A main Challenger engine failed 5 minutes and 45 seconds into its flight in the first major malfunction during ascent in the history of the space shuttle program. The 100-ton spacecraft limped on its two remaining main engines into a low, irregular orbit of the earth. Officials said that the Challenger’s crew was safe and that they tentatively planned to proceed with the mission.
One of the most significant Space Shuttle science missions ever undertaken hung—for the merest of minutes—in the balance, suspended on a knife-edge of success and failure, some 67 miles (108 km) above Earth. Heading towards low-Earth orbit at more than 9,300 mph (15,000 km/h) on the afternoon of 29 July 1985, Challenger was in the process of delivering her eighth human crew on the Spacelab-2 mission to explore the Sun and the cosmos in unprecedented detail, using a battery of telescopes and instruments in her payload bay. Three weeks earlier, on 12 July, the crew of Mission 51F had also suffered a hairy shutdown of their three main engines on the pad, seconds before liftoff. If the crew believed to have weathered their run of bad luck, they could not have been more mistaken. Today, with the shuttle now a figure of history, Mission 51F stands alone as arguably the most significant near-miss in the program’s 30-year operational lifespan.
Aboard Challenger that morning was one of the oldest crews ever launched into orbit, with an average age of 47, and just two previous space missions between them. In command was veteran astronaut Gordon Fullerton, joined on the flight deck for ascent by pilot Roy Bridges, flight engineer Story Musgrave—recently interviewed by AmericaSpace’s Emily Carney—and the then-oldest man in space, Karl Henize. Downstairs, on the shuttle’s darkened middeck, were fellow astronauts Tony England, Loren Acton and John-David Bartoe. For Musgrave, flying his second mission, his duty during ascent was to assist Fullerton and Bridges with monitoring Challenger’s systems and reading back procedures to the pilots in the event of an off-nominal situation. And 29 July 1985 certainly proved to be one such situation.
At an altitude of 67 miles (108 km), and almost six minutes after leaving Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), the shuttle had long since shed her twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) and was racing towards low-Earth orbit under the impulse of her three liquid-fueled main engines, fed by the giant External Tank (ET). Suddenly, temperature readings for the No. 1 engine’s high-pressure turbopump indicated “above” its maximum redline, prompting Challenger’s General Purpose Computers (GPCs) to shut it down. Mission Control made the call “Limits to Inhibit”, advising the crew that they were seeing a potentially show-stopping malfunction and the imminent necessity of an abort. At this stage of ascent, the vehicle was too high and traveling too fast to accomplish a Return to Launch Site (RTLS) abort. One of two options remained open to the 51F crew: either a Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) in Europe or a tricky maneuver, called an Abort to Orbit (ATO), whereby the shuttle would pulse her twin Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines to augment the two remaining main engines and limp into a low, but stable orbit.
Sitting behind and between Fullerton and Bridges, the first instinct of Musgrave was to flick to the page on his knee-mounted checklist which dealt with a TAL abort to a place called Zaragoza Air Base, a joint-use military and civilian installation with a NATO-equipped bombing range, in the autonomous region of Aragon in north-eastern Spain. This particular site had been assigned to 51F for a TAL scenario because the mission’s orbital inclination of 49.5 degrees placed it close to the nominal ascent ground track and enabled the most efficient use of available main engine reserves and cross-range capability.
Next to Musgrave was Karl Henize, who looked on with a measure of nervousness. He was keenly aware that TAL encompassed the six-minute period following the closure of the RTLS “window”, through SRB separation and main engine cutoff, and he knew that it would only be selected in the event of a major malfunction, such as a serious cabin pressure leakage or cooling system failure. Had Mission Control issued the instruction to “Abort TAL” that day, Fullerton would have rotated the abort switch on his instrument panel to the TAL/AOA position and depressed the abort push button next to the selector switch. Challenger’s computers would then have automatically steered the orbiter towards the plane of the European landing site.
Henize could see Musgrave’s checklist open at the page headed “SPAIN”.
