Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site riccb.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihopa!riccb!rjnoe From: rjnoe@riccb.UUCP (Roger J. Noe) Newsgroups: net.columbia Subject: Mission 61-A/Spacelab D-1 Launch Message-ID: <571@riccb.UUCP> Date: Wed, 30-Oct-85 12:06:43 EST Article-I.D.: riccb.571 Posted: Wed Oct 30 12:06:43 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Nov-85 02:32:59 EST Distribution: net Organization: Rockwell International - Downers Grove, IL Lines: 16 Space shuttle Challenger lifted off on its ninth mission at 17:00 GMT today, 30 October 1985. Mission 22 (61-A), also called Spacelab D-1 (erste Deutsche), will focus primarily on about 75 materials processing experiments. Conducting these experiments will be a crew composed of five NASA astronauts and three payload specialists, two of whom are German and the other Dutch. The mission will be controlled primarily by the DFVLR (German federal aerospace research agency), not by NASA in Houston. Landing is planned for one week from today at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This launch occurs just 27 days since the last one at Kennedy Space Center. It is also the first time that a crew larger than seven has been launched on a shuttle. Isn't it pretty amazing that NASA can now manage to launch a crew larger than the entire first group of Mercury astronauts and do it less than four weeks since the last launch from the same complex? -- Roger Noe ihnp4!riccb!rjnoe