Challenger STS-7 – Sally’s Ride

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NO ROSES FOR STEVE

All of the astronauts’ families were gathered at the viewing site at KSC. Sally Ride’s parents took to the news center and watched their daughter’s return to Earth on the TV set. And since the change was on short notice there were not many people at Edwards to greet them. Only a small crowd of NASA and Air Force personnel and their families where on hand to greet the astronauts. The loudest applause went to Sally Ride, who was praised for her professional performance in space, but who said it wasn’t all work. “The thing that I’ll remember most about that flight is that it was fun; and in fact I’m sure it was the most fun I’ll ever have in my life.” Ride and the other crewmembers praised Robert Crippen as "the world's greatest commander." Mission Specialist Norm Thagard said, "Bob Crippen is super and I would fly to hell with him."

Later in the day the Challenger crew took off for Houston, for another homecoming and more accolades. When the astronauts attended a brief ceremony at Johnson Space Center, Sally Ride refused to accept a bouquet of flowers from Center Director Gerald Griffin. As she had said before the mission, she wanted to be treated no differently from her four male crewmates. The wives of the male astronauts each received a red rose; Ride’s husband, astronaut Dr. Steven Hawley, did not…

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SALLY’S EXUBERANCE

“Sally’s role in this entire particular flight is a history-making role,” said shuttle program chief James Abrahamson. “This is a milestone that we all believe in, that we think is important, and that NASA is just delighted to be proceeding with, the first flight of a U.S. lady astronaut… woman astronaut.”

“But the real objective, of course, is the second milestone – and that’s the one where we’re really able to make use of all of our female members of our society, all of our minorities. And we don’t put kinds of roadblocks up and say that this is something that you can’t, or shouldn’t do. And in fact that second milestone is the important one, because nobody will notice that one; that’s the one where we have women astronauts flying, and we have woman brain surgeons, and we have women engineers, and nobody pays any attention, because everybody knows that they’re going to do exactly the same professional job that anyone else could,” Abrahamson told reporters shortly after STS-7 had touched down in California. “So, that’s the one we’re all looking to.”


Bruce Nichols (UPI): I have two questions… actually both of them relate to Sally. I want you to comment please, sir, if you will, number one on the idea that this, her exuberant performance, firmly establishes women as part of the astronaut corps in the space program. And secondly, comment if you will on the fact that her personality, which had really been kind of reserved before the flight for, I think, understandable reasons, really sort of blossomed publicly when she got into orbit.

James Abrahamson: I guess I’d like to try to restate that if I might. I think it’s her professional performance that established her own confidence and obviously speaks well for the confidence of all the women that are in the astronaut corps. Surely she was exuberant and I think that’s just great. She’s exuberant in a lot of activities. You may not have seen her in all of her in all of her training and other kinds of activities. I don’t either. But she’s well known for being a cheerful and eager crewmember, as are the other women by the way. And, by the way, a lot… many of the crewmembers when they get up in space, you know, really have a great time and obviously, I think, her exuberance reflected that as well. So, I think she was a professional, and that’s the first and most important thing to know.

Theresa Foley (Aerospace Daily): Just for equal time, could you please comment on Bob Crippen’s exuberance as well?

James Abrahamson: Theresa, I’m proud of you. Actually, I think the whole crew… it was clear that this whole crew was a happy ship and that they did have a good time throughout. And I appreciate the point that you’re bringing up, Theresa, because I think everybody really should take note of that. The whole crew performed in a superb way.

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STUCK ON THE RUNWAY

Workers at Kennedy Space Center had been primed to roll Challenger right back into the OPF hangar to begin preparing her for shuttle flight STS-8, a mission that had been scheduled for mid-August. The inconvenience of having to transport the shuttle atop the SCA Boeing 747 from California to Florida now was expected to delay the next launch for about eight days. Also, because of flight requirements, NASA wouldn’t get another chance until the originally scheduled eleventh mission in early 1984 (which eventually became Flight 10, officially called STS 41-B) to make the first real shuttle roundtrip from KSC.

And there already was an unexpected delay: Challenger was stuck on the dry lakebed runway at Edwards for more than five hours before the ground crew could tow her to the Mate-Demate Device hoisting crane at Dryden, which would later put her onto the SCA. “During towing operations a chattering noise was heard from one of the wheels on her right-hand main gear,” wrote Ben Evans. “The shuttle had to be jacked up, the wheel removed, its brake assembly disassembled and the wheel remounted before towing could resume.”

