STS 51-B was the seventeenth flight of a
Space ShuttleThe Space Shuttle, part of the Space Transportation System , is a spacecraft operated by NASA for orbital human spaceflight missions. It began operations in the 1980s and is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010 after 134 launches...
and the seventh flight of
ChallengerSpace Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia being the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, STS-51-L on January 28, 1986, resulting...
.
- Mass
In physics, mass commonly refers to any of three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent: inertial mass, active gravitational mass and passive gravitational mass...
:
- Orbiter liftoff: 111,676 kg
- Orbiter landing: 96,097 kg
- Payload: 11,061 kg
- Perigee: 346 km
- Apogee: 353 km
- Inclination
Inclination in general is the angle between a reference plane and another plane or axis of direction.- Orbits :The inclination is one of the six orbital parameters describing the shape and orientation of a celestial orbit...
: 57.0°
- Period
The orbital period is the time taken for a given object to make one complete orbit about another object.When mentioned without further qualification in astronomy this refers to the sidereal period of an astronomical object, which is calculated with respect to the stars.There are several kinds of...
: 91.5 min
The Orbiter
Challenger lifted off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, KSC, at 12:02 p.m.
STS 51-B was the seventeenth flight of a
Space ShuttleThe Space Shuttle, part of the Space Transportation System , is a spacecraft operated by NASA for orbital human spaceflight missions. It began operations in the 1980s and is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010 after 134 launches...
and the seventh flight of
ChallengerSpace Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia being the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, STS-51-L on January 28, 1986, resulting...
.
Crew
Backup crew
Mission parameters
- Mass
In physics, mass commonly refers to any of three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent: inertial mass, active gravitational mass and passive gravitational mass...
:
- Orbiter liftoff: 111,676 kg
- Orbiter landing: 96,097 kg
- Payload: 11,061 kg
- Perigee: 346 km
- Apogee: 353 km
- Inclination
Inclination in general is the angle between a reference plane and another plane or axis of direction.- Orbits :The inclination is one of the six orbital parameters describing the shape and orientation of a celestial orbit...
: 57.0°
- Period
The orbital period is the time taken for a given object to make one complete orbit about another object.When mentioned without further qualification in astronomy this refers to the sidereal period of an astronomical object, which is calculated with respect to the stars.There are several kinds of...
: 91.5 min
Mission highlights
The Orbiter
Challenger lifted off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, KSC, at 12:02 p.m. EDT on April 29, 1985. This was the second flight of the European Space Agency's Spacelab, the first in a fully operational configuration. Spacelab capabilities for multi-disciplinary research in microgravity were successfully demonstrated. The gravity gradient attitude of the orbiter proved quite stable, allowing the delicate experiments in materials processing and fluid mechanics to proceed normally. The crew operated around the clock in two 12-hour shifts. Two
monkeyA monkey is any cercopithecoid or platyrrhine primate. All primates that are not prosimians or apes are monkeys. The 264 known extant monkey species represent two of the three groupings of simian primates...
s and 24 rodents were flown in special cages, the second time American astronauts flew live non-human
mammalMammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose females are characterized by the possession of mammary glands while both males and females are characterized by sweat glands, hair, three middle ear bones used in hearing, and a neocortex region in the brain.Mammals are divided into three main...
s aboard the shuttle. The crew members in orbit were supported 24 hours a day by a temporary Payload Operations Control Center, located at the Johnson Space Center.
Challenger landed at Edwards AFB. Wheel motion stopped at 12:11 p.m. EDT on May 6, 1985, after a mission duration of 7 days, 0 hours and 8 minutes.
The crew members were
Robert F. OvermyerRobert Franklyn Overmyer, Colonel, United States Marine Corps, Ret. was an American test pilot and USAF and NASA astronaut. He was born in Lorain, Ohio, but considered Westlake, Ohio his hometown.-Early life:...
, commander;
Frederick D. GregoryFrederick Drew Gregory is a former NASA astronaut and former NASA Deputy Administrator. He also served briefly as NASA Acting Administrator in early 2005, covering the period between the departure of Sean O'Keefe and the swearing in of Michael Griffin.-Personal data:Born January 7, 1941, in...
, pilot;
Don L. LindDon Leslie Lind is an American scientist and a former NASA astronaut. He attended Midvale Elementary School and he graduated from Jordan High School . Later he married Kathleen Maughan of Logan, Utah with whom he had seven children...
, Norman E. Thagard and
William E. ThorntonWilliam Edgar Thornton is a former NASA Astronaut. Thornton was born in Faison, North Carolina, and is married with two sons to the former Elizabeth Jennifer Fowler of Hertfordshire, England.-Education:...
, mission specialists; and
Lodewijk van den BergLodewijk van den Berg is a Dutch American chemical engineer, specializing in crystal growth, who flew on a 1985 Space Shuttle Challenger mission as a Payload Specialist. He was the first Dutch-born astronaut, a fact that is often overlooked in the Netherlands because he was a naturalized American...
, of EG&G Energy Management, Inc., and Taylor G. Wang, of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, payload specialists. Payload and Experiments. Five basic discipline areas: materials sciences, life sciences, fluid mechanics, atmospheric physics. and astronomy main mission objective with Spacelab-3 was to provide high quality microgravity environment for delicate materials processing and fluid experiments. Spacelab 3 carried a large number of experiments, including 15 primary ones, of which 14 were successfully performed. There were five basic discipline areas: materials sciences, life sciences, fluid mechanics, atmospheric physics, and astronomy—with numerous experiments in each. Two Getaway Special experiments required that they be deployed from their canisters, a "first" in this program. These were NUSAT (Northern Utah Satellite) and GLOMR (Global Low Orbiting Message Relay Satellite). NUSAT deployed successfully, but GLOMR did not deploy and was returned to
EarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun. It is the fifth largest of the eight planets in the solar system, and the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in terms of diameter, mass and density...
.
Connection to Challenger accident
Overmyer discovered while serving on the
Challenger accidentThe Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, at 11:39...
investigation team that 51-B had had a similar problem with its O-rings during the launch. Morton Thiokol engineers told Lind that "you came within three-tenths of one second of dying."
See also
- Space science
Space science is an all-encompassing term that describes all of the various science fields that are concerned with the study of the Universe, generally also meaning "excluding the Earth" and "outside of the Earth's atmosphere". Originally, all of these fields were considered part of astronomy...
- Space shuttle
The Space Shuttle, part of the Space Transportation System , is a spacecraft operated by NASA for orbital human spaceflight missions. It began operations in the 1980s and is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010 after 134 launches...
- List of space shuttle missions
- List of human spaceflights chronologically
External links