Eighty-four days. A mere 12 weeks on Earth, 84 days was the precise time spent aloft by the record-setting closing crew of America’s Skylab house station. It additionally marked the time elapsed between the touchdown and re-launch of shuttle Columbia in April and July 1997, which noticed seven U.S. astronauts—Commander Jim Halsell, Pilot Susan Nonetheless, Mission Specialists Janice Voss, Mike Gernhardt and Don Thomas and Payload Specialists Greg Linteris and Roger Crouch—safe the empirical file for the shortest interval for a complete crew getting back from one house mission and launching on one other.
In doing so, Halsell’s crew, who landed from STS-83 on 8 April 1997 and returned to orbit on STS-94 the next 1 July, surpassed the earlier record-holding spacefarer, Steve Nagel, who secured 128 days between two shuttle flights in the summertime and fall of 1985. In Halsell’s phrases, flying twice in such a brief span of time was nothing lower than “a fabulous, once-in-a-career alternative”.
Launched on 4 April 1997, STS-83 was the Microgravity Science Laboratory (MSL-1) mission, dedicated to supplies analysis, combustion science and fluid physics, on the second-to-last voyage of Europe’s Spacelab pressurized module. With the Worldwide House Station (ISS) on the horizon, many scientists have been keenly conscious that STS-83 was considered one of their closing throws of the cube on the shuttle earlier than the station got here on-line.
The crew was extremely skilled. In January 1996, aeronautical engineer Voss and supplies scientist Thomas have been introduced, adopted shortly afterwards by physicist Crouch and mechanical engineer Linteris. Working throughout two 12-hour shifts, the quartet would help over 25 experiments aboard MSL-1. On the finish of Could, Halsell, Nonetheless and Gernhardt have been named to spherical out the STS-83 crew, with a focused launch in spring 1997.
However in late January, solely 9 weeks earlier than launch, got here a possible showstopper. After finishing an emergency egress coaching session on the Johnson House Heart (JSC) in Houston, Texas, Thomas broke his ankle in a fall down some stairs. Fearful that he won’t recuperate in time, NASA assigned astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman to coach alongside him, able to step into his sneakers if wanted.
By mid-March, Thomas was in “a interval of fairly heavy bodily remedy”, spending six hours day by day strolling in swimming swimming pools, with and with out his solid, to revive his mobility energy. “There’s little doubt in my thoughts,” he instructed journalists, “or the physician’s thoughts, that I’ll be prepared in time.”
Launch of STS-83 was postponed 24 hours from 3 to 4 April, resulting from an improperly insulated water coolant line in Columbia’s payload bay. With launch rescheduled for two p.m. EDT on the 4th, the one concern appeared to be a slight likelihood of rain showers triggered by sea breezes. Mission managers thought-about, then discarded, an choice to fly an hour before deliberate at 1:07 p.m. EDT to supply extra daylight on the Transoceanic Abort Touchdown (TAL) web site at Banjul in West Africa to alleviate considerations about delamination of a backup monitoring antenna there.
“Not nervous in any respect,” was the recollection of Nonetheless, who was making her first flight. “I’m mentally reviewing procedures and ready with pleasure for once I get to begin transferring switches in preparation for launch.” Following a slight delay in evacuating the closeout crew from the launch pad’s hazard space and extreme oxygen concentrations within the payload bay, Columbia roared uphill at 2:20 p.m. EDT.
“A analysis bridge to the house advantages of tomorrow,” was the send-off comment from NASA’s launch commentator as NASA’s oldest shuttle—making her twenty second voyage into house since April 1981—speared towards an orbit of 186 miles (300 kilometers) above the Residence Planet, inclined 28.5 levels to the equator.
There was, Nonetheless mentioned later, “no stopping us now”, and she or he recalled some shock because the vibrations have been decrease than she had seen throughout coaching. “The acceleration off the launch pad was lower than I’ve skilled catapulting off plane carriers,” she mentioned, reflecting on her earlier profession as a Navy check pilot. “However quickly, issues bought fairly thrilling. Once I began feeling the G-forces, urgent down on my chest, I knew I used to be accelerating quicker than ever earlier than. Zero to over 17,500 miles per hour, in solely eight-and-a-half minutes. Now that’s fairly thrilling!”
Two minutes into flight, as Columbia shed her twin Stable Rocket Boosters (SRBs), a blinding flash of sunshine swept throughout the ahead home windows. That generated a spontaneous scream of “Wow!” from the flight deck crew.
Inside hours of reaching orbit, the STS-83 cut up into two shifts—with Halsell, Nonetheless, Thomas and Linteris on the “crimson” group and Gernhardt, Voss and Crouch on the “blue” group—both heading to mattress or plunging into checklists to activate MSL-1. “Every little thing’s going nice,” mentioned MSL-1 Mission Supervisor Teresa Vanhooser of NASA’s Marshall House Flight Heart (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala., because the lab got here alive on the night of 4 April. Sadly, her phrases proved distressingly prophetic, because the fortunes of STS-83 took a definite flip for the more serious.
Mission Management had begun to see erratic conduct in considered one of Columbia’s three power-producing gasoline cells. Though a single cell may maintain on-orbit and touchdown operations, flight guidelines dictated that each one three needed to be purposeful for a mission to proceed.
Every cell carried three “stacks”, made up of two banks of 16 cells every. In considered one of Gasoline Cell No. 2’s stacks, the distinction in output voltage between the 2 banks indicated a rise. The issue was noticed the night time earlier than Columbia launched however leveled-off and was thought-about an “in-family” glitch and cleared for flight. Late on 5 April, Halsell and Nonetheless adjusted {the electrical} system configuration to cut back calls for on the ailing cell, thereby permitting Mission Management to stabilize and proceed to watch it.
