their seats, the astronauts braced—“You feel that noise in the cockpit, quite clearly,” Young said later—as they realised they were about to ride a wild animal into space. Within three seconds, the engines attained nominal performance and Columbia’s computers gimballed all three to liftoff configuration.

“We have Main Engine Start,” came the announcer’s call, his voice notching up an octave in pent-up excitement. “Three, two, one and…”

His next words were drowned by the staccato crackle of the SRBs, which belched fire at precisely T-0. Eight frangible nuts anchoring the boosters to the pad were detonated, the final umbilicals disconnected and the main engines were commanded to full throttle.

“…Solid motor ignition…and liftoff…liftoff of Columbia and the first flight of the European Space Agency’s Spacelab…the Shuttle has cleared the tower!”

For the astronauts, the vibrations and acceleration unmistakably reminded them that something enormously life-changing was happening. “Things are shakin’,” Young remembered. “Mostly, your knees!”

Ten seconds after liftoff, the computers rolled the stack onto its back, at an exceptionally rapid rate of 15 degrees per second, to manoeuvre Columbia onto the proper azimuth for a northerly uphill climb and insertion into a 150-mile-high (240-kilometre) orbit. Ranging as far north as Scotland and as far south as Tierra del Fuego, the 57.5-degree-inclined orbit was the highest ever attained by a Shuttle crew and Columbia became the first U.S. human spacecraft to overfly Russia in daylight. The roll manoeuvre lessened aerodynamic stresses on the vehicle in the lower atmosphere, affording the crew a better orientation for communications and navigation. This “real high roll rate”, said Young, was necessary to achieve the high-inclination orbit demanded by Spacelab-1.

“Soon, the reverberations from the Shuttle main engines and its boosters reached the viewing stands and overwhelmed the cheers from those looking on,” wrote Lord. “The Shuttle quickly rolled around its axis and started to pitch over as it passed through the layer of clouds. Camera shutters clicked rapidly, old friends hugged each other with delight and tears coursed the cheeks of many space-hardened veterans. There is nothing quite like those few moments after liftoff, when everyone is of a single mind, trying to help push the launch vehicle into orbit.”

A minute into the flight, the wind-noise outside Columbia’s heavily reinforced cockpit intensified into a scream-like trill as the stack passed through peak aerodynamic turbulence. Here, atmospheric forces imparted their most severe stresses on the airframe, known in engineering parlance as ‘Max Q’. Passing supersonic speed, visible shockwaves formed around the tips of the SRBs and Columbia’s nose. To avoid exceeding structural limitations on the airframe, the computers throttled the main engines back to 67 percent of rated performance. Seventy seconds into the flight, with Max Q safely behind them, the engines returned to full power.

The incessant guttural snarl of the SRBs became more sporadic and decreased to virtually nothing as the time approached, two minutes into ascent, for their jettison. Young, Shaw and Parker witnessed a yellow-orange flash of light stream across Columbia’s nose, as the boosters’ separation motors pushed them away. Their departure was accompanied by a harsh grating sound and a fair amount of sooty gunk deposited on the Shuttle’s windows, although both SRBs performed nominally (Fig. 3.7).

Fig. 3.7:

Columbia roars aloft on 28 November 1983.

With the boosters gone, the six men oddly felt that they had ceased accelerating, a sensation that they were falling back to the water. But by now, Columbia was above much of the ‘sensible’ atmosphere and Young and Shaw found it easier to flip switches.

The vehicle continued onward, her main engines shutting down 8.5 minutes after liftoff. By this stage, the Shuttle was moving at an orbital velocity of 17,640 miles per hour (28,400 kilometres per hour). Suddenly, the equivalent to three times the force of terrestrial gravity—like a gorilla sitting on their chests—was gone, instantly replaced by absolute serenity, ethereal silence…and weightlessness. Nineteen seconds later, the ET was discarded to burn up in the atmosphere over a sparsely inhabited stretch of the Indian Ocean.

Young and Garriott knew the feelings, sights and sounds of space well, but for the four rookies came euphoria, as the vestiges of weightlessness manifested themselves in the form of washers, filings, screws and bits of wire liberated from every nook and cranny in the cabin, all floating comically in mid-air. An hour after liftoff, the two Orbital Manoeuvring System (OMS) engines in Columbia’s tail circularised their orbit.

Spacelab-1 was officially underway.