“Where we going, Story?”
“Spain, Karl.” Then he retracted it. “We’re close, but not yet.”
Eventually, the call came from Mission Control: “Abort ATO; Abort ATO.” Challenger had achieved sufficient velocity and altitude to undertake the next available option: the Abort to Orbit. In fact, she had missed the closure of the TAL “window” by just 33 seconds! At 4:06:06 p.m. EDT, some six minutes and six seconds into the ascent and hurtling towards space, Gordon Fullerton fired the OMS engines for 106 seconds, consuming a large quantity of much-needed propellant, but permitting the shuttle to continue into a lower-than-planned orbit. Two minutes later, at 4:08:13 p.m., the No. 3 main engine data indicated excessively high temperatures. If the “Limits to Inhibit” had not already been applied, the computer would have it shut down. The “inhibit” command effectively instructed the computers to ignore the over-temperature signals and prevented them from shutting down the No. 3 engine. The two remaining engines fired for an additional 49 seconds, shutting down nine minutes and 20 seconds after launch. “We never did get the call for the transoceanic emergency landing,” said Musgrave, “and we ended up making it to orbit and finishing the mission.”
The U.S. and the Kremlin offered new proposals on nuclear weapons tests. The White House announced that President Reagan had suggested that Moscow send observers to witness an underground nuclear test in Nevada. Hours later, Mr. Gorbachev announced through the press agency Tass and on national television that the Soviet Union would impose a five-month moratorium on nuclear weapons tests. He said the moratorium would start on August 6, the 40th anniversary of the United States bombing of Hiroshima, and would continue beyond January 1 if the United States imposed a similar moratorium in the meantime. The two announcements came as Secretary of State George P. Shultz and the new Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, arrived in Finland for a three-day meeting marking the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki accords on European security and cooperation. Mr. Shultz told reporters traveling with him to Helsinki that the United States did not believe that “it is in our interest to stop our testing program under these circumstances.” He also expressed doubts about the sincerity of the Soviet moratorium.
The Soviet Union’s announcement that it would halt nuclear testing from August 6 until the end of the year is seen by American officials as the latest in a pattern of foreign policy moves by Mikhail S. Gorbachev to put pressure on President Reagan before their November meeting. For its part, the United States has sought to deflect the Soviet moves and to take its own initiatives to try to keep Moscow on the defensive in the competition before the court of public opinion. This has produced almost a Ping-Pong rhythm to public pronouncements by the two sides that specialists expect to continue through the summer and fall. Today, the Soviet proposal for a nuclear testing moratorium was matched by President Reagan’s invitation for Moscow to send observers to witness an American underground nuclear test. At each important turn, the United States has reacted quickly to avoid being outflanked. Hints of Soviet flexibility on arms control have been discounted as too vague to suggest whether Moscow seriously wants a breakthrough or is merely posturing.
Reagan Administration officials, reacting to Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s proposal for a five-month moratorium on nuclear tests, said today that continued underground testing of nuclear weapons was important to two key areas of American research. They said the tests were needed to develop an X-ray laser for a strategic defense against nuclear missiles and to find ways to fight a long nuclear war. Experts on nuclear strategy noted that these were major priorities for the Administration, explaining its apparent reluctance to accept a temporary moratorium on underground nuclear testing or a comprehensive test ban treaty.
French television broadcast excerpts of film it said shows Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov leaving a hospital in Gorky on July 11 and being reunited with his wife, Yelena Bonner. The West German newspaper Bild said it also has film of Sakharov and his wife, hugging and kissing in front of their house in Gorky, where they have been living in internal exile. Bild, which has in the past received information from Soviet journalist Viktor Louis, said Sakharov had been hospitalized in April, apparently after starting a hunger strike.
Many airports have tightened security since the hijacking last month of a Trans World Airlines jetliner and the crash of an Air India plane off Ireland, according to a survey by New York Times correspondents. But the survey found that slackness in procedure and a lackadaisical attitude on the part of personnel were still evident at some airports.
