Half a Dozen Guinea in Orbit

By Frederic Golden

Despite glitches, Spacelab is off to a flying start

In the inimitable NASA phrase, everything seemed to be going A-O.K. As Columbia circled the earth for the third time, with no problem in view, Astronaut Owen Garriott and his West German sidekick Ulf Merbold floated gracefully toward the rear of the main cabin. They reached out and tugged at a hatch that would lead them to the shuttle's cargo bay. To their surprise, despite several minutes of huffing and pulling, the door refused to budge. Not until the muscle power of the entire six-man crew, the largest group ever to fly in space, was applied to the balky hatch did it finally swing open, permitting the astronauts to enter their $1 billion orbital laboratory.

This chaotic beginning last week seemed to set the tone for the debut flight of the European-built Spacelab 1. Following an almost unblemished Florida launch, the astronauts quickly started to activate the 72 experiments both inside the 23-ft.-long module and on its external pallet, where some instruments are exposed directly to space. They also commenced tests on the most complex machinery aboard the shuttle: themselves. But even though this long-awaited venture in international cooperation appeared headed toward a major success, it was accompanied by annoying glitches that turned the mission into as much a test of human patience as of space-age technology.

Electronic equipment failed, causing the loss of precious experimental data. Computers mysteriously broke down, and a larder of food inexplicably spoiled (although there were enough fresh provisions on board to keep the spacemen fed). Communications links, already occasionally garbled because of a satellite problem, were hopelessly overtaxed. A major difficulty was the zeal of the ground scientists, about 200 researchers from Europe, the U.S., Canada and Japan, who have worked up to five years or more on their experiments. As they bombarded the astronauts with commands, often in unfamiliar accents and at times absentmindedly reversing earlier instructions, the irritation of the spacemen rose. Snapped Mission Specialist Bob Parker: "I think you might be quiet until we get one or the other [experiment] done."

Because the early hours in orbit are critical in judging human reaction to weightlessness, the scientist-astronauts got a fast start on their biomedical program. They took blood samples from one another (Payload Specialist Byron Lichtenberg, as the chief bloodletter, became known as "the vampire"), underwent eye tests, lifted steel balls, were flung around in a sledlike contraption called a body-restraint system, and even endured electric shocks. Not surprisingly, the orbital guinea pigs complained that the tests were making them ill, although the torture had a medical purpose: to learn more about the nausea, headaches and general lethargy, known as space-adaptation syndrome, that afflict about half of all astronauts in their first day or two of weightlessness.

The troubles with communications led to the loss of some experimental data. They also curtailed TV pictures and disrupted a ground-to-air press conference by cutting off reporters in Europe, where the flight has been big news. The major culprit was NASA's tracking and data-relay satellite, which can relay an encyclopedic 300 megabits per second. Although designed as Spacelab's main link with the ground, it still has not fully recovered from a faulty launch last April and is now capable of sending only a fraction of its ground-to-orbit capacity. These difficulties were compounded by the brief blackout of a tracking station in White Sands, N. Mex., and the failure of an electronic relay on the shuttle. The device was supposed to collect data from the pallet experiments and pipe them into Spacelab's computers.

Despite the rash of mishaps and irritations, the scientist-astronauts seemed pleased with the gleaming celestial laboratory. Said Lichtenberg, a biomedical engineer from M.I.T.: "It's just an amazing vehicle. Spacelab lives up to all its expectations." In one experiment involving a pallet instrument called a spectrophotometer, the scientists succeeded in making the first measurements of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, in the upper atmosphere. By such observations, scientists can study weather patterns on earth. They can also explore the history of distant worlds, since the presence of large quantities of deuterium is a sign that a planet may once have held water, which is essential for life. Scanning the skies, Spacelab's telescopes sighted at least two puzzling sources of X rays. These could not be observed under the earth's obscuring atmosphere. In a bit of zero-g alchemy, the astronauts succeeded in creating an entirely new alloy. Under the benevolent influence of microgravity, they were able to form a mix of aluminum and zinc, two metals that cannot easily be combined on earth. Extremely strong yet lightweight, the alloy, if it could be produced in mass quantities in space, might be useful for superstructures of airplanes or spacecraft.

On the other hand, seven experiments, including a highly touted West German photographic survey of the earth's surface, performed poorly. All of these will have to be reflown on future missions. There were also problems with the effort to create artificial auroras, a simulation of the northern lights. Still, at least some scientific data were salvaged by an impromptu orbital repair. Under detailed guidance from Mission Control, Parker managed to free a jammed tape recorder used to store the results of experiments. His tool: a 69-c- Phillips screwdriver.

For the Europeans, Spacelab's performance was a welcome change after years of delays. Some Europeans talked of joining the U.S. in creating a permanent orbital station. NASA Chief James Beggs promoted that project last week at a meeting with President Reagan and his Cabinet, with no immediate results. Nothing, however, dampened NASA's cheer. At week's end it was so pleased with Spacelab that it decided to extend the shuttle's record-breaking nine-day mission by 24 hours. --By Frederic Golden. Reported by Jerry Hannifin and Geoffrey Leavenworth/Houston

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin, Geoffrey Leavenworth/Houston This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.