Space shuttle’s record celebrated
TWENTY years ago, on December 7, 1996, the US Space Shuttle Columbia spent a record 17 days in space – the longest ever shuttle mission.
The Swiss-based Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for air sports, acknowledged the anniversary this week.
The flight launched from and landed at the Nasa Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 19, 1996 after a three-week delay.
“Poor weather back on Earth, in both space shuttle landing locations, meant the decision had been made to keep the shuttle in orbit for first one extra day, and then a second. Fog in Florida and high winds in Nevada meant the five astronauts, four men and one woman, continued to circle the planet long after they should have landed.”
However, their enforced exile did have a silver lining: it meant the crew beat the world record for the longest shuttle mission ever flown, – 17 days, 15 hours and 53 minutes.
When they landed, Christmas was on the horizon.
“Kenneth D Cockerel was commander of what was Nasa’s 80th space shuttle mission, and the Columbia’s 21st space flight. Once back on Earth it was he who signed the official FAI dossier when Nasa applied for the world record three months later.”
He declared: “I hereby certify that I was aboard the above vehicle at the time it was launched from Earth’s surface, remained onboard during the period stated herein, and returned to the Earth’s surface at the location indicated below.”
The “above vehicle” was the Columbia, marked, according to the dossier, with the identifying marks, “USA flag and words ‘United States’ and ‘Columbia’ on the fuselage and wings”.
That dossier, the original of which is kept in the archive at the FAI head office in Lausanne, Switzerland, includes a unique flight report written by Cockerel. In it, he details how two planned spacewalks had to be cancelled because of a mechanical problem with the exit door.
“The outer airlock hatch could not be opened due to what was later determined to be a jammed latch actuator.”
In layman’s terms, a screw had backed out of its thread, jamming the latch from the outside.
He drily adds: “Considerable effort was made by the crew and the flight control team on the ground to find a way to un-jam the actuator. No solution was found.”
Despite the failure of the spacewalks, however, the mission was otherwise considered a success.
Numerous experiments were carried out and a satellite was launched using the shuttle’s famous “robot arm”.
That required flying the shuttle manually, to keep the robot arm and satellite in view – a considerable feat of skill at 300km above the surface of gravity.
The crew of space shuttle mission STS-80 included Kent Rominger (pilot), Tamara Jerniga (mission specialist), Thomas Jones (mission specialist) and F Story Musgrave (mission specialist). the Earth in zero