Nation IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : Astronauts Release Gigantic Satellite
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From Times Staff and Wire Reports
The space shuttle Discovery’s crew released the largest environmental research satellite ever carried into space, and the observatory drifted off on a mission to study Earth’s ozone layer. Astronaut Mark Brown freed the 14,500-pound, copper-colored satellite from the end of the shuttle’s robot arm shortly after 9 p.m. PDT. The release, which was delayed by about an hour by a communications problem, capped hours of intensive work by the astronauts and NASA ground controllers at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
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