A suspected Basque rebel killed a vice admiral who was one of Spain’s top military officials. The poice said a vehicle carrying three men and a woman cut off a car carrying Vice Admiral Fausto Escrigas Estrada and riddled it with submachine gun fire in downtown Madrid. His chauffer was critically wounded.
The rural poor in Scotland’s western isles have suffered from unemployment and underemployment for decades that have been as serious as the plight of the urban poor. The island chain is scenically splendid, geographically isolated and economically underprivileged.
Syria said an Israeli air attack in Lebanon early today killed “a number of inhabitants, mostly women, children and old men.” Lebanese authorities said six Israeli Kfir jets carried out the raid on the Syrian-controlled Bekaa, Lebanon’s eastern valley. Israel said its target was a Palestinian base at Bar Elias, 31 miles east of Beirut and 10 miles west of the Syrian border. It was Israel’s eighth air strike on Lebanese targets this year. The police said all six planes dropped balloons to foil heat-seeking SAM-7 and SAM-9 antiaircraft missiles. Israel’s military command said in Tel Aviv that the planes had hit their target and returned safely. The Syrian communique said the Israeli jets were driven off “by antiaircraft fire when they tried to bomb targets in the Bar Elias area at 6:50 AM local time.” Several Syrian-supported radical Palestinian factions have bases in the area.
India said it has asked the U.S. government to shut down what an Indian official called “terrorist schools” such as one near Birmingham, Alabama, where Sikh extremists allegedly received weapons training. The minister of state for external affairs, Khurshed Alam Khan, told Parliament, “The White House has threatened stern action against any terrorist act toward the United States, but it should take the same stand in the case of terrorism towards other governments.” Two of the trainees at the camp were arrested in May in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Washington.
North Korea, at a meeting of the Korean Military Armistice Commission, proposed to reduce the number of arms and military guards in and around the Korean truce site of Panmunjom, about 35 miles north of Seoul. North Korean Maj. Gen. Lee Tae Ho cited recent talks between North and South Korea as “a good omen.” Under his proposal, each side would reduce its security personnel at the truce site from 65 to 30, and weapons would be limited to pistols.
China announced a quarantine to prevent the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome after a tourist died of the disease, the first AIDS case reported in China. A Public Health Ministry report said that Oscar Messina, 34, an Argentine citizen living in the United States, died June 6 in Peking. It said Messina’s family reported he had been diagnosed as having AIDS in the United States and that he had “contacted many people and contaminated a large area” during his 10-day visit.
Japanese intelligence experts have identified tracks of Soviet midget submarines on the bottom of the Sea of Japan, along the straits a Soviet fleet must use to reach the Pacific, The Los Angeles Times reported today. The newspaper said the tracks were a sign that Soviet special forces are making contingency plans for amphibious landings to take control of the key waterways in time of crisis. “We’ve seen the tracks of at least six submersibles, all on the Sea of Japan side, in our territorial waters,” Makoto Momoi, a former military adviser to Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and now a specialist at the Japan Defense Research Institute, said in a recent interview. He said the tracks were discovered in the last year. A spokesman for the Japan Defense Agency would not comment today on the newspaper account.
Roman Catholic bishops in Haiti, protesting the expulsion of three Belgian priests and the mysterious death of a fourth, refused to hold a traditional Mass for President Jean-Claude Duvalier’s militia. The bishops also accused the government of persecuting the Catholic Church in Haiti and declared Friday a day of prayer and fasting. The Belgian priests had been critical of a recent referendum approving a lifetime presidency for Duvalier. Three were expelled last week, and the fourth allegedly was killed during a burglary.
Protest leaders on Guadeloupe ordered a halt to the most serious unrest on the French Caribbean island in two decades after an appeals court freed an independence activist from a Paris jail. Georges Faisans was sent to France to serve a three-year sentence for a machete attack that slightly wounded a teacher. Dozens of people were injured and Pointea-Pitre, a city of 100,000, was virtually shut down by the week of demonstrations.
