Jun 18 1983
From The Space Library
June 18-26: STS-7, carrying the first U.S. woman astronaut, took off June 18 at 7:33 a.m. EDT from KSC launch pad 39A for a six-day mission that would deploy two foreign communications satellites and practice freeing and retrieving a pallet containing 11 experiments from the West German government. Crew members were Navy Capts. Robert L. Crippen, commander, and Frederick H. Hauck, pilot, plus mission specialists Dr. Norman E. Thagard, a civilian physician; U.S. Air Force Col. John M. Fabian; and Dr. Sally Ride, a civilian with a Ph.D. in physics.
Mission control stated that the group of five was "the largest human payload in the history of the space age" The Soviet Union had maintained crews of five on its Salyut space station but had never carried that number on a single launch.
First deployment of a payload was at 5:02 p.m. EDT when the crew launched from the cargo bay a seven-ton communications satellite, Anik C2, for Telesat (Canada's governmental telecommunications organization). At 9:36 a.m. EDT the next day the crew launched a $40 million Palapa B communications satellites for the government of Indonesia. Two previous Palapas launched by the United States were providing communications to Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Palapa B, twice the size of the earlier communications satellite could increase television and telephone traffic in the area by 10% to 15% a year. The 147 million Indonesians living on islands extending more than 3,200 miles east to west had only 560,000 telephones: Palapa B could provide service for as many as a million new telephones in the next 10 years.
After the second communications satellite was launched, the four rookie astronauts (Ride, Fabian, Hauck, and Thagard) appeared on the television screen assembled in the cockpit and wearing dark-blue T-shirts with white letters reading "TFNG: We Deliver." TFNG stood for "thirty-five new guys," the astronaut class, recruited in 1978, to which all four belonged. Crippen stayed out of camera range, but mission control said "That's all right, Crip. We can tell you're a steely-eyed veteran from here." On June 19 mission control said that the families of the four fathers aboard Challenger had gathered "to wish you a happy Father's Day." The four male astronauts had a total of 10 children: Crippen and Thagard, 3 each, Hauck and Fabian, 2 each.
Major activities for the next three days would be the release of the mechanical arm and rehearsal for deployment and retrieval of the West German pallet. Ride and Fabian would drop the 15-foot, 5,000-pound package off the Shuttle and try to pick it up again. (This would be a first for an exercise that could be commonplace on future missions.) On June 22 the team released and retrieved the package five times, as television cameras on Shuttle and package sent spectacular shots of the procedure with a backdrop of Earth and black space. When the exercise concluded and the arm and the payload were back in the cargo bay, Crippen reminded mission control that some crews had announced "We deliver" (referring to the STS-5 crew's boast when they launched two communications satellites from the shuttle last November): "Well, for flight 7, we pick up and deliver." The USSR's Valentina Tereshkova, first woman to make a flight in space 20 years ago, wired congratulations to Sally Ride. The telegram expressed pleasure "to know that a third representative of this planet's women, now from the United States of America, is in outer space today." Last year the Soviet Union sent a second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, into space.
Among more than 20 experiments in Challenger's cargo bay and mid-deck was the colony of 150 carpenter ants sent into space by high-school students from Camden; N.J., to record their reactions to weightlessness. The ants were considered good space subjects, being hardy and naturally social creatures.
Marginal weather at KSC raised a question whether Challenger would land near its launch point, as planned. Landing on the Florida runway was a way to reduce time in preparing Challenger for its next flight. STS-7 could be ex-tended, or landing could be shifted to Edwards Air Force Base in California; a shift to California would mean an eight-day delay in bringing Challenger back to KSC for a mid-August mission, adding pressure to the timetable for launching Spacelab between the end of September and mid-October. The next chance for a Florida runway landing would be early in 1985; the two intervening missions would be a night launch and landing and the heavyweight touchdown of the Shuttle carrying Spacelab. Also of concern was the effect of rainstorms on the Shuttle tile covering: planes carrying strips of the insulation had been flown through rainstorms with a uniform result of "significant erosion of the tile surfaces." Mission control offered three landing times, 6:53 a.m. and 8:29 a.m. EDT at KSC and 9:56 a.m. EDT at Edwards Air Force Base. The crew appeared on television "stowing the cabin" in preparation for landing. A sign "The Doctor Is In" was held up as Thagard showed viewers the experiments he was conducting to find clues for the cause of space sickness. STS-7 had been the first shuttle mission to have no space-sick astronauts.
The Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base June 24 at 9:57 EDT after a steady downpour began at KSC. In a congratulatory telephone call to the astronauts, President Reagan mentioned Ride's handling of the mechanical arm and said "You were there because you were the best person for the job" Ride said that the flight was "the most fun I'll ever have in my life." When the astronauts attended a brief homecoming ceremony at Johnson Space Center June 24, Ride refused to accept a bouquet of flowers from a NASA official; she had said before the mission that she wanted to be treated no differently from her four male crewmates. Wives of the male astronauts each received a red rose; Ride's husband, astronaut Dr. Steven Hawley, did not. (NASA MORE 420 07 83 04 [prelaunch] June 9; NASA MOR M-989-83-07 [prelaunch] June 13/83; NY Times, June 20/83, A-1; June 23/83, A-1; June 25/83, 16; June 26/83, 4-8; W Post, June 17/83, A-2; June 20/83, A-1; June 21/83, A-6; June 22/83, A-3; June 23/83, A-1; June 24/83, A-3, C-4; June 25/83, A-1; June 26/83, A-2)
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