VOYAGE OF SCIENCE

The six men divided into their shifts to operate Spacelab-1 around the clock. Although 24-hour operations were not needed on all Spacelab missions, its demonstration on STS-9 maximised crew flexibility. Typically, the teams met twice daily for a handover, discussing experiments and sharing meals, with half of the crew wolfing down dinner as the others took breakfast. Meal-making was aided by an airliner-style galley, built by General Electric under a September 1978 contract with NASA. It provided hot and cold water, an oven, serving trays, a personal hygiene station (including handwashing area, light and shaving mirror) and water heater. No refrigerators or freezers were aboard the Shuttle and foods were typically rehydratable, thermostabilised, irradiated or in natural form. Sleeping, at least for Ulf Merbold, was time wasted. “My strategy was that I might sleep a lot for the rest of my life and I did not want to waste any minute to sleep more than necessary, so that’s what I did,” he said. “I think the average hours of sleep during the entire mission was between four and five hours [per shift].”

Spacelab-1 was the first of two Verification Flight Tests of the integrated system; Spacelab-2 would evaluate a ‘train’ of unpressurised pallets, an igloo and an array of scientific instruments on a mission planned for March 1985. A total of 264 sensors verified that the passive thermal control system could keep temperatures inside the module and on the pallet within requisite limits, whilst also preventing condensation and heat leakage. Thermal, acoustic and structural responses were carefully monitored and the astronauts found the module offered a pleasant working environment, with the small window in its end-cone allowing them to photograph experiments on the pallet.

But despite Spacelab-1’s eventual success, the mission hit a snag only hours after reaching orbit, as the crew struggled to access the tunnel adapter. “We couldn’t get the hatch open,” said Shaw. It was a momentary scare, particularly looking into the faces of Garriott and Parker—“these guys,” Shaw sympathised, “are seeing their lives pass in front of their faces, if we can’t get in there and do the stuff they’ve been training to do”—but by the evening of the 28th Europe’s laboratory was open for business. “Almost like home,” Garriott said as he turned on the lights, 2.5 hours after launch. In fact, several experiments had already begun, Lichtenberg and Merbold having worn biomedical head sensors to monitor their eye motions during ascent.

“It was fun to watch Owen back in the module, because you could tell right from the beginning he’d been in space before,” reflected Shaw. “He knew exactly how to handle himself, how to keep himself still, how to move without banging all around the place. And the rest of us…were bouncing off the walls until we figured out how to operate. But Owen, it was just like…he was here yesterday. The human body is remarkable in its ability to remember adapting to a previous thing.”

Typically, the pilots remained on the flight deck and spoke to their crewmates in the module via intercom. “Since there was only one of us awake on the flight deck…you didn’t want to leave the vehicle unattended very much, because this is still STS-9, fairly early in the program,” said Shaw. “We hadn’t worked out all the bugs and everything and neither John or I felt too comfortable leaving the flight deck unattended, so we spent most of our time there.” Orbital manoeuvres were periodically needed for different thermal attitudes, but the pilots primarily monitored systems performance. “After a few days of that, boy, it got pretty boring, quite frankly,” Shaw said. “We spent a lot of time looking out the window and taking pictures…but there was nobody to talk to, because the other guys were…in the back end in the Spacelab, working away.”

As such, Shaw spent much time gazing out of the window. Earth observations were important to both pilots. “One of our first experiments had to do with a rotating dome, which would be taking a picture of your eye,” Garriott said. “That camera…broke very early in the flight and…all of this film and camera was sitting there without any particular use, so John Young helped to find a use for that. He took the camera and all these rolls of film up to the flight deck. I think he spent a major fraction of the flight…taking pictures out that left-hand window with the nice format camera.” STS-9’s post-flight report acknowledged that over 7,000 frames were acquired. Young happily accommodated other crewmates who ventured to the flight deck to take photographs (Fig. 3.8).

Fig. 3.8:

Owen Garriott negotiates the ‘lip’ at the top of the joggle as he floats from the tunnel into the Spacelab-1 module.

The only real problem was a temperature glitch in a remote acquisition unit, which serviced NASA’s experiments on the pallet. Analysis revealed the temperature of Columbia’s freon coolant loop was partly to blame and the issue was resolved. Unfortunately, as part of its resolution, a ‘patch’ inserted into the software caused the module’s computer to crash and temporarily affected data-collection efforts from the pallet experiments.

“We didn’t get to participate to a great length in the science that was going on,” Shaw said. He and Young regarded themselves as truck drivers to get Columbia into orbit and home. “In the meantime, the other guys did all the work.” That work was extended on 3 December, when NASA and ESA lengthened STS-9 to ten days, contingent on satisfactory landing weather on the dry lakebed Runway 17 at Edwards Air Force Base, which was needed to handle the Shuttle with the heavyweight Spacelab aboard. Reserves of critical supplies, including fuel cell reactants, and a power consumption rate 1.2 kilowatts lower than predicted easily permitted an extension—from 216 hours and 145 orbits to 240 hours with 160 orbits—and a longer flight would benefit Spacelab-1’s scientific yield. (After the mission, it was found that the experiments did not operate as much as planned and heater duty cycles were less than predicted during pre-flight ‘cold’ tests, producing a lower power consumption rate.) Even at this halfway point, Mission Scientist Rick Chappell lauded STS-9 as a “very successful merger of manned spaceflight and space science”.