In a small room adorned with crucifixes and portraits of secular and religious saints, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister is now in the third week of a fast to protest what he calls “the diabolical obsession of the power that endeavors to destroy us.” The Foreign Minister, the Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, is a Roman Catholic priest. He is among four Nicaraguan priests who have been suspended from the exercise of priestly functions after their refusal to obey papal directives to quit their Government posts.
Nicaraguan rebels ambushed two army trucks, killing nine women and wounding 24 other civilians who were on their way to visit their sons and other relatives at an army training camp near Mulukuku, 168 miles northeast of Managua, the Defense Ministry said. A witness said the rebels, known as contras, fired on the trucks with machine guns and threw hand grenades.
The Chief of Staff of Uganda’s armed forces, who has been a soldier since 1940, was sworn in today as interim head of state. The officer, Lieutenant General Tito Okello, 71 years old, said, “My services to you in this capacity will be short and you will elect a Government of your choice.” He said that the army had overthrown President Milton Obote to bring stability and that elections would soon be held. General Okello was flanked at the inauguration ceremony by Brigadier Basilio Olara Okello, the most prominent leader of the coup on Saturday. The two Okellos are not related.
South Africa’s President rejected a call for urgent talks with Bishop Desmond Tutu aimed at defusing rising tension over the mass arrests of dissidents. Bishop Tutu, a prominent South African black leader who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, said the decision by President P. W. Botha “demonstrates very clearly the crisis of this land.” The State Department criticized Mr. Botha for refusing to meet with Bishop Tutu. It said the crisis in South Africa could only be solved through talks with black leaders. Bishop Tutu, then General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, last met Mr. Botha in 1980. “We keep saying, ‘Let’s talk,’ ” the Bishop said, “and the response we get is intransigence and an escalation of their violence.”
President Reagan refused to back the two central elements of the latest budget proposals by the Senate Republican leadership: tax increases, including an oil import fee, and alternate-year payment of cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits. Mr. Reagan’s position angered some senior Republicans. The announcement of the President’s decision, awaited since Thursday, put an end to the Republican-led effort in the Senate to put together a plan to cut projected budget deficits by more than $300 billion over the next three years. “Any chance for this year of getting a real, significant, reliable deficit reduction package is gone,” said Pete V. Domenici, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Directing the blame at the White House, he added: “In this case there is not a will to address the huge deficit.”
President Reagan chooses Admiral William Crowe take the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
President Reagan meets with Chief of Staff Donald Regan to discuss the budget.
Moves to curtail health-care costs initiated by the Reagan Administration have touched off a debate among health-care professionals and members of Congress over whether the quality of care is being endangered. More than 60 percent of 7,800 doctors responding to a preliminary survey said that the quality of health care had deteriorated or that they feared such a decline was likely under the cost controls.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency today ordered his staff to study the implications of a Federal court ruling requiring the agency to order states to reduce pollution that causes acid rain. Lee M. Thomas, the agency’s administrator, asked his staff to look at all options, from complying with the court decision handed down Friday to appealing it to a higher court. Agency officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said they thought it most likely that the court ruling would be appealed. The decision, by Federal District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, ruled in favor of New York and several other states, which had sued to require the E.P.A. to act on pollution from seven Middle West and border states that is crossing state boundaries and into Canada as acidic rain, snow, fog or dust.
The parents of 17-year-old Walter Polovchak are free to take their son back to the Soviet Union, a federal judge ruled in Chicago. The preliminary injunction prevents the Immigration and Naturalization Service from enforcing the agency’s January, 1982, order that bars anyone from taking Walter out of the country against his wishes. Shortly after the ruling, the Justice Department filed an emergency motion with the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to prevent the Polovchaks from taking Walter back to the Soviet Union.
A bill to allow photographs and biographies of missing children to be printed on government mail was passed by the House and sent to the Senate. It would make the program discretionary and end it after 30 months. Reports would be required within two years after enactment on the program’s effectiveness.
