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February 25, 1996
Web posted at: 6:35 p.m. EST
From Correspondent John Holliman
(CNN) -- The crew of the space shuttle Columbia began unreeling a tethered satellite Sunday as part of an experiment to generate electricity in space. (1.2M QuickTime Movie)
If all goes well, the Italian-made satellite will sweep through Earth's magnetic field at the end of a thin cable, which is just one-tenth of an inch wide and 13 miles long.
"Reeling out the tether is a very exacting process," said NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley.
Should the half-ton satellite swing wildly while being released, it could damage the shuttle like a wrecking ball.
Columbia's seven-man, international crew hopes to produce as much as 5,000 volts of electricity by dragging the fully extended, copper-containing tether through the Earth's ionosphere. If the system works, it could be used to power a space station.
At 3:45 p.m. EST, the Columbia crew started unreeling the cable at a cautious speed of less than .02 mph. It was expected to take about five-and-a-half hours to fully extend the multi-layered cable wound in the cargo bay of the space shuttle.
The $442-million mission is the second attempt to tow a satellite through space. An earlier try in 1992 failed when the tether got caught on a safety bolt in the reel after extending to a length of only about 800 feet.
The current satellite experiment was postponed Saturday due to computer problems. NASA has extended the 14-day mission by one day to allow time to complete all scientific tests. Plans now call for the shuttle to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 8.
Reuters contributed to this story.
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