STS-72 Day 3 Highlights

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On Saturday, January 13, 1996, 6 a.m. CST, STS-72 MCC Status Report # 05 reports:

Mission Specialist Koichi Wakata used Endeavour's robot arm to retrieve the Japanese Space Flyer Unit satellite at 4:57 a.m. central time completing its 10-month scientific voyage and the primary objective of the first Shuttle mission of the year. Berthing of the SFU was completed at 5:39 a.m. as Endeavour passed southeast of Madagascar.

The retrieval followed jettison of both solar arrays when sensors indicated the panels did not latch properly against the satellite after being retracted. The jettison procedure was trained for preflight as a contingency in the event of just such an occurence. The cannisters housing the arrays were jettisoned 12 minutes apart -- at 3:35 and 3:47 this morning -- as Endeavour and the SFU traveled across Africa on the thirtieth orbit of the STS-72 mission.

The contingency procedure delayed the capture of the satellite by about an hour and half from its originally scheduled 3:26 a.m. retrieval. The SFU was placed on internal battery power prior to the solar array retraction activity giving it four hours of electrical power. Once in Endeavour's payload bay, the satellite's internal batteries were bypassed following connection of a remotely operated electrical cable to the side of the satellite.

Wakata grappled the SFU satellite following a flawless rendezvous to catch the 4-ton spacecraft. Commander Brian Duffy flew Endeavour during the final phase of the rendezvous from the Shuttle's aft flight deck controls, moving the orbiter to within a few feet of the SFU allowing Wakata to attach the robot arm to the satellite's grapple fixture. Endeavour was orbiting the Earth over the Gulf of Mexico near the western tip of Cuba at an altitude of about 290 statute miles at the time of the retrieval.

The retrieval of SFU capped off 10 months of scientific investigations involving almost a dozen experiments ranging from materials science to biological studies. The satellite was launched on March 18, 1995 aboard a Japanese H-2 rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.

The astronauts were awakened last night by a traditional Japanese song, "Sea in Springtime", in honor of the retrieval of the Space Flyer Unit. The astronauts will begin an eight-hour sleep period at 10:41 this morning and will wake up tonight at 6:41. The crew's fourth day in space will be highlighted by the deployment of a NASA science satellite called the OAST-Flyer. The satellite will be retrieved later in the flight.

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