Jul 1 1982
From The Space Library
"A clever bit of rewiring. . .with the skill of an automobile thief' enabled the astronauts aboard Columbia (STS-4) [see June 27] to bypass a defective circuit and turn on the power for pan of its payload called the "getaway special." The University of Utah students sponsoring the experiment had given up hope but now planned to accomplish nearly all of their objectives. A thank-you message from the students said, "One small switch for NASA, a giant turn-on for us." Engineers at JSC and GSFC had transmitted 10 possible corrective measures after figuring out that a cable from a control panel was faulty; on the first try, everything began to work, and the conclusion was that launch vibrations could have loosened a connection.
A more serious problem arose when the clamshell doors of the payload bay refused to shut snugly after exposure to the heat and cold of space had expanded and contracted the aluminum fuselage and graphite epoxy doors. A similar problem on the preceding flight was solved by putting Columbia into a slow roll (the so-called barbecue mode), turning the surface toward and away from the Sun to equalize temperatures around the ship. Columbia had been circling the Earth for most of the last two days with its underside facing the Sun, as a means of baking out moisture trapped in the insulating tiles from a hail storm the night before liftoff. Harold Draughon, a flight director, said that data from the flight showed that all the tiles had baked dry. (NASA MOR MR-004, 3; NY Times, July 1/82, B-8)
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