A Lifetime of Challenges

Abstract

Early in November 1984, STS-51A commander Rick Hauck received an unusual meeting request from a senior NASA public affairs official. Hauck was about to lead an eight-day mission on Space Shuttle Discovery, one of whose tasks was to retrieve and bring home a pair of communications satellites – Indonesia’s Palapa-B2 and Western Union’s Westar-VI – whose attached boosters had failed to properly lift them to geostationary orbit the previous February. Instead of positioning the satellites at 35,600 kilometers above Earth, the Payload Assist Module (PAM) boosters had ignited, spluttered, then died, leaving their expensive cargoes stranded in lopsided orbits at unacceptable altitudes which carried them no higher than 1,100 kilometers and as low as 240 kilometers. Although the fault lay with the boosters, and not with the Shuttle itself, it was an embarrassing setback as NASA sought to attract commercial clients to its reusable spacecraft. Moreover, Palapa-B2 was part of a sizeable $79 million deal with the Indonesian government and Westar-VI’s operators had switched over to the ‘safer’ Shuttle when a European Ariane rocket exploded in September 1982. Options to retrieve the two satellites and bring them back to Earth aboard the Shuttle for refurbishment soon entered the realm of possibility and it fell upon the shoulders of Hauck and his crew to do it.