Starting in 1972, the development and construction of the first of NASA’s Space Transport System vehicles, more commonly known as Space Shuttles, was completed in 1979. The next step was a multi-mission test flight program, which controversially would have a human crew on the first flight of the vehicle.

Today, we’re going to look at STS-3, which used OV-102 Columbia, flown by spaceflight veteran Jack Lousma and rookie Gordon Fullerton. Lousma had previously flown on Skylab 3. Fullerton was in the Air Force’s canceled Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program before being assigned to NASA.

The goals of STS-3 were to use Canadarm, the newly developed remote manipulator system, operationally for the first time, continue evaluation of the shuttle system, and operate payloads in the shuttle’s payload bay and crew compartment. The original goal of STS-3 was to deploy a booster that would dock and raise the orbit of Skylab, except the shuttle’s development was delayed, and Skylab reentered in 1979.

STS-3 launched on March 22, 1982, from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After an eight-minute ride, Lousma and Fullerton were in orbit just under 300 kilometers above the Earth.

Space is either very cold or very hot depending on where you are and the only way to get rid of heat is by radiating it away so heating and cooling systems are very important for spacecraft. The vehicle experiment on STS-3 included pointing the shuttle at various angles to the sun to get data on its thermal properties.  As a result of the testing, the payload bay doors were warped and did not initially close. This would have been a disaster. Fortunately, rolling the shuttle through different positions restored the doors to their normal shape and they were successfully closed.

The Remote Manipulator System, “Canadarm”, had been used on STS-2, but without any payloads. On STS-3, Canadarm picked up a payload called the Plasma Diagnostics Package and moved it to three different spots away from the payload bay to collect data on the space environment. The experiment proved that the shuttle itself didn’t interfere much with the space environment, so it would be good for experiments. Fourteen other experiments were conducted during STS-3.

Seven days into the mission it was time to come home. Just before launch, the primary landing site, Rogers Dry Lake on Edwards Air Force Base became… not dry. So NASA hired two trains to ship forty train cars of stuff to the backup landing site at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The crew prepared the shuttle to return, but a windstorm over the landing zone forced them to stay in space for another day. Forced is a strong word because according to Jack Lousma in a 2010 Oral History interview, on the last day of the mission he “finally had a chance to look out the window and enjoy being [in space]”. He called it “our world’s favorite vacation spot”.

Despite the lack of a wind storm, there were still high winds in the area. The shuttle was a glider on reentry, with a glide ratio worse than a brick, so it had to manage its speed and altitude very carefully; it could not go around for a second landing attempt. Instead of taking the previously planned approach, the shuttle had to do an alternative approach because of high winds at 25,000 feet. On this mission, Columbia had few of the modern systems installed for later missions, so it was a lot more manual using the pilot’s skills and experience to get it down safely.

From Mach 25 to Mach 0.95, that is most of the re-entry, the shuttle flew itself. Lousma took over to get the shuttle on its final landing glideslope, then reengaged the autopilot to complete a test objective. Right before the pre-flare maneuver, the autopilot closed the speed brakes early, leading to a higher speed than expected at pre-flare, though still within limits for landing. On touchdown, the nose immediately dropped, and Lousma, surprised, turned off the autopilot, overcorrecting to raise the nose back up. Columbia bounced briefly on touchdown before all three wheels returned to the ground.

As a result of the problems on STS-3, the landing autopilot was removed and all subsequent shuttle landings were done manually. Also, despite being an experimental rocket-powered government spaceplane, the shuttle still needed some FAA certification, and the FAA vetoed the landing autopilot because there was no backup should it fail really late in the approach. Requiring a pilot to recover from the automatic failure and still make a good landing because they only have one chance to land is “not professionally accepted airmanship”. The root cause of the issue was the astronauts never training on the landing autopilot in the simulator because it wasn’t added.

No other shuttle missions would land at White Sands. Gypsum dust from the landing got stuck very far in the spacecraft, to the point where it floated out in space on future missions and was spotted in the spacecraft for the rest of its career.

More Information

STS-3 (NASA)

PDF: Jack Lousma biographical info (NASA)

Jack R. Lousma interview (NASA)

C. Gordon Fullerton biography (NASA)