“Detailed inspections revealed that the right-hand inboard brake had actually suffered major structural damage to two of its rotors, including the beryllium heat sink and carbon lining segments. Additionally, the right-hand outboard brake had two loose carbon pads with retainer washers missing. Cracked retainer washers were found in all brake assemblies and it was discovered that a similar situation might have occurred on previous shuttle missions with no adverse effects. None, however, had been positively identified before STS-7.”

Evans continued, “It became clear that the washers had probably cracked during their manufacture or pre-flight assembly. With structural and thermal analyses confirming that neither the flight nor landing could have caused the damage. One of the main to-do tasks on the list for Challenger’s processing team at KSC before the next mission, STS-8 in August 1983, would be the replacement of all cracked or suspect brake washers.”

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ICE ICE BABY

After a first visual post-flight inspection of the orbiter Challenger, more debris damage was noted to the lower Thermal Protection System (TPS) surfaces on STS-7 when compared with previous flights. This damage was primarily to the left chine area, and the damage definitely occurred during ascent.

“It did appear that there are some places on the nose and on the left chine where there is some damage on some of the black tiles,” General Abrahamson, during the KSC post-flight briefing, gave his first impressions of what he had seen on TV coverage from Edwards. “And I can only assume that we may have had some ice hits here, or something of that kind.”

“The reason we attribute at least initially some of this to ice,” explained the General, “is that of course on every mission, you know, we take many views and shots of the launch itself. And we look, we examine those in a very careful way, looking for pad debris and things falling off the orbiter. That’s a source of a great deal of our information. And we did see some ice, just a few particles, that departed from the tank during this launch. So, that’s a possible source of some of it.”

The orbiter had more FRSI (Felt Reusable Surface Insulation) discoloration than on STS-6, primarily along the side fuselage at the FRSI-to-tile interface. Five tile corners were broken on the rudder speed brake along with heavy fraying of the right-hand split line thermal barrier.

A portion of one tile on the left main landing gear door fractured at door opening, as also occurred on STS-6. Also, the nose landing gear door thermal barrier sustained slight damage. The AFRSI (Advanced Felt Reusable Insulation) was damaged on fifteen og the right-hand pod blankets and on three of the left-hand pod blankets. In addition, tile slumping was noted on four tiles of the Leading Edge Structural System (LESS) lower access panel, and on four tiles on the elevon leading edge carrier panel.

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YOU CAN’T WALK ON IT

And then there was the Kennedy Space Center post office, which mailed out 25,000 stamped envelopes commemorating a first-time Florida shuttle landing that didn't happen. "They're not going to be worth the stamp that's on them," said Hubert James, a post office worker who is no collector. Some people will probably be very happy to have a "first day-cover" from a day that wasn't the first. Mistakes that bear a postal imprimatur have a way of gaining in value, although a distribution of 25,000 has a way of diluting that.

Challenger finally returned to Kennedy Space Center at 10:26 a.m. EDT on June 29, 1983, and workers immediately began the 16-hour process of demating the shuttle from the carrier aircraft and towing the orbiter into the first of KSC’s two Orbiter Processing Facilities. Orbiter Vehicle manager Bill Williams attributed Challenger’s slightly more used appearance – including scorch marks on the white tiles over the wings – to a hotter reentry pattern flown by the craft on this latest return to Earth.

About a month later, on July 28, 1983, STS-7's history-making crew of Bob Crippen, Rick Hauck, John Fabian, Sally Ride and Norman Thagard finally returned to KSC for a red carpet welcome. More than 2,000 persons - workers, family members, retirees and guests - were present to see KSC Director Dick Smith roll out the red carpet for the astronauts. The words "Welcome Back to KSC STS-7" were emblazoned on the carpet, but Smith pointed out the "STS-7" portion of the message was removable. "You can touch it. You can feel it. You can't walk on it," said Smith. "You've got to land here to walk on it," he quipped to the crew. A surprise guest was a space-suited Mickey Mouse who presented Mickey Mouse watches to the astronauts, and a large framed "E-ticket" and a kiss to astronaut Sally Ride.

