Shuttle

First there were two small red flashes in the starry sky above California's Mojave Desert, as the space shuttle Challenger fired thruster rockets to steady its attitude. Then, after a wait of about three minutes, ground observers glimpsed the unlighted shuttle. Silently it glided into view just 200 ft. above the end of runway 22. In the glare of blue xenon searchlights, Navy Captain Richard Truly, the mission commander, flawlessly guided the orbiter, nose up, to its first nighttime landing. Challenger's arrival at Edwards Air Force Base last week, at 12:40 a.m. California time, ended a six-day flight that drew raves from NASA officials. Crowed the shuttle's boss, Lieut. General James Abrahamson: "That was a fabulous mission. We think it was the cleanest mission yet."

NASA listed only 27 minor hitches or anomalies during the eighth mission of its Space Transportation System. Among them was a leaky valve in the shuttle's million-dollar space toilet, a source of trouble on four previous flights. In addition, solar panels on India's Insat-1B, a $45 million communications satellite released by Challenger, failed to open all the way, threatening to render the satellite as useless as Insat-1A, launched last year, which also developed panel problems. Still, said Mission Evaluation Manager Joseph E. Mechelay, "none of these things should affect STS-9." That flight is scheduled for Oct. 28. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.