Apr 28 1981
From The Space Library
Shuttle orbiter Columbia on its 747 carrier landed at the Shuttle landing facility runway at KSC at 11:24 a.m. EDT. Demating began in preparation for moving it into the processing facility for 72 hours of troubleshooting.
CBS TV News said hundreds of employees and their families were on hand for the arrival; reporter Bruce Hall said that, although the orbiter's condition was "excellent," a number of NASA officials did not expect the next launch to take place before 1982. Jules Bergman of ABC TV said that work on the orbiter would include installing a miniature remote-control arm to deploy satellites and retrieve them on future missions. The second flight, STS-2, would test the arm only. NASAs current target date was said to be mid October, though much work remained to be done on the reusable boosters and the launch pad. (NASA Dly Actv Rpt, Apr 29/81; DOD Radio Tv Rpts, Apr 29/81)
NASA's acting administrator, Dr. Alan M. Lovelace, signed a memorandum of understanding with Hans-Hilger Haunschild of the Federal Republic of Germany's (FRG) ministry for research and technology on FRG use of the STS (Shuttle), with NASA furnishing launch and support services on a reimbursable basis. NASA said that the Federal Republic had "long been a supporter" of STS and had contributed 40% to ESA's development of Spacelab, soon to be a Shuttle payload with laboratory facilities like those on Earth but adapted for zero gravity.
The Federal Republic of Germany had already paid NASA for two reimbursable Spacelab missions: D-1, materials processing and life-sciences experiments, and D-4, astrophysics experiments; it also planned to launch an X-ray satellite (Rosat) from the Shuttle in 1986. In addition, private and scientific organizations in West Germany had reserved 25 small self-contained payloads for eventual shuttle flight on a space-available basis. (NASA Release 81-58)
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