Fwd: The Independence Day Mission of STS-4

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 6, 2014 4:40:38 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: The Independence Day Mission of STS-4

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 5th, 2014 

'A Hundred Flights ... ': The Independence Day Mission of STS-4 (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

Columbia touches down at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on 4 July 1982, concluding the shuttle's fourth and final Orbital Flight Test. Photo Credit: NASA

More than three decades ago, on Independence Day (4 July) in 1982, Columbia triumphantly touched down at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., concluding the fourth shuttle mission. Aboard the reusable spacecraft were Commander Ken Mattingly and Pilot Hank Hartsfield. Theirs was the final Orbital Test Flight (OFT), after which the shuttle was supposed to be declared fully "operational" and ready to conduct commercial missions for national and international customers, military missions for the Department of Defense, and scientific research missions with the European-built Spacelab. It was expected that by the end of the 1980s, the four members of the shuttle fleet—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis—would be launching every two weeks, flying more than 20 times each year. Yet despite this rhetoric, many within NASA doubted that such a feat was ever possible.

To be fair, the processing time required to prepare Columbia for her first three missions had been significantly reduced from a 610-day "flow" in the Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) for STS-1 to 104 days for STS-2 to 68 days for STS-3 … to just 42 days for STS-4. However, the technical challenges facing engineers to prepare payloads for flight, much less to deal with the refurbishment of the shuttle and its intricate Thermal Protection System (TPS), were enormous. By the end of 1985, just prior to the calamitous loss of Challenger, the fleet had managed to fly nine missions in a single 12-month period—an achievement never again matched in the shuttle's 30-year history. By 2002, the year before Columbia was lost, that figure had fallen to six flights, and in 2011, at the very end of the shuttle era, only three missions took place.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was—and still is—naïve to suppose that a vehicle of such complexity could ever come close to becoming the spacefaring equivalent of a commercial airliner. Yet that was precisely the intention, and it was a dream which would persist to 1986 and beyond. In fact, NASA's final shuttle manifest, published a few weeks before the loss of Challenger, quoted plans for no fewer than 14 missions in 1986 and almost twice that number in 1987. Even without the loss of Challenger, insiders doubted that such flight rates were realistic. The plan to remove ejection seats from Columbia after her four test flights was also controversial. Bryan O'Connor, who would STS-40 in June 1991, remembered a conversation with Ken Mattingly. "I told him I just didn't feel comfortable with how we could possibly get to a confidence level after such a short test program," O'Connor recalled in a NASA oral history. Mattingly told him not to worry about the rhetoric from NASA Headquarters: "You and I both know that it will take a hundred flights before this thing will be operational!" In fact, it would take far more.

Pictured during their training for STS-4 are Commander Ken Mattingly (left) and Pilot Hank Hartsfield. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

In the spring of 1982, it was a quite different story. On the outside, the shuttle seemed to be prospering, and it was with great anticipation that NASA set to work preparing Columbia for her fourth and final OFT mission. Thirty-six tiles and fragments of 14 others were found to have fallen from her nose and the aft body flap beneath her main engines during STS-3, but none of those areas were subjected to exceptionally high temperatures during re-entry. The tiles had been closely inspected after each flight, and a process of "densification" had been ongoing since even before STS-1. This process involved the application of a silica solution to the tiles and was intended to improve their adhesion to a Nomex felt pad bonded onto Columbia's aluminum skin. Since the airframe expanded when heated, the tiles were affixed to a "dynamic" base. Most of the tiles in areas subjected to particularly high levels of heating, such as the belly, had been densified long before STS-1, and the remainder were completed between flights and during a year-long maintenance period which started after Columbia returned from her fifth mission.

Meanwhile, the payloads assigned to STS-4 were being brought up to speed, and, by May 1982, most of them were aboard the shuttle. An Interim Environmental Contamination Monitor (IECM) was returned to its manufacturer, inspected, and then reinstalled in the payload bay. An important new commercial facility, called the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES), was loaded into the middeck, and the first "real" Getaway Special (GAS) canister was mounted on Columbia's payload bay wall. It had been purchased by Gilbert Moore, a Morton Thiokol manager, who donated the canister to Utah State University for student experiments.

