As director of Ames Research Center, Hans Mark identified a handful of programs that he felt demanded priority: the series of Pioneer space probes; the ILLIAC supercomputer; and the nascent but promising tilt-rotor program that would one day evolve into the Marine Corps’ MV-22 Osprey, which, in the wake of the failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran, Mark once again advocated as a machine with “extraordinary promise.” And there was the Kuiper Airborne Observatory.
The KAO started life as an effort by Lockheed to sell its C-141 Starlifter military airlifter to civilian operators. After barely 700 hours in the air it became apparent that there was insufficient commercial interest to sustain the project. But when, in 1970, NASA went looking for a large four-engine jet capable of carrying a big infrared telescope for high-altitude astronomy, the mothballed jet offered the perfect solution. In 1974, after extensive modifications, she emerged painted in NASA’s elegant blue-and-white house style and carrying a 36-inch reflecting telescope which could observe the heavens from an altitude above most atmospheric interference. Named in honor of infrared astronomy pioneer Gerard P. Kuiper, the director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, the KAO’s telescope had studied Halley’s Comet and total eclipses, discovered rings around Uranus, a heat source inside Neptune, Pluto’s atmosphere and water vapor in comets. Observers on board the aircraft had explored the formation of elements inside supernovas, mapped the Milky Way’s galactic center, and examined the structure of star-forming clouds. And in 1976, before Mark left Ames for the Pentagon, his researchers began to look at whether the jet might be used to capture infrared images of the Space Shuttle as the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. By August of the following year, a report concluded it was feasible. The experiment was christened IRIS—infrared imagery of Shuttle.
Three and a half years after the publication of the study, the long, low, high-winged shape of the KAO was parked on the apron at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii in the predawn, having been deployed west across the Pacific from Moffett Field in readiness for Columbia’s return. Through the night, technicians had prepared her for a mission which had been rehearsed using radar controllers on the ground and, in the absence of the Shuttle on which to focus the telescope, stars and planets. Already the sensitive infrared detectors were being precooled inside a vacuum flask—a dewar—to minus 452°F using liquid helium, while the detector’s cores were chilled further to just four-tenths of a degree above absolute zero using helium-3.
Joining the KAO’s aircrew and scientists for the flight were the aircraft’s mascots: two cuddly toys—a koala bear and a kiwi—gifts from colleagues Down Under.
• • •
While the team from Ames prepared for their contribution to Columbia’s return, in Houston, Dan Brandenstein pressed Play on the day’s wake-up music. Thankfully, Young and Crippen were already awake when a mad blast of Texas radio was beamed up as their day-three alarm call. After a brief, deceptive snippet of birdsong, the trumpets began, followed by a lot of shouting.
Get out of the rack!
Both of you could use a shower.
C’mon John, after five missions you ought to have this down by now!
Be nice to him, he’s fifty years old . . .
Crip, you’ve waited for this for twelve years. If you don’t wake up now you’ll miss the whole darned thing!
It still paled in comparison to the kind of things that were used as wake-up calls in the sims. Most of those were definitely not for public consumption.
With the cacophony over, Bob Crippen thanked Brandenstein for his help in the night. “I was so asleep in the middle of the night I couldn’t think,” he admitted.
“We got all of your teleprinter messages off there. We appreciate that.”
Unable to broadcast via CapCom details of the NRO’s spy satellite photograph seen in Mission Control the previous night, if the good news was passed on to the crew about the integrity of Columbia’s heat shield, it was contained in the reams of paper Young and Crippen had woken up to from Houston. And if Crippen was going to be more fulsome in his appreciation, then that too would have to wait until conversations could be held in private on the ground. Further reassurance was also required, as it appeared that the efforts of both Mission Control and the crew to solve the problem with the APU heater had been unsuccessful. Although Columbia could return with just two functioning auxiliary power units, test data suggested that even if the temperature continued to drop on APU 2, they were still, even if it was a little sluggish at first, going to be able to get it started. As Brandenstein looked forward to the end of his shift, it was a relief not to have replaced one problem with another.
“We’re twenty seconds from LOS [loss of signal],” he told Crip. “The Crimson Team will pick you up at Indy at twenty-two plus fifty-four. See you guys later.”
“Okay,” Crip replied, “we’re just mighty glad that you did not have to practice any of those things that you know so much about there . . .”
