Bo Bobko, who served with NASA from 1969 until 1988.

*****

It’s April 17, 1985, flight day six aboard Discovery on the the 14th Shuttle Mission. commanded by Karol J. “Bo” Bobko.  Bobko, who was Air Force astronaut for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program in the 1960s, who was a member of the unwanted seven MOL astronauts dumped on NASA when the MOL was canceled in 1969, who had to wait until the Shuttle program for a chance to fly, who finally entered orbit after 14 years with NASA as pilot for the first flight of Challenger in 1983, after a successful start to this, his first Shuttle command, after deploying the big, drum-shaped Syncom/Leasat communications satellite, suddenly had a new mission dropped in his lap.  The Syncom/Leasat’s timer failed to start.  A small lever was suppose to flip when it was deployed, beginning the activation sequence.  That did not happen.   

And so now Bobko is flying an unplanned rendezvous on an improvised mission to meet up with the dead satellite.  The hope is that the trigger-like lever on the satellite’s exterior simply is stuck.  The day before spacewalking  astronauts Jeff Hoffman and David Griggs attached a makeshift hook made of 59-cent plastic book covers to the end of Discovery’s robot arm.  Rhea Seddon is ready to operate the arm and try to snap the lever and pull it.  This will become known as “Fly Swatter” Flight, as that is what the improvised device resembles.

After the flight, Bobko will say, “I felt a little like Mr. Phelps on ‘Mission Impossible’ when I went to the teleprinter in the morning to see each day what our mission would be.  I look back at it now and am amazed at everything we did in the short period of time we had, how it all came together so well.”

Bobko flies the perfect rendezvous.  His pilot, Donald Williams, exclaims, “Coming into sunrise . . .  And tally ho to target, and the Syncom is right in the center of the COAS [tracking sight].”

*

Bo Bobko, 85, died on Aug. 17, 2023.  Born on Dec. 23, 1937, in New York City, he was a member of the first graduating class of the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1959.   An Air Force pilot, he was assigned to the MOL program in 1966.  After transferring to NASA, he, along with Bob Crippen and Dr. Bill Thornton (all future Shuttle astronauts) served as the crew for a 56-day Skylab simulation, the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT).  He also served on the support crew for 1975’s Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), the final flight of an Apollo vehicle.  He made is first flight as pilot of STS-6 in April 1983.  Before commanding Mission 16 (51-D), he’d been assigned to two canceled Shuttle flights.  After the flight, he flew one more time, as commander of Mission 21 (51-J) in Oct. 1985, the first flight of Atlantis and the second so-called “secret” Shuttle flight for the Department of Defense.  In all, he logged 16 days, 2 hrs. and 3 min. in space.