One passenger aboard STS-4 which was not publicized as highly was the first classified Department of Defense payload. The U.S. military had long harbored a keen and active interest in the development and use of the shuttle, and an independent Air Force launch site had already been built at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. In fact, as Columbia was being prepared for her fourth orbital voyage, the Air Force was midway through negotiations to buy nine missions from NASA to fly its top-secret reconnaissance and intelligence satellites and perform other experiments … for the bargain price of just $268 million. This remarkable deal of less than $30 million per flight had been struck partly in recognition of the Air Force's support to NASA in gaining Congressional approval for the shuttle, but also in anticipation of the plans to start flying military missions out of Vandenberg from 1986 onward. One of the shuttle fleet would be detailed to Vandenberg for either military payloads or polar-orbiting missions. It would represent the first time a manned spacecraft had flown from the West Coast.

STS-4 rolls out to Pad 39A, ahead of Columbia's fourth launch into orbit. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Little of this could have been foreseen in the summer of 1982, and it was in anticipation of a flurry of classified missions that the first such payload was installed aboard Columbia for launching into orbit on STS-4. It was designated "DoD-82-1," meaning that it was the first Department of Defense payload to be flown on the shuttle in Fiscal Year 1982. Some details of this payload have slipped out over the years and the centerpiece was a sensitive detector, known as the Cryogenic Infrared Radiance Instrument for Shuttle (CIRRIS). Its objective was to test infrared sensors for an advanced "staring-mosaic" surveillance satellite, called "Teal Ruby," which, at the time of the Challenger loss, was scheduled to be aboard the first Vandenberg shuttle mission in July 1986. In the wake of Challenger, and a three-year period on the ground, Teal Ruby was first shifted onto STS-39 and finally cancelled. By the time STS-39 lifted off in April 1991, it carried not Teal Ruby … but an updated version of CIRRIS. Apparently, by the time it would have been ready to launch, the Teal Ruby technology—considered "advanced" in the late 1970s—would be virtually obsolete, because sensor technology was advancing rapidly.

It was under an unusual shroud of secrecy that Ken Mattingly and Hank Hartsfield, the last two-man shuttle crew, rode the bus out to Pad 39A on 27 June 1982 for their flight into space. Mattingly had previously flown on Apollo 16 to lunar orbit, whilst Hartsfield would be embarking on his first mission. Originally, when NASA intended to fly six Orbital Flight Tests (OFT), before declaring the shuttle fully operational, Mattingly and Hartsfield were named to fly the fifth (called the "E") mission, and when the agency reduced the number to four, they confidently expected to be reassigned to one of the operational flights instead. According to the initial plans, fellow astronauts Vance Brand and Bob Overmyer (the "D" crew) were in line for STS-4, but their roles were switched with Mattingly and Hartsfield, and Brand and Overmyer wound up as the flight crew for the first operational voyage, STS-5. Many have considered the presence of a classified Department of Defense payload aboard STS-4, and the fact that Mattingly was the astronaut office's lead on DoD affairs, as the primary reason for the switch. "The idea of trying to get on an early test flight," Mattingly recalled many years later, "was what every pilot wants to do. Of course, none of us thought that it was going to take so many years before that first flight took place."

By the time the first crew announcements for the OFT missions were made in March 1978, the men for STS-1 (the "A" mission) were identified as John Young and Bob Crippen, with Joe Engle and Dick Truly following them aboard STS-2 (the "B" mission). By the end of 1979, Jack Lousma and Gordon Fullerton were training for the third ("C") mission, when, all at once, Mattingly and Hartsfield were called up to join them for the same training program. "It was kinda funny," Hartsfield recalled in his NASA oral history, "because it scared them. Lousma made a panic call to Houston; [he] thought we were going to replace them." In fact, Mattingly and Hartsfield would back up Lousma and Fullerton. "It was a little bit confusing as to the way the crews were announced, because no one really knew; it was a standard joke … around the office, trying to figure out this crew structure and how it was going to work."

