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This is NASA's press kit for Space Shuttle mission STS-75, dated February 1996 and later edited by Richard W. Orloff. It covers Columbia's planned 13-day flight carrying the Italian Tethered Satellite System reflight (TSS-1R) and the third United States Microgravity Payload. The kit sets out launch and landing plans, abort modes, the timeline, payload weights, crew duties, the tether's science objectives and investigators, and crew biographies. It does not mention any unidentified objects.
“Earth orbit”11 pages
Edited by Richard W. Orloff, 01/2001/Page 21 Retrieval Operations Retrieval operations of the satellite will occur more slowly than deployment. The rate of retrieval of the tether, the closing rate between Columbia and the satellite, will build after five hours since its initial movement to a peak rate of about three miles per hour. At that point, when the satellite is about four and a half miles from Columbia, the rate of retrieval will gradually decrease, coming to a halt about five and a half hours after the start of retrieval operations when the satellite is approximately 1.5 miles from Columbia. The satellite will remain at 1.5 miles from Columbia for seven to nine hours of science operations before the final retrieval begins. The final phase of retrieval is expected to take about two hours. A peak closing rate of closing between Columbia and the satellite of about 1.5 miles per hour will be attained just after the final retrieval begins, and the closing rate will gradually decrease through the remainder of the operation. The closing rate at the time the satellite is docked to the cradle at the end of the deployer boom is planned to be less than one- tenth of one mile per hour.
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