Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 29, 1994 TAG: 9409300003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
No, she's not Supergirl. Kathryn C. Thornton says she is not even a Trekkie. But she has been an astronaut since 1985, spending nearly 600 hours in three space shuttle missions.
She is the second woman (and first mother) to go spacewalking, having spent more than 21 hours working outside the shuttle in orbit. Many television viewers watched her do that in December, when she helped upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope in what NASA called a ``make-or-break'' mission.
Thornton, 42, returned to the University of Virginia this month to receive the 1994 Distinguished Alumna Award from its Women's Center. She earned her master's degree there in 1977 and doctorate in 1979, both in physics, and her husband, Stephen Thornton, teaches there.
In a talk during her visit, she said she never felt she needed the women's movement when she was attending Auburn University in her native Alabama. ``I was a very cocky undergraduate,'' she said.
She had been a ``tomboy'' who found she could eventually do whatever her brothers could, she said. But on a job in Birmingham in the early 1970s, measuring the efficiency of devices for removing pollutants from smokestack emissions, she was not allowed to work with the men.
She packed up the gear for the guys, did busywork while they were out, and unpacked when they got back, she said, while fulfilling a company quota for female employees. ``I should have had the same chance they did, but I didn't.''
Things have changed, she said. The University of Virginia began to admit women, and so did NASA. She credits the feminist movement, even though she was not part of it. ``Years later, I got the chance to fly in space and walk in space because of [the women's movement].''
Thornton was a mission specialist on a five-day flight of the shuttle Discovery in November 1989, carrying Department of Defense freight and other payloads. She was part of the crew for the maiden flight of the Endeavor in May 1992, and was outside on one of that mission's four extra-vehicular activities, or spacewalks, checking out planned techniques for assembling the space station. She is scheduled to be payload commander aboard Columbia next fall for a 16-day mission.
She was on the EVA crew again when the Endeavor lifted from Florida on the night of Dec. 2, 1993, to service and repair the space telescope. Supporters and critics of NASA called its success vital to the credibility of the space program. Thornton, however, said that upgrades were always planned for the orbiting telescope. ``This is just the first of several,'' she said. ``We have a very short attention span in this country.''
The new camera installed in the Hubble, for example, was actually being built at the time the telescope was being put in orbit. Correcting the optics, of course, was something new.
To catch up with an object like the four-story 65,000-pound Hubble, the shuttle must actually slow down to drop into a lower orbit, which takes it around the world faster. It is nothing like the way one car approaches another, she said.
Preparing for a spacewalk is not easy. She and her EVA partner must lay out about 150 tools before getting into their suits. ``It takes about three hours to dress up,'' she said. ``You become your own satellite, your own life-support system, when you go outside.''
When an astronaut emerges, he or she is generally looking down at a spectacular panorama of the Earth. ``It makes your heart stop for just a second,'' she said.
It is a much wider view of oceans and continents than what can be captured on television. Thornton liked night views even better, when she could recognize continents by the shapes of the city lights illuminating them. There is always a lightning storm somewhere, she said, and occasionally a meteor burning up in the atmosphere below.
Thornton helped outfit the telescope with new solar energy panels. One of the old wing-like instruments was folded so it would fit inside the shuttle and brought back to Earth, where it is now being studied. The other had been damaged so it would not roll up, and viewers of Thornton's spacewalk got to see the 5-foot-4 115-pound astronaut toss the 40-foot instrument away.
At least that was how it looked. Actually, she said, it was the shuttle that changed position. ``All I did was move my hands away and let it go,'' she said. ``Then the pilot moved us away from it.''
Although the array weighed 400 pounds on Earth, it was virtually weightless in orbit. ``It does, however, have mass,'' Thornton said. ``Once you get it started moving, you really have to exert an effort to stop it.''
The working spacewalkers did everything very slowly, ``because it didn't matter how long we had to take do do it, so long as we did it right,'' Thornton said. ``Everything has to be accounted for when we come inside. We didn't want to leave anything floating around.''
While on earth, Thornton acknowledged that she probably does a poor job of balancing her career with mothering her three daughters. If she ever retires from space, she said, it will probably be because of family needs.
Her oldest daughter was barely old enough to understand when the shuttle Challenger exploded and its crew was killed. For a time, she got upset every time she saw a picture of her mother in a space suit.
The astronaut corps has about 18 women out of 100 astronauts. ``I definitely think there should be more,'' Thornton said. The way to make that happen is not to force NASA to accept more women, she said, but for more women to get qualified for the job.
by CNB