STS-51-B
STS-51-B was the 17th flight of the NASA Space Shuttle program and the seventh flight of Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. The launch of ''Challenger'' on April 29, 1985, was delayed by 2 minutes and 18 seconds, due to a launch processing failure. ''Challenger'' was initially rolled out to the pad to launch on the STS-51-E mission. The shuttle was rolled back when a timing issue emerged with the TDRS-B satellite. When STS-51-E was canceled, ''Challenger'' was remanifested with the STS-51-B payloads. The shuttle landed successfully on May 6, 1985, after a week-long mission. Crew Crew seat assignments Mission insignia The mission insignia features the ''Challenger'' with her payload doors open, to show the onboard Spacelab 3. The orbiter rides over the American flag. The seven crewmembers are represented by the 7 stars on the patch, that indirectly refer to the Mercury Seven as a nod to their legacy. Behind the orbiter, the contours of Pegasus can be seen, as a refere ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Taylor Wang
Taylor Gun-Jin Wang (; born June 16, 1940) is a Chinese-born Taiwanese-American scientist and in 1985, became the first person of Chinese origin to go into space. While an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wang was a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' mission STS-51-B. Early life and education With ancestry in Yancheng, Jiangsu, Republic of China, Wang was born in Shanghai to Wáng Zhāng () and Yú Jiéhóng (). He moved to Taiwan in 1952 with his family. He studied his later part of elementary school in Kaohsiung, and graduated from the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan. He later moved to Hong Kong. Wang started studying physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1963. He received his Bachelor of Science in 1967, his Master of Science in 1968, and his Ph.D. in low temperature physics (superfluid and solid state physics) in 1972. Career and research After completing his doc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Norman Thagard
Norman Earl Thagard (born July 3, 1943; Capt, USMC, Ret.) is an American scientist and former U.S. Marine Corps officer and naval aviator and NASA astronaut. On March 14, 1995, he became the first American to ride to space on board a Russian vehicle, the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft for the Russian Mir-18 mission. Therefore, Thagard was the first American cosmonaut. Experience Thagard held a number of research and teaching posts while completing the academic requirements for various earned degrees. In September 1966 he entered active duty with the United States Marine Corps Reserve. He achieved the rank of captain in 1967, was designated a Naval Aviator in 1968 and was subsequently assigned to duty flying F-4 Phantom IIs with VMFA-333 at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina. He flew 163 combat missions in Vietnam while assigned to VMFA-115 from January 1969 to 1970. He returned to the United States and an assignment as aviation weapons division officer with VMFA-251 at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spacelab
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory developed by European Space Agency (ESA) and used on certain spaceflights flown by the Space Shuttle. The laboratory comprised multiple components, including a pressurized module, an unpressurized carrier, and other related hardware housed in the Shuttle's cargo bay. The components were arranged in various configurations to meet the needs of each spaceflight. Spacelab components flew on a total of about 32 Shuttle missions, depending on how such hardware and missions are tabulated. Spacelab allowed scientists to perform experiments in micro-g environment , microgravity in geocentric orbit. There was a variety of Spacelab-associated hardware, so a distinction can be made between the major Spacelab program missions with European scientists running missions in the Spacelab habitable module, missions running other Spacelab hardware experiments, and other Space Transportation System (STS) missions that used some component of Spacelab hardware. Th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Space Shuttle Challenger
Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after HMS Challenger (1858), the commanding ship of a Challenger expedition, nineteenth-century scientific expedition that traveled the world, ''Challenger'' was the second Space Shuttle orbiter to fly into space after ''Space Shuttle Columbia, Columbia'', and launched on STS-6, its maiden flight in April 1983. It was destroyed in January 1986 soon after launch Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, in a disaster that killed all seven crewmembers aboard. Initially manufactured as a Test article (aerospace), test article not intended for spaceflight, it was used for ground testing of the Space Shuttle orbiter's structural design. However, after NASA found that their original plan to upgrade ''Space Shuttle Enterprise, Enterprise'' for spaceflight would be more expensive than upgrading ''Challenger'', the orbiter was pressed into operational service in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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STS-51-D
STS-51-D was the 16th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the fourth flight of Space Shuttle ''Discovery''. The launch of STS-51-D from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, on April 12, 1985, was delayed by 55 minutes, after a boat strayed into the restricted Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) recovery zone. STS-51-D was the third shuttle mission to be extended. On April 19, 1985, after a week-long flight, ''Discovery'' conducted the fifth shuttle landing at KSC. The shuttle suffered extensive brake damage and a ruptured tire during landing. This forced shuttle landings to be done at Edwards Air Force Base, California for the next five years until the development and implementation of nose wheel steering made landings at KSC more feasible. Crew Spacewalk * Personnel: Hoffman and Griggs * Date: April 16, 1985 (≈12:30–15:30 UTC) * Duration: 3hours, 6minutes Crew seat assignments Mission summary During STS-51-D, the shuttle crew deployed two communications satell ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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STS-51-G
