Still's mission in `home stretch'

Web posted July 15, 1997

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Space shuttle Columbia neared the end of its 16-day laboratory mission Monday with scientists exhausted but thrilled with all their results.

Columbia is due to land at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday morning.

``Where we are in the mission now is very much, again, like the Kentucky Derby,'' said NASA mission scientist Michael Robinson. ``We're in the home stretch, there's no doubt about it.''

``If you walk around the science operations area, there are a lot of tired people and they've got a right to be,'' Robinson added. ``The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy. But they're happy tired.''

Columbia's seven crew members had set 197 small test fires as of Monday, 53 more than planned. Researchers say data from those experiments, conducted inside sealed chambers, could help improve combustion processes on Earth, which would reduce air pollution.

Columbia, NASA's oldest space shuttle, had only five or six items in its trouble log, impressive for such a long flight, said mission operations director Lee Briscoe.

Among the minor problems was a window ding about one-fifth of an inch across that was caused by a micrometeoroid.

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