It was a feeling strongly shared by Brandenstein. It was, he thought, a load off everybody’s minds. After he’d seen the photographs brought in by Gene Kranz, he could hand over the CapCom console to Joe Allen secure in the knowledge that he wasn’t passing his replacement a world of trouble.
• • •
Ames Research Center’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory was just one of a fleet of aircraft being readied for Columbia’s return. Already parked on the Dryden flight line at Edwards were the four T-38 jets belonging to Jon McBride’s Chase Air Force. A squadron of helicopters carrying soldiers, doctors, astronauts and rescue workers was ready to control crowds and respond to an emergency.
They were also joined by one of the Gulfstream Shuttle Training Aircraft, sent to Edwards to bring Young and Crippen home to Houston after their arrival. It now also had to conduct the weather flight as the pilot scheduled to do the job was going to be absent. Dick Truly’s call sign would have been Weather West.
Truly had been assigned to fly a weather flight over Edwards in a T-38 in advance of the orbiter’s return. With good weather forecast over the Californian high desert base, though, it was agreed that his presence was surplus to requirements. Instead, the astronaut chose to stay in Mission Control with Joe Engle for the landing. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, reentry had always caused Truly more anxiety than ascent. He wanted to watch the landing from the nerve center of the mission, feeding on the detail of it. First to know of any developments.
“On your next pass over the US,” Dan Brandenstein suggested, “do your own weather flight.”
“We will take over for Weather West,” Crippen laughed.
In the Mission Control room, Truly smiled and pointed out that it was actually going to be the other way around—on Columbia’s next flight, Truly, with Engle sitting alongside him next to the CapCom console, was actually going to be taking over from him.
Clocks were started to count down toward the ignition of the orbital maneuvering system rockets to initiate the spacecraft’s reentry.
As Crippen bantered with Joe Allen at CapCom through the Bermuda ground station, the Shuttle was beginning orbit thirty-three. Mission elapsed time was two days, one hour. On their next revolution, Young and Crippen would climb into their David Clark S1030 pressure suits and verify the positions of the switches on the mid-deck before returning to the flight deck for the last time in readiness for coming home.
• • •
At Hickam AFB, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory sat waiting. Beneath long wings, angling down from her shoulders toward the hardstand below, the launch crew moved purposefully around her. Her fuel tanks were full; the supercooled dewar carrying the IR detectors had been loaded and attached to the telescope.
With less than half an hour before their scheduled departure time, the flight crew walked out to NASA’s unique variation on Lockheed’s big airlifter, climbed on board and strapped into their seats. On the flight deck, the aircraft’s captain, Dave Bark, commanded, “Before engines, start checklist,” prompting a scripted call-and-response between him, his copilot and their flight engineer as they set up the jet’s systems for flight. Outside on the ramp, a second engineer, the scanner, verified the KAO’s responses and directed the launch crew to remove the landing-gear pins and main-gear chocks. With the checks complete, Bark was ready to start the four Pratt & Whitney TF33-P-7 turbofans. He pressed the starter button, then moved the fuel and start ignition switch to “Run.” Behind him, his flight engineer routed high-pressure air through the engines, and then checked the temperatures and pressures as each jet spooled up, generating a building whining growl in the dark of predawn.
In what had once been the aircraft’s cargo hold, the team of telescope technicians sat in a windowless cabin in front of a mosaic of switches and cathode-ray tubes mounted on gray panels running along the length of the fuselage. Around them were exposed structural spars and junction boxes, as much a victory for function over form as a university electrical engineering lab. The bags of flight food brought on board—potato chips, cookies, soft drinks—didn’t suggest nutrition was as huge a priority on the long mission ahead.
With a nudge on the throttles to move them forward out of idle, Bark began to taxi. As the big Lockheed jet rolled toward the runway, his copilot next to him set the wing flaps at 75 percent and armed the spoilers. Minutes later, as the KAO accelerated past 120 knots, Bark pulled gently back on the yoke to raise the nose. As they accelerated away into the night, the crew raised the gear, pulled the power back to 92 percent and, after raising the flaps and settling into the climb, handed control to “George,” the C-141’s autopilot. Given the precision flying to come as they attempted to track Columbia as she streaked past Hawaii, it made sense to lighten the load while they still had the opportunity to do so. The success or failure of the KAO’s mission would be measured, ultimately, in milliseconds.