STS-51-G was the 18th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the fifth flight of Space Shuttle ''Discovery''. The seven-day mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on June 17, 1985, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on June 24, 1985. Sultan bin Salman Al Saud from Saudi Arabia was on board as a payload specialist; Al Saud became the first Arab, the first Muslim, and the first member of a royal family to fly into space. It was also the first Space Shuttle mission which flew without at least one astronaut from the pre-Shuttle era among its crew. Crew Backup crew Crew seat assignments Mission summary ''Discovery'' lifted off from Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), at 7:33 a.m. EDT on June 17, 1985. The mission's crew members included Daniel C. Brandenstein, commander; John O. Creighton, pilot; Shannon W. Lucid, Steven R. Nagel, and John M. Fabian, mission specialists; and Patrick Baudry, from France, and Prince S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A
Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, was built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V launch vehicle, and has been used to support NASA crewed space flight missions, including the historic Apollo 11 moon landing and the Space Shuttle. Since 2014 the site has been leased by SpaceX and supports launches of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. History Apollo program In 1961, U.S. President Kennedy proposed to the U.S. Congress the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Congressional approval led to the launch of the Apollo program, which required a massive expansion of NASA operations, including an expansion of launch operations from the Cape to adjacent Merritt Island to the north and west. First named Launch Complex 39C, Launch Complex 39A was designed to handle launches of the Saturn V rocket, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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TDRS-B
TDRS-B was an American communications satellite, of first generation, which was to have formed part of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. It was destroyed in 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, disintegrated 73 seconds after launch. Launch TDRS-B was launched in the payload bay of ''Challenger'', attached to an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). It was to have been deployed from the Shuttle in low Earth orbit. The IUS would have then performed two burns to raise the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit. On the previous TDRS launch, TDRS-1, the IUS second-stage motor malfunctioned following the first-stage burn, resulting in a loss of control, and delivery of the satellite into an incorrect orbit. Launch failed TDRS-B was originally scheduled for launch on Canceled Space Shuttle missions#Canceled due to the late development of the Space Shuttle, STS-12 in March 1984; however, it was delayed and the flight cancelled following the IUS failure on TDRS-1. It was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Canceled Space Shuttle Missions
During NASA's Space Shuttle program, several missions were canceled. Many were canceled as a result of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, ''Challenger'' and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster , ''Columbia'' disasters or due to delays in the development of the shuttle. Others were canceled because of changes in payload and mission requirements. Canceled due to the late development of the Space Shuttle In 1972, NASA's planners had projected 570 Space Shuttle missions between 1980 and 1991. Later, this estimate was lowered to 487 launches between 1980 and 1992. The details of the first 23 projected missions, listed in the third edition of ''Manned Spaceflight'' (Reginald Turnill, 1978) and the first edition of the ''STS Flight Assignment Baseline'', an internal NASA document published in October 1977, are: Later in the development process, NASA suggested using the first crewed Space Shuttle mission, STS-1, as a sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital test of the Space Shuttl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Solid Orange
Solid is a state of matter where molecules are closely packed and can not slide past each other. Solids resist compression, expansion, or external forces that would alter its shape, with the degree to which they are resisted dependent upon the specific material under consideration. Solids also always possess the least amount of kinetic energy per atom/molecule relative to other phases or, equivalently stated, solids are formed when matter in the liquid / gas phase is cooled below a certain temperature. This temperature is called the melting point of that substance and is an intrinsic property, i.e. independent of how much of the matter there is. All matter in solids can be arranged on a microscopic scale under certain conditions. Solids are characterized by structural rigidity and resistance to applied external forces and pressure. Unlike liquids, solids do not flow to take on the shape of their container, nor do they expand to fill the entire available volume like a gas. Much ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Low Earth Orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, peaking in number at an altitude around , while the farthest in LEO, before medium Earth orbit (MEO), have an altitude of 2,000 km, about one-third of the Earth radius, radius of Earth and near the beginning of the Van Allen radiation belt#Inner belt, inner Van Allen radiation belt. The term ''LEO region'' is used for the area of space below an altitude of (about one-third of Earth's radius). Objects in orbits that pass through this zone, even if they have an apogee further out or are sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital, are carefully tracked since they present a collision risk to the many LEO satellites. No human spaceflights other than the lunar missions of the Apollo program (1968-1972) have gone beyond L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |