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- THE WEEK, Page 25HEALTH & SCIENCEUp to Snag a Straggler
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- On its maiden flight, the new shuttle Endeavour is out to rescue
- a satellite
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- Blasting through a thin layer of clouds into blue skies
- above, the new space shuttle Endeavour rode into space only half
- an hour behind schedule last week, on a mission to rescue a
- misplaced satellite and to give astronauts some space-walking
- practice. It was the first flight for the new $2 billion craft,
- a replacement for the Challenger, which blew up and killed its
- crew of seven in January 1986.
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- The satellite in distress is Intelsat-6, designed to carry
- international telephone traffic. It was launched in 1990 but was
- stranded 345 miles up -- about 22,000 miles short of its
- assigned orbit. The astronauts will pull the 4.5-ton satellite
- into the shuttle's cargo bay, strap a booster rocket onto it and
- send it on its way. Then four of them will suit up and go
- outside to try out construction techniques that will be used on
- the U.S. space station, Freedom, scheduled to be built by the
- late 1990s. They will also test the "astrorope," a device
- astronauts could use to save themselves if they start to float
- off into space.
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