A national atheist organization has asked the Boy Scouts of America to strike its requirement that Scouts believe in God after the expulsion of a scout who said he does not believe in a supreme being. “We believe this recent discriminatory action of the Boy Scouts of America is both legally and morally indefensible,” Anne Gaylor, president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said in Madison, Wisconsin. Paul Trout, 15, of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, was denied a promotion to Life Scout in June after he told a local review board that although he respects the rights of others to believe in God, he does not hold such a belief himself.
Soviet-bloc students and scholars would not have access to virtually all supercomputers in the United States, under a policy proposed by the Pentagon and several government intelligence agencies. The proposal, designed to protect United States technology, has generated protests from officials at three universities, charging that the restrictions could violate academic freedom.
Crews began another attempt today to recover the bodies of 26 men and one woman killed December 19, 1984, in a fire deep inside a Rocky Mountain mine. The recovery operation at the Wilberg Coal Mine in Utahcame after preparatory work to assure the safety of 100 workers going in, an Emery Mining Corporation spokesman, Bob Henrie, said. Three tunnels will be bored in a second attempt to reach the bodies of the 21 miners and six company officials and supervisors. The bodies were left inside when the raging fire drove rescue crews out and forced the company to seal the mine. Mr. Henrie said cutting the tunnels might take 13 weeks. The first attempt was aborted several weeks ago by cave-ins.
The longest-lasting auto tire is manufactured by Michelin, and it can run 66,000 miles under average driving conditions, according to tests by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an arm of the Transportation Department, showed that among 134 radial tires from 18 companies, Michelin’s did best with its XH, which has a treadwear rating of 330 or 66,000 miles. One treadwear-ratings point is equivalent to approximatley 200 miles of driving. Thus, a tire with a treadwear rating of 100 should get 20,000 miles.
The man alleged to have won an Alaska state office lease in exchange for raising campaign funds for Governor Bill Sheffield testified at the governor’s impeachment proceedings in Juneau that the lease was “not a big deal” for him. “I have personally done nothing illegal or immoral,” Lenny Arsenault told the Senate Rules Committee. Sheffield is accused of steering the $9.1-million lease to a firm partly owned by Arsenault, who is the business manager and financial secretary and treasurer of Local 375, Plumbers and Steamfitters Union.
Key farm state senators reached private agreement on income support features of a new farm bill, enhancing chances for the Agriculture Committee to send the bill to the floor this week. The accord would reduce a freeze on the amount farmers are guaranteed for their crops to two years from four and would retain a $50,000 limit on subsidies to each farmer. The farm bill would substantially cut price supports, which raise prices of U.S. commodities on world markets, and, instead, increase federal income support payments to farmers.
No definitive link can be found between exposure to Agent Orange and cancer or birth defects, Iowa health officials said after studying 10,848 Iowans who had served in Southeast Asia, including 4,238 directly exposed to the chemical defoliant. The survey found 120 cases of cancer among the veterans and their families; and, out of total births of 19,698, it found 2,331 babies born prematurely or with birth defects, 1,155 miscarriages and 191 stillbirths. However, it said those rates differ little from rates among the general population.
Fire crews in central Idaho’s tinder-dry mountains retreated from the advancing flames of two major wildfires and sought to establish new lines ahead of blazes raging over more than 30,000 acres. Firefighters continued battling blazes big and small in Montana, Oregon, Washington and Canada’s British Columbia. In the Salmon National Forest in Idaho, gusting winds disrupted containment efforts by more than 1,000 firefighters near Long Tom Mountain. In Idaho’s Payette National Forest, rugged terrain posed special problems for crews battling a 14,500acre fire near French Creek.
Development and growth of the brain continue into old age, according to mounting evidence. It was once thought that the brain was fixed by late childhood, according to innate genetic design.
A pair of Siberian tigers at the Bronx Zoo attacked and killed one of their keepers yesterday in an enclosure that is part of the Wild Asia exhibit. According to Dr. William Conway, the director of both the Bronx Zoo and the New York Zoological Society, the keeper, 24-year-old Robin Silverman, violated the “cardinal rule of animal care” by entering the two-acre enclosure without knowing where the tigers were. “It’s one of those terrible human tragedies, an accident,” Dr. Conway said. “She was considered a very bright and competent person, very highly regarded by her colleagues here at the zoo. But when you’re working with dangerous animals, you must be certain you know where they all are, and you don’t go into the enclosure with the big cats.”
Singer Tina Turner films music video for the song “One Of The Living” at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; song is from the film “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” in which she co-starred with Mel Gibson.
Major League Baseball:
The Blue Jays edged the Orioles, 4–3, in ten. Dámaso García hit a one-out home run in the 10th off Mike Boddicker as Toronto extended its club-record winning streak to nine games. It was Garcia’s eighth game-winning RBI this year. Toronto is now 10–1 in extra inning games. Tom Henke pitched scoreless relief in the ninth and tenth to get the win for the Jays in his first major league appearance.
With Manager Billy Martin directing his team from a hospital bed in Arlington, Texas, the Yankees rallied out of their general malaise tonight and handed the Cleveland Indians an 8–2 defeat. The victory, only the second for the Yankees in their last seven games, came with Martin still recuperating from a partially collapsed lung that he suffered Sunday. Martin, who gave orders to the Yankee dugout via telephone tonight, listened while his team, after struggling with the Cleveland starter, Bert Blyleven, moved out in front in the seventh — helped immensely by a Julio Franco fielding error at shortstop. With the bases loaded and two men out, the Yankee cleanup hitter, Dave Winfield, sent a seemingly harmless grounder to the left side. Franco, with an easy force awaiting him at second base, was slightly handcuffed on the routine roller and watched it slip between his legs. Mike Pagliarulo, the runner at third, raced in easily to break the 2–2 tie.
Cecil Cooper and Ted Simmons hit consecutive run-scoring singles in the eighth, and Teddy Higuera pitched a five-hitter to lead Milwaukee to a 3–2 win over the visting Texas Rangers.
Bret Saberhagen pitched a seven-hitter for eight and one-third innings, Hal McRae singled in two runs and Steve Balboni hit a two-run homer as Kansas City won its seventh consecutive game, downing the Detroit Tigers, 4–2.
Gorman Thomas hit two home runs and Dave Henderson broke a 5–5 tie with a three-run blast in the seventh inning at Seattle to lead the Mariners to their third straight win, topping the Twins, 8–6. The homers by Thomas, raising his season total to 22, gave him five in the last three games and eight since the All-Star break.
Rick Aguilera, starting a game for the eighth time since arriving from the minor leagues seven weeks ago, showed no signs of pain or intimidation as the New York Mets opened a 20-game stretch against their Eastern Division rivals. He pitched one-hit ball for seven innings and three-hit shutout ball into the eighth and steered the Mets toward a 3–2 victory over the Montreal Expos.
Mariano Duncan cracks a bases-loaded triple off Scott Garrelts as the Dodgers score seven in the sixth inning and wallop the Giants, 10–5. Duncan also doubled in a run in the fifth off Vida Blue. Altogether the Dodgers banged out 15 hits.
Toronto Blue Jays 4, Baltimore Orioles 3
New York Yankees 8, Cleveland Indians 2
Kansas City Royals 4, Detroit Tigers 2
San Francisco Giants 5, Los Angeles Dodgers 10
Texas Rangers 2, Milwaukee Brewers 3
Montreal Expos 2, New York Mets 3
Minnesota Twins 6, Seattle Mariners 8
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1343.86 (-13.22)
Born:
Geoff Kinrade, Canadian NHL defenseman (Tampa Bay Lightning), in Nelson, British Columbia.
Died:
James F. Nolan, 69, American actor (“Dante”), dies of cancer.
History Diaries 