Shuttle successfully deploys huge space telescope

The Chandra deployment, as filmed by the Columbia crew (from top): The telescope in the shuttle cargo bay, with one cargo door open; the telescope is tilted upward; the Chandra floats away after release VIDEO Watch the launch Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K   INTERACTIVE LIVE: Shuttle Telemetry Clickable Chandra  ALSO: In-Depth: Apollo 11 at 30 Shuttle launched: One giant leap for womankind QUICKTIME Friday's shuttle launch 40 sec. 3.5 mb QuickTime movie Please enable Javascript NASA animation of Chandra deployment from shuttle cargo bay 1.1 mb QuickTime movie Please enable Javascript

July 23, 1999
Web posted at: 3:47 p.m. EDT (1947 GMT)

In this story: A beautiful sight First female commander handles shaky start 'It's great to be back in zero-g' RELATED STORIES, SITES

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- Space shuttle Columbia's astronauts flawlessly released a powerful, $1.5 billion X-ray telescope into orbit Friday, achieving the main objective of the first U.S. space mission commanded by a woman.

As Columbia cruised over Indonesia, the shuttle team tilted, powered up and released the 50,000 pound (22,680 kilogram) observatory into space shortly before 8 a.m. EDT.

"Houston, we have a good deploy," said shuttle commander Eileen Collins. "Chandra is ready to open the eyes of X-ray astronomy to the world."

The Earth-orbiting telescope will focus on X-rays emitted by black holes, exploding stars and colliding galaxies, giving astronomers insight into the origins of the universe and access to vibrant radiation that is undetectable on Earth. The first test data from the telescope should arrive in three to four weeks.

The release of the Chandra X-ray Observatory went smoothly, unlike the shuttle launch and its eight-and-a-half minute climb into orbit. Columbia suffered two malfunctions during liftoff: a short circuit and a premature engine cutoff.

After the telescope's spring-loaded release at 10 a.m., Collins and her crew backed the shuttle away from the telescope. About an hour later, a rocket motor attached to Chandra pushed the telescope into its orbit, which eventually will extend a third of the way to the moon.

A mission operator later told the crew the telescope was in its proper orbit.

"There are five big smiles in here," said mission specialist Cady Coleman as other crewmembers could be heard cheering in the background. Coleman oversaw Chandra's deployment.

A similar motor malfunctioned on a military satellite in April, and everyone was anxious even though Chandra's motor had been altered and triple-checked.

Crewmembers filmed the silver, blue and gold telescope as it drifted away, and those images were replayed on NASA-TV.

"There is nothing as beautiful as Chandra sailing off on its way to work," Coleman said. "We were almost too excited to video."

Later Friday morning, mission operators at the Chandra Control Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sent commands for the telescope to cut tethers to release its solar arrays and for explosives to fire to separate Chandra from its booster rockets.

After the rocket motor peeled away from Chandra Friday morning, it was down to its working weight of 13,000 pounds.

Thrusters to be fired in the next 10 days will push Chandra into a highly elliptical oval orbit for its five-year mission. Chandra operations engineers spent much of Friday preparing the thrusters for their first burn on Saturday evening.

"This is an absolutely tremendous day for science," said Roger Brissenden, science flight director at the Chandra control center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Columbia, with commander Eileen Collins at the helm, roared into orbit at 12:31 a.m. Friday after its troubled launch.

The problems started at liftoff, when Collins noticed a malfunction in the electrical power flowing to the shuttle's engines, said Donald McMonagle, a shuttle program manager for the space agency.

A short circuit lasting about a second knocked out computers that controlled two of the shuttle's three engines. Backup computers kept the engines working, and the loss of power should have no impact on the mission, NASA said.

More troublesome was that Columbia ran short of liquid oxygen fuel -- about 4,000 pounds short. That caused the shuttle's engines to shut off "less than three or four seconds" sooner than planned, McMonagle said.

"The cause is not known," he said, but a review would look at how the fuel was loaded and whether mission managers' calculations were in error.

"Keep in mind that's 4,000 pounds out of about 1.2 million pounds carried in the shuttle's massive external fuel tank," McMonagle said. Columbia was left in an orbit seven miles lower than intended.

Launch controllers said they were unsure why they had less liquid oxygen than needed, but as it turns out, the high point of Columbia's oval orbit (153 nautical miles) was good enough for deployment of the Chandra.

After NASA halted two earlier launch attempts late in the countdown -- Tuesday because of a technical glitch and Thursday because of lightning -- Collins expressed relief to finally be in space.

"It's great to be back in zero-g again," said the 42-year-old Collins, who flew twice before as a shuttle co-pilot. As for the liftoff problems, the commander calmly said, "A few things to work on ascent kept it interesting."

Among those who were on hand for the launch was Lalitha Chandrasekhar, the 88-year-old widow of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Indian-born astrophysicist known to friends and colleagues simply as Chandra, for whom the telescope was named.

Chandrasekhar was the scientist who predicted an upper limit to the mass of stars, above which they either explode or form black holes -- points in space so massive that light, energy and matter seem to disappear into them.

Columbia is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday.

Correspondent Miles O'Brien and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.