Shuttle Won’t Re-Release Satellite Nasa Decides Shuttle Columbia Doesn’t Have Enough Fuel Left To Retrieve Spacecraft Again

Space shuttle Columbia’s astronauts will not set loose a science satellite that they rescued in a spacewalk last week, NASA decided Sunday after considerable debate.

Mission managers reviewed a variety of options but finally concluded - a day earlier than expected - that it was unfeasible to release the Spartan satellite a second time and attempt to salvage its sun-studying mission.

The shuttle simply does not have enough fuel to support another satellite retrieval, said mission operations director Lee Briscoe.

“If you were deploying a brand new, fresh spacecraft, you wouldn’t do it under those circumstances,” Briscoe explained at a hastily arranged news conference.

“So here’s a case where we have the Spartan in the bay. We have it. It’s a healthy spacecraft. We can bring it back. If you were to deploy it under these kinds of propellant margins, you could stand a 40 or 50 percent chance of not bringing it back” if you ran into any kind of trouble, he said.

NASA had hoped to release the $10 million Spartan satellite for 18 hours, less than half the time it was supposed to fly free of Columbia and observe the sun’s charged outer atmosphere.

Columbia’s six astronauts were asleep when the decision was made. Mission Control planned to inform them of the disappointing news when they awakened later in the day.