Mattingly and Hartsfield need not have worried. On 1 March 1982, NASA formally announced their names to fly STS-4.

 

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 6th, 2014 

'What's Tab November?': The Independence Day Mission of STS-4 (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

Columbia roars into orbit on 27 June 1982, kicking off the STS-4 mission. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

More than three decades ago, on Independence Day (4 July) in 1982, Columbia triumphantly touched down at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., concluding the fourth shuttle mission. Aboard the reusable spacecraft were Commander Ken Mattingly and Pilot Hank Hartsfield. Theirs was the final Orbital Test Flight (OFT), after which the shuttle was supposedly to be declared fully "operational" and ready to conduct commercial missions for national and international customers, military missions for the Department of Defense, and scientific research missions with the European-built Spacelab. It was expected that by the end of the 1980s, the four members of the shuttle fleet—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis—would be launching every two weeks, flying more than 20 times each year. However, as described in yesterday's AmericaSpace history article, many within NASA doubted that such a feat was ever possible.

On the eve of the launch of STS-4, concerns were raised about Mattingly and Hartsfield's chances of launching safely, because on the night of 26 June a severe hailstorm damaged several of Columbia's thermal tiles and deposited water behind the covers of two Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters. Despite the possibility that this water might freeze during ascent, it was eventually concluded that it would not pose a serious problem. Columbia lifted off precisely on time at 11:00 a.m. EDT, right at the opening of a four-and-a-half-hour window for that day, and quickly arced her way into the clear Florida sky for a planned seven-day mission.

For Mattingly, who had previously endured a bone-shaking Saturn V ascent, the shuttle offered the smoothest ride in the world. "It just goes!" he said later. Ascent, overall, was nominal, but a number of hydraulic sensors registered dramatic temperature drops in the nose landing gear wheel well, which required several hours to return to normal. Nothing like it had been seen in Columbia's three previous launches, and it was attributed to rainwater penetration. More worryingly, other sensors recorded moisture behind a number of TPS tiles. This reinforced a decision by NASA managers, before launch, to fly the shuttle in a belly-to-Sun attitude to evaporate the water. This attitude was maintained for 12 hours, after which the crew began preparing for the "normal" attitudes planned for their mission. With the belly facing the Sun and the payload bay and overhead windows facing Earth, this offered them the opportunity for some magnificent views of orbital flight. "All of a sudden," Mattingly noted, "it was like you pulled the shades back on a bay window … and the Earth appeared!"

Ken Mattingly (foreground) and Hank Hartsfield depart the Operations & Checkout Building on their way to the launch pad. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

The ascent, however, had gone somewhat awry for the twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), both of whose parachutes failed during their descent. They sank after splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, and, although an underwater remote camera did succeed in photographing the wreckage, it was considered too expensive to recover them. The cause of the failure was subsequently traced to a new feature intended to separate the parachutes from the SRBs at the instant of splashdown to prevent them from being dragged through the water by their deflated canopies. This system had been "active" on the first three shuttle missions, but was partially disabled on STS-4 and frangible nuts holding one of two risers for each parachute were replaced by solid nuts which would not separate the riser. Preparations for STS-5 would see the replacement of all frangible nuts with solid ones. As a result, when Columbia next lifted off in November 1982, both risers on both parachutes remained attached to the boosters until they could be removed by recovery forces. The fix was successful.

