Tethered satellite breaks loose from shuttle

17 Jun 2002

(AP) Like a child watching a helium balloon slip from his hand, scientists looked on in distress as a half-ton satellite being towed by space shuttle Columbia broke loose and floated off into the black void, dangling 12 miles of frayed and curled cord. In a split second Sunday night, the cord and the instrument-packed satellite were gone forever, a $400 million-plus experiment now just space junk.

NASA flight director Chuck Shaw said it would be too dangerous to send the shuttle after the Italian satellite, even if such a rescue was feasible-- the spaghetti-thin cord could wrap itself around the spaceship. The lost satellite poses no hazard to Columbia and its crew for the remaining 1 1/2 weeks of their mission, and it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up within a month, officials said.

NASA officials refused to speculate what went wrong. But Hoffman reported that the frayed end of the cord remaining aboard Columbia looked as though it had been charred and melted. The cord-- made of braided copper, nylon and Teflon-- broke off inside a tower that was being used like a fishing rod to cast the satellite into space. Italian scientist Marino Dobrowolny said the insulation may have been stripped away, exposing the copper wire. Data on the ground showed the equivalent of a spark or discharge, which may have occurred as the copper passed near metal on the deploying equipment, he said.

NASA has established an investigative board to study the accident.