Pivotal Space Shuttle mission with astronaut Terry Hart on "This Week In Space"

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Hosts Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk to retired astronaut Terry Hart about STS-41C, a pivotal Space Shuttle mission for NASA.

Transcript

00:00Hey, space fans, it's Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief of Space.com.

00:03And on this week in space, we got some very cool glimpses

00:07into a pivotal mission for NASA, STS-41C, with astronaut Terry Hart.

00:13That's a mission that set the groundwork for long-duration material science in space

00:17and satellite servicing. Check it out.

00:19Well, you know, one of the things we wanted to talk about was the mission, right?

00:24Terry's Flight in Space in 1984, STS-41C, of which the most visual part,

00:32obviously a moving experience for Rod and I, was seeing the mission as it debuted.

00:37But in The Dream is Alive, actually, I have that on DVD and the soundtrack.

00:43It's amazing.

00:44It doesn't.

00:46I know, right?

00:48But, you know, I think that a lot of folks, a lot of our listeners,

00:53engineers and a lot of young people now, you know,

00:58the engineers that would design the missions of the future,

01:01you know, may not be familiar with, I think, some of the more,

01:04I want to say, like, milestone moments of that mission.

01:11So, STS, just as a reminder for folks, it was a mission in 1984.

01:16It deployed the long-duration exposure facility, and there was a repair of a satellite,

01:24the SolarMax satellite, and you were instrumental in both of those things.

01:29And on film.

01:30On film, yeah.

01:31So, you know, I want to ask kind of how you approach and train for that mission

01:37and where you see it as, in terms of, like, the science and operational knowledge

01:42that came out of it.

01:43But if you could kind of give our listeners a synopsis kind of of what the mission,

01:48like, the primary goals were, and then we can start from there to talk about it.

01:52Yeah, at that time, this was the, we were the 11th flight of the program.

01:58So, we had checked out the man maneuvering unit a couple flights before,

02:03and we were ready to go now.

02:04Almost two years of training for this, because it was the first rendezvous.

02:08That was one of my duties.

02:09I was a rendezvous officer for Bob Krippen, our commander, of course,

02:13and Dick Scobie, our pilot.

02:15But we were doing the first rendezvous of the program.

02:17We deployed the long-duration exposure facility as a NASA Langley experiment,

02:22about as big as a school bus, actually.

02:26And it had 85 trays on it, 150 scientists from all around the world

02:33that contributed these experiments for micrometeorite collection

02:35and cosmic rays and all that stuff.

02:37It stayed up for six years, and then Bonnie Dunbar captured it

02:40and brought it back.

02:41So, that was day two.

02:42Then we were in the process of doing the rendezvous,

02:45and we caught up to Solar Max, which had been launched in 1980 on a delta.

02:50Ironically, it was the first satellite that Goddard designed to be repaired

02:53by the shuttle.

02:55And about three months after it was on orbit, it actually blew some fuses.

03:00It had a thermal hotspot in the attitude control system,

03:03and the fuses derated, basically, and they lost control of it.

03:06So, it was spinning slowly, but spinning, sort of pointed at the sun

03:11to keep its batteries charged.

03:12But for years, you know, it was waiting for us to get there in 1984 then.

03:18So, all the stage was set, you know, to do all that,

03:20and we had decided to use the man-maneuvering unit,

03:25the George Nelson, Pinky, or Jim Van Hoften, Ox.

03:31You know, so, Pinky and Ox were our two spacewalkers.

03:34So, they were outside, ready to go.

03:36We just finished the rendezvous.

03:38I had the arm ready to go, and Pinky was going to dock to the Solar Max,

03:42stop the rotation, and then I could grapple,

03:45because the grapple fixture was right underneath one of the solar panels.

03:47So, it was kind of hard to get at if it was spinning.

03:49And we were all set for that to work,

03:52and Crippen did a beautiful job of bringing the Challenger in, like, real close.

03:57And Pinky flew over, and he went to dock,

03:59and he bounced right off the satellite.

04:02And so, what was that?

04:04You know, no one could figure out why the jaws didn't grab the pin on the satellite.

04:08So, he did it again.

04:10I think he did it the third time.

04:11Each time he hit the satellite, he imparted energy on it.

04:14So, now the satellite, instead of just spinning slowly, it's tumbling.

04:17So, we were beside ourselves, not knowing what happened there.

04:22So, we didn't want to get dangerous.

04:25So, we brought Pinky back into the payload bay.

04:28And I tried a couple times to get that fixture,

04:31but every time I was getting close, I would reach one of the limits of the arm.

04:35So, it was a real mess, and mission control didn't have any idea.

04:40So, we backed away several miles behind the satellite then

04:45and parked in the same orbit for a day.

04:48And then, fortunately, the Goddard people had some control.

04:52They had a program called BDOT,

04:54which reacts the torquers against the Earth's magnetic field.

04:58And they managed to get the energy out of the spinning satellite,

05:01the tumbling satellite.

05:03And they were fortunate, because the batteries were almost dead on it.

05:05And it stopped, finally, and it was pointed roughly at the sun when it stopped.

05:10So, the batteries recharged.

05:12And then, we still thought about where we had to do it.

05:14We were kind of low on fuel at that point.

05:17And mission control said, you know, we'll take another shot at it,

05:20but you can't spend much fuel on this rendezvous,

05:23because we've got to save something to get home.

05:24So, again, Crippen and Scobie did such a great job.

05:28They brought it back in again.

05:30And now, it was spinning slow enough that I could capture it with a mechanical arm.

05:33So, when I had it on board,

05:35then Pinky and Ox went back out again the next day and did the repair work.

05:39So, it was quite a good demonstration of how our training pays off so much

05:45between the crews and the mission control engineers.

05:49And Goddard, too.

05:51Everyone was involved.

05:52There were hundreds of people trying to make this work, you know,

05:55and we pulled it off, you know.

05:56So, it was quite a nice accomplishment.

05:59Wow.

05:59That really is an amazing achievement.

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