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

DATE: THURSDAY, February 3, 1994                   TAG: 9402030046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

SPACE MISSION TO MAKE HISTORY

The NASA officials also found themselves defending Discovery's primary payloads: a science satellite criticized by some scientists, and a commercial laboratory lacking in commercial customers.

Discovery was scheduled to blast off at 7:10 a.m. today with Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and five American astronauts. It will be the first time a Russian has flown on a U.S. shuttle and the first joint U.S.-Russian human space mission since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking.

Both countries expect Discovery's eight-day voyage to lead to more shared missions and, by 2001, a shared space station. Up to 10 shuttle dockings are planned with Russia's Mir space station.

"It is sort of ironic, preparing all those years" against the former Soviet Union, said Jeremiah Pearson III, head of NASA's space flight program and a retired Marine officer. "But now there are no more wars to fight, and the space program's a good place to be."

But some space policy analysts and congressmen have expressed concern about building a space station with the Russians, given the political and economic turmoil in Russia.

"If something happens, we'll have to regroup and rethink it and probably take a different approach," said Dr. Arnauld Nicogossian, a NASA science administrator who was crew surgeon for the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

As Russian space and government officials arrived at Cape Canaveral - nearly two dozen were expected for the launch - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration kept close watch on the temperature. Forecasters predicted a 70 percent chance that the weather would cooperate.

The temperature was expected to be 44 degrees at launch time. NASA's flight rules stipulate that wind speed and humidity reach certain levels when the temperature is 36 to 48 degrees; otherwise lubricants could harden, and dangerous ice could form on the fuel tank.

It was 36 when Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff Jan. 28, 1986, because of a leak in a joint on the right solid rocket booster. NASA subsequently imposed stringent weather criteria for launches and redesigned the boosters.

Two days after arriving in orbit, Discovery's crew is to release the Wake Shield Facility so it can create an ultravacuum wake in which to grow thin, pure semiconductor films. Krikalev will use the shuttle robot arm to retrieve the Wake Shield two days later.

The $13.5 million Wake Shield, a steel disk 12 feet in diameter, will attempt to grow seven wafers of film.

But Loren Pfeiffer, a physicist at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., said similar results eventually could be obtained on Earth with a $13.5 million budget.

NASA's own inspector general has criticized Spacehab, the pressurized laboratory module in Discovery's cargo bay that contains 12 experiments. The inspector general recommended last fall that NASA stop its financial support of Spacehab Inc. of Arlington, Va., given the lack of commercial customers.