STS-3 Space Shuttle 3rd Flight: "One Step Closer" 1982 NASA Film JSC-821

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'Astronauts: Jack R. Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton

Launch date: March 22, 1982

Recaps the third flight of Columbia; a flight that brought the Orbital Flight Test Program one step closer to completion. This includes the move of landing equipment to Northrup Strip, NM (alternate landing site), launch, major crew activities on-orbit, sandstorm at landing site, wave off of landing (causing Columbia to stay on-orbit an extra day), and landing.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-3

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

STS-3 was NASA's third Space Shuttle mission, and was the third mission for the Space Shuttle Columbia. It launched on 22 March 1982, and landed eight days later on 30 March. The mission involved extensive orbital endurance testing of the Columbia itself, as well as numerous scientific experiments. STS-3 was the first shuttle launch with an unpainted external tank, and the only mission to land at the White Sands Space Harbor near Las Cruces, New Mexico. The shuttle was forced to land at White Sands due to flooding at its originally planned landing site, Edwards Air Force Base...

Mission summary

Columbia was launched from Kennedy Space Center at 11:00 am EST, on 22 March 1982, the planned launch date. The launch was delayed by one hour due to the failure of a heater on a nitrogen-gas ground support line. Prior to the launch, Columbia had spent only 70 days in the Orbiter Processing Facility – a record checkout time...

The primary objectives of the flight were to continue testing the "Canadarm" Remote Manipulator System (RMS), and to carry out extensive thermal testing of Columbia by exposing its tail, nose and top to the Sun for varying periods of time. The crew found that prolonged exposure to the Sun caused the cargo bay doors to warp slightly, preventing them from closing fully. Rolling the orbiter to balance temperatures around the orbiter resolved the issue.

In addition, in its payload bay, Columbia again carried the DFI package, and OSS-l (named for the NASA Office of Space Science and Applications) which consisted of a number of instruments mounted on a Spacelab pallet, intended to obtain data on the near-Earth environment and the extent of contamination caused by the orbiter itself. A test canister for the Small Self-Contained Payload program – also known as the Getaway Special (GAS) – was mounted on one side of the payload bay.

For the first time, a number of experiments were carried in the shuttle's mid-deck lockers. These included an Electrophoresis Equipment Verification Test experiment to study the separation of biological components, and a Mono-disperse Latex Reactor experiment, to produce uniform micrometer-sized latex particles. The first Shuttle Student Involvement Project (SSIP) – a study of insect motion – also was carried in a mid-deck locker.

A variety of minor problems were experienced during the flight. The orbiter's toilet malfunctioned on first use resulting in, according to Lousma, "eight days of colorful flushing"; one Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) overheated (but worked properly during descent); both crew members experienced some space sickness; and on 26 March, three communications links were lost.

STS-3 was planned as a 7-day flight. The landing was moved to Northrop Strip (later renamed White Sands Space Harbor) at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico since the planned landing site at Edwards Air Force Base had flooded. Lousma and Fullerton chose to land at White Sands instead of the new Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center because they had trained there. A large-scale equipment movement (reportedly "40 train carloads") from Edwards AFB to White Sands was undertaken before and during the mission, to ensure that a landing could be fully supported. Although time-sensitive equipment movements of this nature were originally to be handled by Air Force cargo planes, NASA altered those plans and moved the equipment in two dedicated trains over the 1,000-mile distance via the Santa Fe Railroad and the Southern Pacific Railroad. The choice to move the support equipment by rail saved NASA approximately $2 million in transportation costs. High winds at White Sands reduced visibility and delayed the landing by a day. As all mission objectives had been accomplished..