Up To Snag a Straggler

BLASTING THROUGH A THIN LAYER OF CLOUDS INTO blue skies above, the new space shuttle Endeavour rode into space only half an hour behind schedule last week, on a mission to rescue a misplaced satellite and to give astronauts some space-walking practice. It was the first flight for the new $2 billion craft, a replacement for the Challenger, which blew up and killed its crew of seven in January 1986.

The satellite in distress is Intelsat-6, designed to carry international telephone traffic. It was launched in 1990 but was stranded 345 miles up -- about 22,000 miles short of its assigned orbit. The astronauts will pull the 4.5-ton satellite into the shuttle's cargo bay, strap a booster rocket onto it and send it on its way. Then four of them will suit up and go outside to try out construction techniques that will be used on the U.S. space station, Freedom, scheduled to be built by the late 1990s. They will also test the "astrorope," a device astronauts could use to save themselves if they start to float off into space.