STS 61-B

Flight Crew

SHAW, Brewster Hopkinson Jr., 40, USAF, commander, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-9 (1983)

O’CONNOR, Bryan Daniel, 38, USMC, pilot

ROSS, Jerry Lynn, 37, USAF, mission specialist 1

CLEAVE, Mary Louise, 38, civilian, mission specialist 2

SPRING, Sherwood Clark “Woody’’, 41, US Army, mission specialist 3

WALKER, Charles David, 37, civilian, payload specialist 1, 3rd mission

Previous missions: STS 41-D (1984); STS 51-D (1985)

NERI VELA, Rudolpho, 33, civilian, payload specialist 2

Flight Log

Such was the apparently routine nature of Space Shuttle flights by November 1985 that the 61-B mission’s extraordinary EVA operations were left unheralded. The flight got off to a spectacular start at 19: 29 hrs local time at the KSC, the third night launch in the US manned space programme and the second by the Shuttle. Unlike Challenger’s ascent into thunder clouds on STS-8, Atlantis began the 61-B mission in skies so clear that the ascent could be seen over 640 km (398 miles) away. Riding the mid-deck were two payload specialists with a difference, Mexico’s Rudolpho Neri Vela, flying courtesy of his country’s booking of the Shuttle to deploy the Morelos national communications satellite – and who was to become the last international passenger on the Shuttle – and McDonnell Douglas’s Charlie Walker, who was flying for the third time – more than any of the professional NASA crew. Indeed, by the end of the mission, Walker had clocked up more Shuttle flight experience than all the NASA astronauts, except Crippen and Hartsfield.

Atlantis reached a 28° inclination orbit and a maximum height of 334 km (208 miles) during the mission, which included the routine deployments of Morelos,

Aussat and a Satcom Ku-band satellite, and the remarkable EASE-ACCESS EVA experiments. These were performed by astronauts Jerry Ross (EV1) and Sherwood Spring (EV2), who erected a series of truss frames in a rehearsal of proposed space station construction procedures. The photography of the two EVAs on 1 and 3 December was splendid, one showing Spring standing at the end of a 13.7 m (45 ft) long tower, erected over the payload bay. The EVAs lasted 5 hours 34 minutes and 6 hours 46 minutes.

Probably the best Shuttle flight in the pre-Challenger era of the programme, 61-B came home to Edwards Air Force Base’s runway 22 at T + 6 days 21 hours 4 minutes 49 seconds, after a mission shortened by one orbit because of concerns over landing lighting conditions.

Milestones

113th manned space flight

54th US manned space flight

23rd Shuttle flight

2nd flight of Atlantis

1st manned space flight by a Mexican

23rd US and 33rd flight with EVA operations