STS-51-G was the 18th flight of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Space Shuttle program The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its ...

, and the fifth flight of Space Shuttle ''Discovery''. The seven-day mission launched from

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten NASA facilities#List of field c ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

, on June 17, 1985, and landed at

Edwards Air Force Base Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation in California. Most of the base sits in Kern County, California, Kern County, but its eastern end is in San Bernardino County, California, San Bernardino County and a souther ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, on June 24, 1985. Sultan bin Salman Al Saud from

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

was on board as a

payload specialist A payload specialist (PS) was an individual selected and trained by commercial or research organizations for flights of a specific payload on a NASA Space Shuttle mission. People assigned as payload specialists included individuals selected by t ...

; Al Saud became the first

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

, the first

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

, and the first member of a

royal family A royal family is the immediate family of monarchs and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or empress, and the term papal family describes the family of a pope, while th ...

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,

(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 Patrick Pierre Roger Baudry (born March 6, 1946, in French Cameroon, Cameroon) is a retired lieutenant colonel in the French Air Force and a former CNES astronaut. In 1985, he became the second French citizen in space, after Jean-Loup Chrétien, ...

, from

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, and Prince Sultan Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, from

, both payload specialists. STS-51-G carried three

communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a Transponder (satellite communications), transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a Rad ...

s as its primary cargo. These were Arabsat-1B (

Arab Satellite Communications Organization The Arab Satellite Communications Organization (often abbreviated as Arabsat) is a communications satellite operator in the Arab World, headquartered in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Arabsat was created to deliver satellite-based, public ...

); Morelos-1 (

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

); and Telstar-303 (

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...

); all three were Hughes-built satellites. All three successfully utilized

Payload Assist Module The Payload Assist Module (PAM) is a modular upper stage designed and built by McDonnell Douglas (Boeing), using Thiokol Star-series solid propellant rocket motors. The PAM was used with the Space Shuttle, Delta, and Titan launchers and carried ...

(PAM-D) booster stages to achieve

geostationary transfer orbit In space mission design, a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) or geosynchronous transfer orbit is a highly elliptical type of geocentric orbit, usually with a perigee as low as low Earth orbit (LEO) and an apogee as high as geostationary orbit ...

s (GTO) after being deployed from ''Discovery''. Also carried was the SPARTAN-1 (Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for AstroNomy) a deployable/retrievable carrier module, designed to be deployed from the orbiter and fly free in space before being retrieved. SPARTAN-1 included of astronomy experiments. It was deployed and operated successfully, independent of the orbiter, before being retrieved. ''Discovery'' furthermore carried an experimental materials-processing furnace, two French biomedical experiments (French Echocardiograph Experiment (FEE) and French Postural Experiment (FPE)), and six Getaway Special (GAS) experiments, which were all successfully performed, although the GO34 Getaway Special shut down prematurely. This mission was also the first flight test of the OEX advanced autopilot which gave the orbiter capabilities above and beyond those of the baseline system. The mission's final payload element was a High Precision Tracking Experiment (HPTE) for the

Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic nuclear missiles. The program was announced in 1983, by President Ronald Reagan. Reagan called for a ...

(SDI) (nicknamed "Star Wars"); the HPTE failed to deploy properly during its first try on the mission's 37th orbit, because the orbiter was not at the correct attitude. It was successfully deployed on orbit 64. ''Discovery'' landed at

at 9:11:52 a.m. EDT on June 24, 1985, after a mission duration of 7 days, 1 hour, 38 minutes, and 52 seconds.

Mission Insignia

The STS-51-G insignia illustrates the advances in aviation technology in the United States within a relatively short span of the twentieth century with ''Discovery'' flying over the ''

Wright Flyer The ''Wright Flyer'' (also known as the ''Kitty Hawk'', ''Flyer'' I or the 1903 ''Flyer'') made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft on December 17, 1903. Invented and flown by brothers Wrigh ...

''. A gold-and-orange-flame eagle forms the base of the insigna. The surnames of the crewmembers for the ''Discovery''s mission appear near the center edge of the circular design, with the French and Saudi crewmembers added below, with a respective flag icon along their name. Although Baudry was the first French citizen to fly with a Space Shuttle mission into space, he was only the second Frenchman to go to space, following Jean-Loup Chrétien's earlier missions with Soyuz capsule, Soyuz T-6.

Wake-up calls

NASA began a tradition of playing music to astronauts during

Project Gemini Project Gemini () was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first American crewed space program, Project Mercury, while the Apollo program was still in early development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and ...

, and first used music to wake up a flight crew during

Apollo 15 Apollo 15 (July 26August 7, 1971) was the ninth crewed mission in the Apollo program and the fourth Moon landing. It was the first List of Apollo missions#Alphabetical mission types, J mission, with a longer stay on the Moon and a greate ...

. Each track is specially chosen, often by the astronauts' families, and usually has a special meaning to an individual member of the crew, or is applicable to their daily activities.

Gallery

Image:STS-51-G Arabsat 1-B deployment.jpg, Arabsat-1B deployment Image:STS-51-G Morelos 1 deployment.jpg, Morelos-1 deployment Image:STS-51-G Telstar 3-D deployment.jpg, Telstar-303 deployment Image:STS-51-G Spartan 1.jpg, SPARTAN-1 after deployment

References

External links

NASA mission summary

{{Orbital launches in 1985 Space Shuttle missions Edwards Air Force Base 1985 in spaceflight 1985 in the United States Spacecraft launched in 1985 Spacecraft which reentered in 1985