Late on 7 December, the crew shut down Spacelab-1, stored and secured samples and deactivated the module and pallet, ahead of landing at 8:01 a.m. PST on the 8th. But five hours before landing, as Young and Shaw configured Columbia for re-entry, a computer failed. “This is the first computer failure we had on the program,” Shaw recalled. The pilots’ eyes widened with alarm. But worse was to come. Six minutes later, a second computer stopped. Young and Shaw brought it back online, but their efforts to restart the first one proved fruitless and it was powered down. The mood in the cockpit was tense. “My knees started shaking,” Young said of the first failure. “When the next computer failed, I turned to jelly.”

Mission Control waved off the landing for eight hours. (It later turned out that several tiny slivers of solder, floating freely inside the computers, had induced the failures.) Then, an inertial measurement unit—a critical piece of navigation hardware—failed, its death-throes accompanied by a harsh banging sound. As Columbia lingered in orbit, with Spacelab-1 deactivated, the crew maintained themselves in a state of preparedness for re-entry, whenever that might come. Eventually, they began their homebound return on the afternoon of the 8th, touching down at Edwards at 3:47 p.m. PST after ten days and 167 orbits, the longest Shuttle mission so far. Yet even the landing did not go well. Four minutes before touchdown, one of Columbia’s three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) exhibited higher than normal temperatures. The second failed computer, which Young and Shaw had earlier brought back to life, conked out, seconds after the Shuttle’s wheels hit the runway. And six minutes after that, one of the APUs experienced an ‘underspeed’ condition and shut down, as did another shortly thereafter. The crew did not know it, but one of the APUs caught fire, due to a hydrazine leak from a cracked injector tube, its flickering flame clearly visible as Columbia raced down the runway. “There was more excitement on that flight than we should ever really have again,” said STS-9 propulsion systems officer and future Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale. “We learned a number of lessons in how to prepare the vehicle.”

After touchdown, the six men—“six dirty ol’ men,” Young joked, after ten days without a shower—disembarked to meet a “very happy” scientific community for post-flight tests. Eleven life sciences experiments met with full success, the rest achieved 50-90 percent of their planned objectives. The space plasma physics suite scored 80-100 percent, with a failure of SEPAC’s electron beam assembly in its high-power mode the sole anomaly of note. Atmospheric physics and Earth observations hovered between 75-100 percent successful, thanks to unfavourable viewing parameters. Key Spacelab-1 accomplishments included the first silicon melt and crystal growth in space, confirmation that vision helps to orient the human body in weightlessness and evidence that fungus does indeed maintain Earth-like circadian rhythms, even in complete darkness and a virtual absence of terrestrial gravity (Fig. 3.9).

Fig. 3.9:

“Six dirty ol’ men” was John Young’s description of the unshowered Spacelab-1 crew as they returned to Edwards Air Force Base in California on 8 December 1983. At the foot of the steps is Young, about to shake hands with George Abbey, JSC’s director of flight crew operations. Young is followed by Brewster Shaw, Bob Parker (in sunglasses), Ulf Merbold, Owen Garriott and Byron Lichtenberg.

On 19 January 1984, a report landed on the desk of NASA Administrator James Beggs, praising a successful mission. It certainly did not harm President Ronald Reagan’s decision later that spring to invite Europe to build a future space station—not as a lip-service ‘partner’, as had been the case early in Spacelab’s evolution, but rather as a full and real partner. In fact, as early as February 1982, Beggs and ESA Director General Erik Quistgaard had discussed the potential for space station collaboration; “Europe,” wrote John Logsdon, “was thus given the opportunity to be involved in the station program almost from its inception.” Pages of scientific journals throughout 1984 overflowed with Spacelab-1 results. And in February 1985, ESA determined that all but two of the mission’s materials science experiments were successful. That same month, the National Society of Professional Engineers recognised MSFC’s role in Spacelab-1 as one of the United States’ ten outstanding accomplishments of the previous year.

With STS-9, NASA and ESA triumphantly staged the first of two Verification Flight Tests of Spacelab, validating the module and pallet. Ahead lay Spacelab-2, which would deploy a ‘train’ of pallets and an instrument pointing system. But if Spacelab-1 ended traumatically, Spacelab-2 experienced its fair share of trauma both before—and during—launch. In fact, the second Verification Flight Test came within a whisker of not making it into space at all.