
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 20, 1993                   TAG: 9309200125
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

`OH BABY,' ASTRONAUTS CAPTURE TELESCOPE

Discovery's astronauts retrieved an orbiting telescope loaded with nearly a week's worth of star observations Sunday, and shot some movie footage of themselves.

The retrieval of the 3 1/2-ton satellite was the crew's last major job before returning to Earth on Tuesday and the only one conducted without a hitch.

"Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby," astronaut Daniel Bursch exclaimed after grabbing the telescope with the shuttle's robot arm. Crewmate Carl Walz used the same expression at the end of his spacewalk last week. Bursch set the ultraviolet telescope free last Monday so it could study stars and interstellar gas, a job that would have been hampered if it had remained in the shuttle's cargo bay.

"We're in a party mood. This one's for us," said Stuart Bowyer, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Berkeley, raising his left fist in a toast.

As of Sunday, Discovery's astronauts had accomplished everything they set out to do on their nine-day flight despite last-minute snags.

Discovery is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center at 5:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday. It would be the first shuttle touchdown there in darkness, although shuttles have landed in the dark before at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

by CNB