IMAGINE TRYING TO SEIZE AN ELEPHANT THAT IS spinning overhead by grabbing onto three makeshift handholds the size of soup cans. Then consider performing this feat swaddled in a 255-lb. rubber suit, suspended in midair, with no net. It , was a comparable challenge that confronted the Endeavour astronauts last week when they rescued Intelsat, a 4.5-ton 17-ft.-long telecommunications satellite, from its useless orbit 230 miles above the earth. In a record 8-hr. 29-min. space walk, with the world rolling by beneath them, Commander Pierre Thuot, Richard Hieb and Lieut. Colonel Thomas Akers wrestled the satellite into the shuttle's cargo bay...
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