STS-7 was a space shuttle mission by NASA
using the
Space Shuttle
Challenger, launched 18 June 1983. This was the
seventh space shuttle mission, and was the second mission for the
Space Shuttle
Challenger. It was also the first American
mission to have a female
astronaut.
Crew
Mission parameters
Mission highlights
Deployment of Anik C2
Deployment of Palapa B-1
SPAS-1 grappled by the RMS
The
Challenger’s second flight began at 7:33 a.m. EDT, 18
June 1983, with another on-time liftoff. It was the first flight of
an American woman in space --
Sally K.
Ride -- and also the largest crew to fly
in a single spacecraft up to that time, five people.
Crew members included
Robert L.
Crippen, commander, making his
second Shuttle flight;
Frederick
H. Hauck, pilot; Ride,
John M. Fabian and
Norman
Thagard, all mission specialists. Thagard conducted medical
tests of the
Space Adaptation
Syndrome nausea and sickness frequently experienced by
astronauts during the early phase of a space flight.
Two
communications satellites
-- Anik C-2 for Telesat of Canada
, and
Palapa B-l for Indonesia
-- were successfully deployed during the first 2
days of the mission. The mission also carried the first Shuttle
Pallet Satellite (SPAS-l) built by Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, a
West
German
aerospace firm. SPAS-l wasunique in that it
was designed to operate in the payload bay or be deployed by the
RMS as a free-flying
satellite. It carried 10 experiments to study formation of metal
alloys in microgravity, the operation of
heat
pipes, instruments for remote sensing observations, and a mass
spectrometer to identify various gases in the payload bay. It was
deployed by the RMS and flew alongside and over
Challenger
for several hours while a U.S.-supplied camera took pictures from
the SPAS-1 of the orbiter performing various maneuvers. The RMS
later grappled the pallet and returned it to the payload bay.
This mission also carried seven
GAS
canisters which contained a wide variety of experiments, as well as
the OSTA-2 payload, a joint U.S.-West German scientific pallet
payload. Finally, the orbiter's Ku-band antenna was able to relay
data through the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite to a ground
terminal for the first time.
STS-7 was
scheduled to make the first Shuttle landing at the Kennedy Space
Center
's Shuttle Landing Facility. However, unacceptable
weather forced a change to Runway 23 at Edwards AFB
. The landing took place 24 June 1983, at
6:57 a.m. PDT. The mission lasted 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 59
seconds. It covered about 2.2 million miles during 97 orbits of the
Earth.
Challenger was returned to KSC on June 29.
Incidents
While orbiting a window of the Shuttle was damaged by
space debris.
Mission insignia
The seven white stars in the black field of the mission patch, as
well as the arm extending from the shuttle in the shape of a 7,
tell the flight's numerical designation in the Space Transportation
System's mission sequence. The five-armed symbol on the right side
illustrates the four male/one female crew.
Wake-up calls
A tradition for NASA human spaceflights since the days of
Gemini, mission crews are played a special
musical track at the start of each day in space.Each track is
specially chosen, often by their families, and usually has a
special meaning to an individual member of the crew, or is
applicable to their daily activities.
See also
References
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