“RMS in motion, Flight,” Parker called as he and Mother lifted the PAM higher. “You there?”
The pilot’s headset was full of static two minutes before their eighth hour in the fretful sky. South America and the black starless sky of daytime filled the flightdeck’s ten windows.
Outside, the low sun two minutes from plunging over the western edge of the world highlighed the lush green highlands of Columbia.
“We’re on our own, Will,” Enright said quietly over the intercom. “Our show here on out.”
“Reckon so, Number One.”
15
Nicaragua below was already dark although Endeavor flew in daylight into her eighth hour aloft.
Through his rear and overhead windows, Parker saw the end effector swing the heavy payload assist module to within two feet of LACE.
LACE’s glass sides with thousands of blue-black solar cells glowed brilliantly where the sun burned very low in the west. Fist-size globules of melted silicon and glass cluttered LACE’s sides. Hundreds of electricity-generating cells had melted from the intense sunshine. Until Parker had arrested LACE’s slow rotation, the satellite’s constant rolling had protected the delicate cells from prolonged exposure to the blistering sun of airless, cloudless space. With LACE at a standstill, the vicious sun broiled her fragile flanks during the daylight half of every 90-minute, orbital “day.”
With an explosion of now familiar orange-and-red bands along the western horizon, the sun flattened, gave one burst of crimson protest, and conceded to the frigid night.
Shuttle was engulfed in freezing blackness at 08 hours 01 minute, MET. The floodlights brilliantly illuminated the payload bay and bathed LACE in coldly white glare.
In the artificial daylight, Parker could see LACE’s seams and titanium rivets where the view was not obscured by the PAM canister which hung from the flexed remote arm.
“You should see this view, Jack!”
The Aircraft Commander studied LACE. To his surprise, tiny craters were opening silently all along the satellite’s body. During its pass without spinning for passive thermal control through 45 minutes of merciless daylight, hundreds of half-dollar-size blisters had risen upon LACE’s skin of thin solar cells. Now in the sudden, atom-stopping cold of nighttime space, the little glass blisters were imploding — exploding inward. Silently, ragged holes opened over LACE’s entire body. Her once sleekly black and shining skin erupted into silicon acne.
“Whatcha got, Will?”
“LACE’s skin is popping all over the place. The solar arrays must have blistered after spindown. Looks like she’s being machine-gunned.”
“Let’s hope not… Thirteen minutes to the Anomaly, Skip.”
At 08 hours 03 minutes, Shuttle crossed the Equator southbound into summer over Rio Negro in northern Brazil.
Forward, Enright in his balloon pants felt much recovered. He sipped a fresh jug of electrolyte solution. He watched the coolant temperatures decrease in the radiator loops, and he adjusted the freon flow within them to avoid overcooling the delicate plumbing.
Over nighttime Brazil, Parker steered the PAM to within one foot of LACE. As Shuttle flew on her left side with her flat black belly facing southeast, Parker faced northwest through his rear and overhead windows aft. The PAM canister with LACE almost touching was just below the vertical horizon. Out the rear window, Shuttle’s vertical tail was parallel to the horizon, seen very faintly against the dayglow of South America. The weightless AC had the feeling of lying on his side. He was. In the western sky behind LACE, the satellite moved swiftly across the six-star group of the constellation Corona Borealis visible on the far northern side of the Equator. The bright star Nunki in Sagittarius was directly above Endeavor. To the AC’s weary mind, the death ship outside, with her pitted and ragged skin, looked sadly forlorn and beaten against the icy backdrop of black Brazil, black sky, and faint stars.
“Ten minutes to transit, Will.”
“Okay. Goin’ in… Easy now… Easy, babe.”
Running the remote arm in fully manual mode, Parker used both bare hands to lay the heavy PAM alongside LACE.
On the side of the boxy PAM, a grapple fixture protruded. The arm’s end effector unit held the PAM at a right angle from the mechanical arm. The PAM appeared to dangle by its narrow end from the end effector’s snares.
The arm gently touched the side of the PAM to the side of the weathered LACE. The AC saw an instantaneous blue spark erupt behind the PAM unit.
“Damn!” Parker whispered.
“What’s up, Skipper?”
“A static discharge. No apparent activity by the target… I don’t need these little surprises, Jack.”
“Yeh… Niner minutes.”
Shuttle was ten degrees south of the Equator still over Brazil in darkness at 08 hours 07 minutes, MET. They were four minutes and 1,200 miles from the sea.
“Radio check, Endeavor,” a Russian voice crackled.
“With you, Doctor,” Enright called as he worked the coolant controls. “The Colonel has made contact with the target.”
“Yes. I saw the spark. Soyuz standing by.”
Parker watched the PAM lie against LACE in the light thrown from the open bay. The elbow camera on the arm could not peer over the top of the PAM to where the two bodies touched. The AC commanded the arm to pull the PAM slowly along the side of LACE until the unseen grapple fixtures engaged, one on the payload assist module and one on LACE which had been left by Parker.
The PAM climbed LACE’s midsection. Parker watched intently for the twitch in the long arm which would signal a hard latch of the grapple fixtures.
“Damn it, Jacob. Nothin’.”
“Again, Will. Eight minutes to SAA transit.”
Parker pushed the PAM down LACE’s motionless side. At LACE’s mid-line ridge, the end effector stopped abruptly. An audio tone from the RMS arm’s Caution and Warning sensors rang in the AC’s headset as a yellow CHECK CRT light flashed on the Canadian instrument console. Parker consulted the CRT screen, where green letters flashed CHECK MCIU. The sudden inertial resistance from picking up LACE’s mass — unexpectedly to Mother — had triggered the alert alarm to check the arm’s computerized manipulator controller interface unit. Parker’s fingers on Mother’s keyboard reassured her that all was well and that her 100-million-dollar arm had not banged into a wall.
“Hard latch, Jack!”
The man-size PAM with a rocket nozzle at its base was firmly latched to LACE’s mid-line grapple fixture.
“Super, Will! Let’s arm the thing and begin our pitchup… Soyuz? We’re positive rigidize on the target. You can back off at earliest opportunity.”
“Soyuz in motion, Endeavor. Thank you.”
Enright and Karpov up front, flying on their left sides, could not see Soyuz off Endeavor’s tail section. But Parker through his overhead windows could see the Soviet vessel behind Shuttle.
In the moistly black sky over Brazil 20 degrees south of the Equator, Parker saw the orange flash of thrusters on Soyuz as she slowly backed away from Shuttle and LACE close to Endeavor’s open bay.
“Rotating,” Parker called as he commanded the arm’s wrist joint to flex. The end effector slowly twisted to lay the upright, 10,000-pound LACE on her side.
“Five minutes, Will. Feet wet,” Enright called. At 08 hours 11 minutes, Shuttle left Vitoria, Brazil, behind as Endeavor, with LACE in tow, and Soyuz sped past the coastline for the South Atlantic and 11,000 miles of open water.
The remote arm gently laid LACE on her side. A full minute ticked by as the target with the PAM attached assumed a horizontal position with the PAM rocket nozzle pointed toward Shuttle’s tail. LACE’s ten-foot-long, blistered body was parallel to the open bay.