(KSC post-flight press conference transcript; Brinkley/Kashiwahara/Sherr, ABC News, June 24, 1983; Plat/Skolnick/Adams, Today, June 25, 1983; European Stars and Stripes, Darmstadt, West Germany, June 25, 1983; Yacenda, Today, June 30 and July 29, 1983; STS-7 Space Shuttle Program Mission Report, JSC-19095, July 1983; Bette R. Janson/Eleanor H. Ritchie, “Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1979-1984, A Chronology,” NASA SP-4024, 1990; Ben Evans, “Space Shuttle Challenger – Ten Journeys into the Unknown,” Springer/Praxis 2007 – edited)

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Landing Switch Could Delay Future Missions

“As I indicated we think it’s on the order of eight days, of impact on STS-8. That will move STS-8 from a normal period of about the middle of August to fairly late in August itself. It does then begin to put STS-9 under pressure. Let me not say jeopardy, but pressure I think is perhaps the best way to describe it. We feel at this point that we need about 30 days between the launching of STS-8 and the launching of STS-9. And the reason we can get it down to that small amount of time is, of course, we have two MLPs that we can use and pull through our sequencing.

Probably the biggest impact of a delay on STS-8 is that it will impact our simulations, our total simulations that we’re doing for STS-9. And that’s just a kind of a subtle level and one you might not expect. It’s not here at the Cape, it’s a problem of simulating and making sure that we have a fully trained crew and that we have worked out the bugs on STS-9. So that’s the part that puts us under pressure.”

- Lt. General James Abrahamson, KSC post-flight press conference, June 24, 1983


(By John Noble Wilford)

Failure of the Space Shuttle Challenger to land at the Kennedy Space Center will almost certainly delay the launching of the next mission, possibly the one after that, and put off until at least next February a chance to evaluate the shuttle's ability to return to its launching base, project officials said. A demonstrated ability to fly onto the runway at KSC is critical to future shuttle operations because it would accelerate the ground processing time between flights and thus decrease mission costs. Only then will it be possible to assess the promised economies afforded by reusable spaceships compared to the conventional expendable rockets.

Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, head of the shuttle program, said at a news conference after the landing that the failure was a ''disappointment'' but ''not a major setback'' to the program. He also said that if engineers had more confidence in the shuttle's automatic landing system, the flight controllers ''might have felt more comfortable'' about a landing in bad weather. As it was, when the low, dark clouds hanging over the launching base would not go away, the astronauts were diverted to Edwards Air Force Base in California, and the immediate implications were anything but sunny.

Putting down at the Cape Canaveral site is somewhat riskier because there is less margin for error. There is only one runway, a 15,000-foot-long concrete strip with 1,000 feet of overrun at each end. Instead of being in the middle of a smooth desert floor, as at Edwards, the runway here is bordered by the Indian River and marshes more hospitable to alligators than errant spaceships.

The change in plans now means a delay of perhaps eight days in bringing the Challenger back to the Cape for maintenance before its next mission, which had been set for mid-August. General Abrahamson said a liftoff in late August was now more likely. The mission's payloads include a communications satellite for India. That, in turn, puts even more pressure on the timetable for the subsequent mission, which has to be launched between Sept. 30 and mid-October. This will be the first flight of the European-built Spacelab, a chamber fitted into the cargo bay in which scientists are to conduct scores of experiments in a nine-day mission. The timing is dictated by some of the mission's astronomy objectives.

Even though the Spacelab will be carried by the Columbia, not the Challenger, there is only one launching pad in service, and it could be a tight squeeze to launch one mission in late August and be ready for another in early October. The first opportunity astronauts will get to try again for a runway landing here should come in late January or early February. The previous two missions will be directed to the California base because the first will be a night landing and the second involves such a heavy cargo in the Spacelab. Eventually, nearly all the shuttles are supposed to return to their launching base.

Since cloudy weather is common in Florida, landings in marginal weather will someday have to occur as a matter of routine. If this had not been the first landing attempt here, General Abrahamson said, ''we would have been a little bolder.'' But officials chose to play it safe because of two uncertainties: the effect of moisture on the shuttle's heat-shielding tiles and concern over the shuttle's automatic landing system. Airplanes coated with strips of the lightweight silicon tiles have been flown through rainstorms, and almost invariably the result was significant erosion of the tile surfaces. It would be both costly in time and money to have to replace a large number of the Challenger's 31,000 tiles. ''We don't have the answer to that yet,'' the General said.

Moreover, flight controllers were not sure the automatic landing system could be trusted in the final approach to touchdown. In various simulations, at 300 feet the system tends to plunge the craft into a steep dive. Engineers suspect some problems in the computer programs that run the system. A plan to have the Columbia fly all the way in on automatic pilot was canceled last year. ''While we're ironing that out, we just elected not to use it at low altitudes,'' General Abrahamson said. ''We certainly will do it as soon as we're comfortable with our tests.''

