Astronaut George Nelson (lower right of center, seen from above and behind his head) tries to capture the damaged Solar Max satellite, navigating himself with his bulky Manned Maneuvering Unit backpack. This approach didn't work, because a grommet that wasn't spec'd in the satellite's blueprints got in the way. The shuttle's robot arm did the trick later.
Courtesy NASA 1984: Shuttle astronauts retrieve the malfunctioning Solar Max astronomy satellite, fix it and send it back into orbit. It's the first time a satellite has been repaired in space.
The Solar Maximum Mission had been launched Feb. 14, 1980. But it was having trouble with its altitude-control system, and the electronics in the coronagraph instrument were wonky.
Space shuttle Challenger launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-41C.html" mission="" sts-41c on April 6. Five days later, astronauts George Nelson and James van Hoften used the Remote Manipulator System robot arm to retrieve the buggy satellite from orbit and place it on a workbench in the aft end of the Challenger's open cargo bay.
There, they replaced Solar Max's altitude control and main electronics box, then redeployed the Solar Max to orbit. The refurbished satellite continued to observe the solar-activity cycle for another five years, before it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and went down in flames Dec. 2, 1989.
Challenger's seven-day flight also deployed a school-bus-sized science satellite, the Long Duration Exposure Facility, a rack of 57 experiments to test the effects of long-term exposure to radiation and micrometeoroids. In addition, Challenger carried a student experiment to see if honeybees could make a honeycomb in the near-zero gravity of space. They could, and they did: just like the astronauts, busy as bees.
The shuttle program has gone on to recover or repair other satellites, including multiple missions to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Challenger flew four more successful missions in 1984 and 1985, before its 10th and final flight on Jan. 28, 1986, when it was blown apart 73 seconds after launch, killing its crew of seven.
Source: NASA, various
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