From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!alice!sjb
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Title: Shuttle Ready for Countdown
Article-I.D.: alice.695
Posted: Tue Jun 22 18:02:24 1982
Received: Sun Jun 27 03:17:29 1982

The Columbia was readied for its countdown today, which, if
all went well, should have started about an hour ago.  The
countdown is 10 hours longer than previous shuttle countdowns,
due to the need for loading a telescope in the DoD's "secret"
package with liquid helium.

Thursday is scheduled for the joint Soviet-French space flight
to launch.  If all goes according to plan, this will be the
third time that U.S. and Russian astronauts have been in orbit
at the same time.