(The New York Times, June 25, 1983 – edited)

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Best Mission Yet

For the future of shuttle operations, the flight of Challenger during STS-7 was both pivotal and transitional. The world’s first reusable satellite, SPAS-01, was successfully deployed and retrieved, clearing the way for complicated rendezvous, repair, deployment and retrieval missions which are planned to become the mainstay of future U.S. space missions.

Asked how he would rate Space Shuttle Flight 7, based on what he knew right after Challenger’s return to Earth, NASA Associate Administrator for Spaceflight James A. Abrahamson told reporters at Kennedy Space Center, “Best mission yet. I think I’d have to say yes when you measure complexity and the many, many things that we have. Let me give you one measure of that from a statistical point of view. In addition to the major deployments of the satellites and those activities… we had 58 DTOs, Development Test Objectives. We accomplished 56 of those for a 96 percent rating, and that’s pretty good statistically.”

The deployment of two satellites – one for Indonesia and the other for Telesat Canada – added new evidence to NASA’s claim that the shuttle is a very precise launch platform. Telesat’s Anik C-2, for example, was deployed within 1,500 feet of the target point and within 0.085 degrees of the planned pointing vector, according to Flight Director John Cox. That kind of accuracy can add months or years to a satellite’s usable lifetime through the conservation of onboard attitude control fuels.

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AN ASTOUNDING SUCCESS

“And then, of course, there was really superb performance with the arm and with the SPAS itself,” James Abrahamson said after the flight. “I think that the SPAS spacecraft… and you’ve heard me talk about it before… really represents a whole new approach to spacecraft design, to payload design, and really is part of this revolution for the future that is happening in the space business. And, of course I feel the shuttle is an important ingredient, but not the whole ingredient in that.”

Early risers on Flight Day Four were treated to a rare sight in Houston shortly before sunrise: a bright dot, the Challenger, passing quickly from horizon to horizon with a smaller dot, SPAS-01, keeping station as they went. Back inside, viewers of NASA Select were being treated to spectacular downlink television, showing Challenger from 1,000 feet away as she sped along at five miles per second above the clouds of Earth. The video was taken from a TV camera aboard SPAS, transmitted to the orbiter and then beamed to ground stations. SPAS also carried a 16mm movie camera and a 70mm still photo camera.

“We’re really expecting even more marvelous film than the TV that has come down, which of course we all are really just astounded with,” said Abrahamson. Even the temperature problem that had developed with the SPAS-01 spacecraft during attached and proximity operations, in his view, “were more of a verification of the approach and what we can expect, and that it can be solved... I really see it as a positive thing.”

Aside from aesthetics, the SPAS proximity operations proved the capability of rendezvous, repair and complicated proximity operations with the shuttle. This accomplishment paved the way for more ambitious projects in the future, including the Solar Max repair mission on Flight 13, the deployment and periodic servicing of the Long Duration Exposure Facility and the Space Telescope, and the concept of West Germany’s SPAS itself: that of a reusable commercial space platform. SPAS-01 was given an international space satellite designation for United Nations registration – 1983-058F.

“We are proud of our work, all together, and I feel that this is really a milestone especially for our company, which is not used to manned spaceflight up to now,” said Konrad Moritz, SPAS program manager for MBB, during the STS-7 post-flight press conference at KSC. “The SPAS is really a success, I think, of a few people that brought up an idea and were able to get it successful. We have had some luck, but I think the most important thing is that where our people create an idea and believe in it, it will happen. That’s, I think, the bottom line of our success.”

“I’m rather in love with the SPAS satellite,” said General Abrahamson,” and as Konrad knows we are interested in flying it again as soon as we’ve gone through equitable arrangements and agreement, and of course as soon as there are payloads that make it a profitable and a productive thing to do. Those are under discussion now and I think that it’s just premature to try to project exactly when that will happen. But I would like to have it happen as soon as possible.”

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MOMS’ BEST

This false-color image was obtained by one of SPAS-01’s main payloads, the Modular Optoelectronic Multispectral Scanner (MOMS), onboard STS-7 on June 8, 1983. It shows the border between Peru and Chile and the Pacific Ocean. The vegetation growing in the river valleys and certain rocks emit distinctive infrared radiation and are shown here in red. Cumulus clouds are also evident in white.