STS-85 was the 23rd flight of

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

''Discovery'' that performed multiple space science packages. It was 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, on 7 August 1997. The main STS-85 payloads included the satellite known as Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-Shuttle Pallet Satellite-2 CRISTA-SPAS-02.

Crew

Jeffrey Ashby was originally assigned to be pilot on this mission, but asked to be relieved in order to take care of his wife, who was dying from cancer. He was replaced by

Kent Rominger Kent Vernon "Rommel" Rominger (born August 7, 1956) is an American former astronaut, former NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center, and a captain in the United States Navy. Rominger holds the Space Shuttle Orbiter flight time ...

and was assigned to pilot

STS-93 STS-93 in 1999 marked the 95th launch of the Space Shuttle, the 26th launch of Space Shuttle Columbia, ''Columbia'', and the 21st night launch of a Space Shuttle. Eileen Collins became the first female shuttle Commander on this flight. Its prima ...

instead. The launch occurred on Rominger's 41st birthday.

Crew seat assignments

Mission highlights

The deployment and retrieval of a satellite designed to study Earth's middle atmosphere along with a test of potential International Space Station hardware highlighted NASA's sixth Shuttle mission of 1997. The prime payload for the flight, the Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-

Shuttle Pallet Satellite The shuttle pallet satellite was a satellite bus designed to be deployed and then retrieved for return to Earth on NASA's Space Shuttle. It carried a variety of payloads both scientific and military in nature. It was made by Messerschmitt-Bölkow ...

-2 ( CRISTA-SPAS-2) made its second flight on the Space Shuttle (previous flight STS-66 in 1994) and was the fourth mission in a cooperative venture between the German Space Agency (DARA) and NASA. During the flight, Davis used ''Discoverys robot arm to deploy the CRISTA-SPAS payload for about 9 days of free-flight. CRISTA-SPAS consists of three telescopes and four spectrometers that measured trace gases and dynamics of the Earth's middle atmosphere. Davis also operated the robot arm for CRISTA-SPAS retrieval. The Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS) on which the scientific instruments were mounted is a self-contained platform that provides power, command, control and communication with ''Discovery'' during free-flight. Two other instruments mounted on the SPAS also studied the Earth's atmosphere. The Middle Atmosphere High Resolution Spectrograph Instrument (MAHRSI) measured hydroxyl and nitric oxide by sensing UV radiation emitted and scattered by the atmosphere, while the Surface Effects Sample Monitor (SESAM) was a passive carrier for state-of-the-art optical surfaces to study the impact of the atomic oxygen and the space environment on materials and services. The crew also supported the Manipulator Flight Demonstration (MFD) experiment being sponsored by NASDA, the Japanese Space Agency. MFD consists of three separate experiments located on a support truss in the payload bay. The primary objective was to demonstrate the newly designed dexterous robot arm in the space environment, before installing on the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) of the International Space Station. Several Hitchhiker payloads, including the Technology Applications and Science Payload (TAS-01), the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH-02), and the Ultraviolet Spectrograph Telescope for Astronomical Research (UVSTAR) were housed in Discovery's payload bay, operating independently of crew support during the flight. STS-85 landing

The Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount (MIM) experiment was operated by Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason. The MIM experiment is a small double-locker size device designed to isolate International Space Station payloads and experiments from disturbances created by thruster firings or crew activity. MIM was operated for 30 hours with real-time data transmission to investigators on the ground. (Reference NASA Press Release 96–224) Another experiment onboard STS-85 was the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System (SWUIS-01) from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) along with scientific collaborators from JPL, APL, and the University of Maryland. SWUIS (pronounced, "Swiss") is a wide-field UV imager to which was used to observe comet Hale-Bopp. It is based around an 18-cm Maksutov UV telescope and a UV-sensitive, Xybion image-intensified CCD camera that frames at video rates (30 Hz). Each SWUIS observation period lasted approximately 3 hours, and garnered approximately 10^5 images in up to 7 filter bandpasses. SWUIS was operated from a 2-axis mount inside the Shuttle mid-deck cockpit, and looked out of the Shuttle through a quartz window. SWUIS can be pointed anywhere in a 4.5 deg cone around the centerline of the comet. Mission specialists set up and operated the instrument. On Day 8, the crew was awakened by the song "You Will Go to the Moon" by Canadian artists Moxy Früvous, selected by astronaut

Marc Garneau Joseph Jean-Pierre Marc Garneau (; February 23, 1949 – June 4, 2025) was a Canadian Armed Forces officer, astronaut, and politician. Garneau served as a naval officer before being selected as an astronaut as part of the 1983 NRC Group. He be ...

, the first Canadian in space. The mission lasted a day longer than originally planned due to a threat of ground

fog Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus and is heavily influenc ...

Media

File:STS-85 launch.ogv, STS-85 launches (40 secs) File:STS-85 landing.ogv, STS-85 prepares to land (30 secs) File:Space Shuttle Discovery lands on STS-85.ogv, STS-85 lands (38 secs)

References

External links