Meanwhile, despite the half-day "soak" of Columbia in orbit, data indicated that water still lingered in several nooks and crannies. It was feared that, during "cold" periods, this might freeze and potentially crack the more sensitive tiles on areas which endured maximum atmospheric heating during re-entry. As a consequence, another "solar inertial" run, this time lasting for 23 hours, was added to the astronauts' timeline for 29 June. It resolved the problem. In fact, maneuvering the shuttle into various attitudes to better understand its thermal behavior had long been a key objective for STS-4. "We had been assigned to do a bunch of thermal tests," explained Mattingly, "where you put the orbiter in an attitude and get one side hot, and then one side cold, and then spin it around. They were collecting the data [because], after this flight, we wouldn't have the [Development Flight Instrumentation] to do that. It was something that had to be done, but was really not a glamorous kind of test that you can run."

Sitting in Mission Control throughout these exercises was Capcom Mike Coats. He described the thermal behavior of the shuttle as "the banana effect," for during orbital flight its skin flexed, as one side "expanded" and the other "contracted." During a practice opening and closure of Columbia's payload bay doors under extremely cold conditions, problems arose after one period in the belly-to-Sun attitude. A "closed" indicator on one of the doors was not achieved, prompting Coats to advise Mattingly and Hartsfield to reverse their attitude and warm up the orbiter's topside. This procedure, as well as 10 hours of so-called "barbecue roll" and another two hours in a tail-to-Sun orientation, thankfully resolved the issue and the door opening and closure was satisfactorily demonstrated several times. A thorough understanding of the factors impacting the satisfactory closure of the payload bay doors was critical before the shuttle could be declared fully operational; for if a crew was unable to close them properly, a safe return to Earth would be impossible. For the remainder of her mission, Columbia spent 67 hours in a tail-to-Sun attitude and on 3 July underwent a 10-hour barbecue roll to thermally stabilize herself for re-entry.

In effect, Mattingly and Hartsfield could insert the shuttle into the required attitude, then leave her alone until it became necessary for another orientation change. In the meantime, they had a multitude of other tasks to undertake. Of pivotal importance among these were the final series of tests of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm. Mattingly and Hartsfield's primary work with the RMS was the deployment and maneuvering of the Induced Environmental Contamination Monitor (IECM), which had been forestalled on STS-3, due to a failure of the arm's wrist camera. In total, the astronauts completed two successful deployment and berthing exercises with the device, lasting around nine hours in total, and commented positively on the arm's "crisp and precise" handling characteristics.

The Interim Environmental Contamination Monitor (IECM) is maneuvered by the RMS mechanical arm, close to Columbia's vertical stabilizer. Photo Credit: NASA

They also evaluated a new berthing device in the payload bay—a "Retention Engagement Mechanism" (REM) —and acquired good images of the IECM on their monitors in Columbia's aft flight deck. Images of the bay itself, though, were restricted, to keep the Department of Defense's 82-1 payload carefully under wraps. It seems that, in addition to the CIRRIS sensor, there were six other instruments, all of them affixed to a cross-bay "bridge," known as an Experiment Support Structure (ESS). These all bore their own elaborate titles and hinted at a range of atmospheric, navigational, plasma physics, and attitude investigations: the Horizon Ultraviolet Program (HUP), the Autonomous Navigation and Attitude Reference Systems (ANARS), the Shuttle Effects on Plasma in Space (SEPS), the Sheath and Wake Charging (SWC), a set of passive cosmic-ray collectors, and a pallet alignment model.

Each apparently functioned without incident … except, ironically, for CIRRIS itself, which was foiled by the failure of its lens cap to open. Mission controllers in Houston discussed the possibility of either knocking it free with the RMS or sending Mattingly outside on a spacewalk to manually open it, but it was eventually decided not to complicate what was, after all, an experimental mission. "Payloads" on the OFT missions were a bonus and CIRRIS, despite the impatience of its sponsor, would have to await another chance to demonstrate its flair in space. Not surprisingly, Ken Mattingly was keen to do an EVA. The new space suit for the shuttle was still untested and the procedures for donning and doffing it in microgravity had to be fine-tuned. That honor fell to Mattingly, and on STS-4 he did get the opportunity to suit himself up for a spacewalk. The only problem, he said later, was that "I didn't get to open the door!"

