All right, sorry this took so long. In some repayment, it's a bit longer than normal.
Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #20
With the launch of Spacelab, projects that had been underway for years began to show results very rapidly. Most news-worthy was the tensions that came about in the ASTP II mission, but the following missions were no less critical. In fact, for all the political and diplomatic implications of ASTP II, it had involved mostly technology barely different from that of ASTP I. However, missions planned in 1979 and 1980 were to push the state of the art in Western space station operations far beyond what Skylab had already established and narrow the gap between Soviet and American experience in space. These advances occurred in two major areas. The first was in the realm of the crew itself, with regular flights and increasing durations, culminating in experiments with continuous manned operations. The second was in logistics and supply, with increased developments and experience in unmanned support flights coupled with the world’s first use of modular station assembly.
The first use of modular techniques actually was a disassembly with the end of the Soyuz 29 visit to Spacelab as part of ASTP II in 1978. On their departure, the Soviet crew used their craft as a tug to pull away the now-unnecessary Docking Module which had served as a quasi-airlock between the Soviet craft and the rest of the station. This cleared the zenith port on the MDA for the Airlock Module, already being prepared on the ground for a launch in 1979. After the departure of their Soviet co-occupants, the Spacelab 3 crew spent a week tying up loose ends, including using the Aardvark’s engine to begin the process of raising the station’s orbit to the same low-drag 430 km circular orbit that had been used on Skylab, as opposed to Spacelab’s original 225 km orbit, which had been selected for access by Soyuz. With this complete, the Aardvark was undocked and guided to entry by remote control, and the Spacelab 3 crew followed within two days.
The Spacelab 4 crew, consisting of Apollo veteran Stuart Roosa (who had delayed his retirement in order to serve as station commander), accompanied by rookie pilot Gordon Fullerton and Dr. William Thornton, launched to the station in November of 1978 for a stint that would last through January of 1979. On his flight, Thornton (the first medical professional to fly to space) largely dealt with experiments that focused on his specialty, the long-term effects of spaceflight, including following up on work with Space Adaption Syndrome that had been begun on Skylab 5 with Rusty Schweickart. On the technical side, the station crew received an Aardvark load of supplies, and set to work on improving the makeshift sleep stations in the laboratory annex that had been used by the Soviet cosmonauts during ASTP II. Originally intended to be temporary and removed after the flight, the now-planned Block III+ and five-person crews to come meant that the additional sleep stations were instead modified to be permanent with improved space and better air circulation. Roosa’s crew also made similar modifications to the station’s air processing systems to ensure that they could handle the load of a five-person crew for years to come. Finally, they used the Aardvark’s engines to complete raising the station’s orbit to 430 km.
With three weeks left in their time on-station, the crew was finally ready to conduct the first modular assembly operation in spaceflight history. Using an Aardvark bus (an Aardvark minus the pressurized cargo module with an added payload adaptor), the Airlock Module was launched from Kennedy Space Center on a Saturn 1C rocket and brought to rendezvous with the station. With the experienced hand of Roosa controlling remotely from the station, the module was brought gently into a docking with the zenith port on the MDA using the same probe-and-drogue system as used on Apollo and Aardvark. After letting vibrations from docking damp out, the crew checked seals and waited hours while ground operators checked out the module’s functions. Finally, the crew opened the hatch, connected power and data cables, and strung ductwork to circulate air into the module. With their job complete, Spacelab 4’s crew made one final piece of history as they welcomed the Spacelab 5 crew aboard the station in late January (the first time two separately-launched US crews had ever occupied the same spacecraft), with Stuart Roosa formally turning over the station to the Spacelab 5 commander, fellow lunar veteran Joseph Engle in a change-of-command ceremony that would set the tradition for future operations.
After Spacelab 4’s departure, Spacelab 5 undocked from the zenith port of the airlock module, withdrew several hundred meters from the station, and maneuvered to re-dock at the now-open nadir port on the MDA in a port-swap maneuver that would over time become routine. In addition to Engle, the Spacelab 5 crew consisted of pilot Karol Bobko and the first ESA astronaut to fly, Dutch physicist Wubbo Ockels. During their mission, which would push the standard duration from 3 months to 4, they would continue work on biomedical experiments and do trial EVAs using the new airlock to place experiments on new exposed pallets on the airlock module itself. However, other than being a point of prestige for the ESA with the flight of their first astronaut and several late night monologues riffing on the idea that new astronauts were being selected on the basis of silliest names, the mission was otherwise low-key and routine compared to the preceding flights. The same was also true of the Spacelab 6 flight. Engle turned over command of the station to fellow ex-Apollo LMP Fred Haise, who along with pilot Robert Overmeyer and flight scientist Joseph Allen stayed on the station for four months from May to September 1979. The most notable fact about the mission was that once again an Apollo veteran retired after serving as station commander, as Haise ended his career with NASA after the mission to accept a position at Grumman Aerospace.
Spacelab 7 launched in September 1979, commanded by Jack Lousma with pilot Henry Hartsfield and ESA flight scientist Ulf Merbold, and quickly set its own list of firsts. It was the first time that Spacelab had been commanded by someone who wasn’t a veteran of the moon flights (Lousma had made his first flight on Skylab 3), and Lousma was also the first astronaut to have flown to both stations. Lousma favorably compared Spacelab to Skylab in both space and capabilities, but mourned the loss of the freezer that had allowed an expanded diet onboard the shorter-lived station. However, Lousma’s list of firsts was overshadowed some by the publicity surrounding Merbold. Though a long-time citizen of West Germany, Merbold had grown up in East Germany, defecting to study Physics in West Germany. Comparisons between Merbold and Sigmund Jahn (the East Germany who just one year before had become the first German to fly to space) were obvious. Where Jahn had spent only 7 days onboard Salyut 6, Merbold would be on Spacelab for a planned 120 days, and was to be in charge of installation and checkout of the new European Research Module of the station. Glossing over the tensions still simmering from the Seat Wars, official NASA press releases stressed the close working relationship of the US and European space agencies. After the mission, the used capsule was presented as a gift to West Germany to commemorate the flight. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Apollo capsule used by Merbold and the Soyuz capsule used by Jahn would end up being displayed side-by-side in the Militärhistorisches Museum in Dresden, Germany.
The launch of the European Research Module, the first major ESA contribution to the American program, came in October 1979, three weeks into the mission. Propelled by an Aardvark service module “tug” just as the lighter airlock had been, the ERM was carefully maneuvered to within visual range of the station by ground control. From there, the station’s crew took over, using radar and cameras to guide the station’s new module into a docking at the MDA’s axial port. As with the airlock, a waiting period then followed as the ground verified systems functions, then the hatch was opened between the modules, and the fitting out process began. The module’s own environment systems were tied into the station’s system, and power and data hookups were made. However, the connections were complicated by the additional fittings required to allow fuel, water, and other vital fluids to be transferred from Aardvarks docked to the ERM’s forward axial port to Spacelab’s main tanks. Several weeks of checkout followed, including the arrival of an Aardvark that carried some instruments intended for the lab that had been omitted on launch to keep the module’s mass and center of gravity within the Aardvark tug’s limits. The process took longer than expected, but careful work on the ground testing the process ensured that no serious issues were encountered. This data on the performance of a more complex module assembly was carefully studied to help shape stations that might follow Spacelab if funding could be obtained. The module added further lab space, several external experiment stations, and Earth science equipment.