In a single day, the speed of change within the cell slowed from 5 millivolts per hour to round two millivolts however continued to exhibit a slight upward pattern. “There’s all the time a distinction between the 2 halves of the stack,” Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) consultant and former flight director Jeff Bantle instructed journalists, “however we’re noticing a altering distinction. Really, that altering distinction has leveled off loads, so the degradation was better the primary 12 hours of the mission.”
If the distinction between the 2 stacks elevated as excessive as 300 millivolts—and it was pushing 250 by the night time of the fifth—it may power the STS-83 crew to close down Gasoline Cell No. 2 totally. “The priority is degradation in a single cell,” Bantle defined.
“If it degrades sufficient, somewhat than getting energy out from the cell, you’d have energy output into that cell,” he continued in his remarks. “You can even have crossover and localized heating, alternate of hydrogen and oxygen throughout the cell, and will also have a localized fireplace.
“That’s the very worst case,” Bantle concluded. That’s why we’ve flight guidelines which might be very conservative to attempt to keep away from and attempt to shut down and secure a gasoline cell earlier than you’d ever get to that time.”
On the Capcom’s console in Mission Management for a lot of this drama was Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Writing years later in his memoir An Astronaut’s Information to Life on Earth, Hadfield was initially satisfied it was a sensor downside, somewhat than a glitch with the gasoline cell itself. “However Flight Guidelines insisted the gasoline cell needed to be shut down,” he wrote, “after which, with solely two gasoline cells deemed absolutely operational, one other flight rule kicked in: the mission needed to be terminated.”
A guide purge of the cell by Halsell and Nonetheless proved fruitless and it was left to Hadfield to interrupt the unhealthy information. On the afternoon of 6 April, a Minimal Length Flight (MDF) was declared and preparations kicked into excessive gear to deliver Columbia again dwelling on the eighth. “Pay attention, I do know you simply bought up there,” Hadfield instructed Halsell, paraphrased in his memoir, “however you need to come on again. Beginning now.”
However the crushing disappointment, Mission Management retained a humorousness, by faxing the astronauts a tongue-in-cheek listing of the Prime Ten “actual” the reason why they have been coming dwelling early. These included operating out of “Columbian” espresso, forgetting to file the most recent episode of Mates, forgetting to do their taxes earlier than launch…and that your complete state of affairs was only a horrid April Idiot’s prank.
Because the untimely finish of STS-83 neared, the crew and floor personnel labored collectively to plan an alternate flight plan. Gasoline Cell No. 2 was shut down, as have been different non-critical items of apparatus, to ensure that science operations to proceed. Lights have been turned off contained in the Spacelab module, forcing the astronauts to work by torchlight. It was a shock verging on disbelief that 16 days of rigorously deliberate analysis was ruined.
Over the next 36 hours, the crew labored across the clock to finish a outstanding quantity of analysis. Earlier than the shuttle landed, casual discussions have been already underway to refly the mission, later in 1997. “There have been rumors already flying,” Thomas recounted on his web site, OhioAstronaut.com, “that after fixing the issue NASA can be re-flying our crew in just a few months to finish our Spacelab science mission. That positively helped ease the sting of coming dwelling early.”
Crewmate Roger Crouch agreed. “In some methods, this might make for a extra significant flight in the long term,” he mentioned, “however, actually this one was a bummer!”
Columbia landed safely on Runway 15 of the Shuttle Touchdown Facility (SLF) on the Kennedy House Heart (KSC) in Florida at 1:33 p.m. EDT on 8 April, wrapping up a flight of simply 95 hours in house. It was the fourth-shortest shuttle mission ever accomplished: surpassed by Columbia’s first two test-flights in April and November 1981 and by STS-51C, a categorized voyage by Discovery in January 1985.
And as Halsell climbed out of his ship, he was approached by KSC Director Roy Bridges, who supplied him a handshake and the phrases: “We’re going to attempt to offer you an oil change and ship you again.” Two weeks later, NASA introduced that the mission would refly in early July 1997, taking over the next-available unused shuttle flight variety of “STS-94”.
Because of the equivalent nature of the payload, a good portion of processing was simplified. In truth, when Columbia ready to fly once more on the afternoon of 1 July a mere $55 million had been expended on her processing and $8.6 million on the turnaround of the MSL-1 payload itself.
The shuttle spent simply 56 days within the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF), lower than two-thirds of what would ordinarily be required for flight-to-flight preparations. As a way to enable for vital duties to happen—such because the substitute of two Auxiliary Energy Models (APUs) and a number of other Response Management System (RCS) thrusters—a lot of structural inspections have been deferred till Columbia’s subsequent processing stream. Remarkably, this was the shortest turnaround for a single shuttle within the post-Challenger period. By 11 June 1997, the automobile was again at Pad 39A, monitoring a gap launch try on 1 July.
“Our strategy,” mentioned STS-83 and STS-94 Lead Flight Director Rob Kelso, “has been to deal with this flight as a launch delay. The crew is precisely the identical, the flight administrators are all the identical and the flight management group is sort of equivalent. It’s a mirror-image flight in lots of respects.” Even the embroidered patch, worn by Halsell’s crew, was the identical, albeit with a crimson border for STS-83 and a blue border for STS-94.
And at 12:50 p.m. EDT on 1 July 1997, simply 84 days since their return from STS-83, Halsell and his six crewmates headed into orbit once more.
“Because of the entire ascent group for getting us to a secure orbit,” mentioned Nonetheless.
“It seems to be like Columbia’s performing like a champ,” raplied Capcom Dom Gorie.
This time round, she actually was.