The military experiments had already drawn sufficient criticism to delete a planned reconnaissance camera from STS-4, and the dismal failure of CIRRIS only magnified the Air Force's embarrassment. In fact, the overly secretive nature of the mission turned into something of a joke, especially for the crew. "A funny thing happened on that flight," recalled Hank Hartsfield. "On one experiment, they had a classified checklist [and] because we didn't have a secure comm link, we had the checklist divided up in sections that just had letter-names, like Bravo Charlie, Tab Charlie, Tab Bravo, that they could call out." Whenever the crew talked to Air Force controllers at the Satellite Control Facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., they would be told, for example, to "Do Tab Charlie." "We had a locker that we kept all the classified material," continued Hartsfield, "and it was padlocked, so once we got on orbit, we unlocked it and did what we had to do." As the end of the mission neared, Hartsfield packed away the remainder of the classified materials and secured the locker.

He told Mattingly. "I got all the classified stuff put away. It's all locked up."

"Great!" replied Mattingly.

STS-4 crewmen Hartsfield and Mattingly are greeted at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., by President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan on Independence Day, 4 July, 1982. Photo Credit: NASA

Half an hour later, Mission Control in Houston called and told them that the military staff at Sunnyvale, Calif., wanted to talk to them. The Air Force controller asked them, cryptically, to "do Tab November." The two astronauts looked at each other, bewildered. What the hell was Tab November? Neither of them could remember. The secret nature of the military instruction and the lack of a secure communications link also meant they could not ask over the radio. The only option was to reopen the classified locker, dig through all the materials, and find the checklist. Eventually, after much searching, Hartsfield finally found the glossary entry for Tab November.

It read: Put everything away and secure it!

Columbia's return home on Independence Day, 4 July 1982, was watched closely by President Ronald Reagan, and Mattingly and Hartsfield had already been briefed by NASA Administrator Jim Beggs and asked to think of some memorable words to mark the occasion. "We knew they had hyped-up the STS-4 mission, so that they wanted to make sure that we landed on the Fourth of July," Mattingly continued. "It was in no uncertain terms that we were going to land on the Fourth of July, no matter what day we took off. Even if it was Fifth, we were going to land on the Fourth! That meant, if you didn't do any of your test mission, that's okay, as long as you land on the Fourth … because the President is going to be there! We thought that was kinda interesting."

Fortunately, Columbia's landing—the first on Edwards' concrete Runway 22—came precisely on time on Independence Day afternoon, completing a textbook flight. Unlike the experience of Jack Lousma and Gordon Fullerton on STS-3, the landing gear was deployed at an altitude of around 390 feet (120 meters), a full 20 seconds before touchdown, allowing all six wheels to be firmly locked into position with plenty of time to spare. The vehicle landed just past the runway threshold, and Mattingly applied the brakes for 20 seconds to bring Columbia to a smooth halt. Now came his biggest challenge: How to welcome Reagan inside the shuttle? He and Hartsfield had considered putting up a big notice, worded to the effect of: Welcome to Columbia: Thirty minutes ago, this was in space. As circumstances transpired, Mattingly actually welcomed his commander in chief with a rather painful forehead. …

Immediately after wheelstop, he turned to Hartsfield and spoke. "I am not going to have somebody come up here and pull me outta this chair! I'm going to give every ounce of strength I've got and get up on my own!" Previous crews had come back to Earth, some feeling fine, others feeling nauseous, and still others requiring a gurney to carry them off for medical attention. That would not happen with the President Reagan in attendance. Mentally and physically set up to meet the chief, Mattingly pushed himself upward out of his seat … and smashed his head sharply on the overhead instrument panel!

"Oh, did I have a headache," he recalled later.

Nevertheless, the two returning space heroes composed themselves, Mattingly wiped away the few spots of blood, descended the steps, and smartly saluted Reagan. The test flights were over and the shuttle's operational history had begun.

 

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

 

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