STS-7
STS-7 was NASA's seventh Space Shuttle mission, and the second mission for the Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. During the mission, ''Challenger'' deployed several satellites into orbit. The shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 18, 1983, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base on June 24, 1983. STS-7 carried Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut. Crew Support crew * John E. Blaha * Roy D. Bridges Jr. (ascent CAPCOM) * Guy Gardner * Terry Hart * Jon McBride * Bryan D. O'Connor (entry CAPCOM) Crew seat assignments Mission summary STS-7 began on June 18, 1983, with an on-time liftoff at 07:33:00 a.m. EDT. It was the first spaceflight of an American woman (Ride), the largest crew to fly in a single spacecraft up to that time (five people), and the first flight that included members of NASA's Group 8 astronaut class, which had been selected in 1978 to fly the Space Shuttle. President Ronald Reagan also sent his personal favorite Jelly Belly jelly bean ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sally Ride
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32. Ride was a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1973, a Master of Science degree in physics in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1978 for research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium. She was selected as a mission specialist astronaut with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of NASA astronauts to include women. After completing her training in 1979, she served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Spac ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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NASA Astronaut Group 8
NASA Astronaut Group 8 was a group of 35 astronauts announced on January 16, 1978. It was the first NASA selection since Group 6 in 1967, and was the largest group to that date. The class was the first to include female and minority astronauts; of the 35 selected, six were women, one of them being Jewish American, three were African American, and one was Asian American. Due to the long delay between the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972 and the first flight of the Space Shuttle in 1981, few astronauts from the older groups remained, and they were outnumbered by the newcomers, who became known as the Thirty-Five New Guys (TFNG). Since then, a new group of candidates has been selected roughly every two years. In Astronaut Group 8, two different kinds of astronaut were selected: pilots and mission specialists. The group consisted of 15 pilots, all test pilots, and 20 mission specialists. NASA stopped sending non-pilots for one year of pilot training. It also ceased appointin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Female Astronauts
The following is a list of women who have traveled into space, sorted by date of first flight. This list includes Russian cosmonauts, who were the first women in outer space travelers. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go to space in 1963, very early in crewed space exploration, and it would be almost twenty years before another flew ( Svetlana Savitskaya). Female astronauts went on to become commonplace in the 1980s and beyond. By 2019, roughly 12% of all the space travelers were women. , there were 73 women with completed spaceflights. History , of the 621 total space travelers ( FAI), 70 have been women. There have been one each from France, Italy, South Korea, and the United Kingdom; two each from Canada, China, and Japan; five from the Soviet Union/Russia; and 55 from the United States. The time between the first male and first female astronauts varied widely by country. The first astronauts originally from Britain, South Korea, and Iran were women, while th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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STS-8
STS-8 was the eighth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the third flight of the Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. It launched on August 30, 1983, and landed on September 5, 1983, conducting the first night launch and night landing of the Space Shuttle program. It also carried the first African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford. The mission successfully achieved all of its planned research objectives, but was marred by the subsequent discovery that a solid-fuel rocket booster had almost malfunctioned catastrophically during the launch. The mission's primary payload was INSAT-1B, an Indian communications and weather observation satellite, which was released by the orbiter and boosted into a geostationary orbit. The secondary payload, replacing a delayed NASA communications satellite, was a four-metric-ton dummy payload, intended to test the use of the shuttle's Canadarm (remote manipulator system). Scientific experiments carried on board ''Challenger'' included the environmental testin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Crippen
Robert Laurel Crippen (born September 11, 1937) is an American retired naval officer and aviator, test pilot A test pilot is an aircraft pilot with additional training to fly and evaluate experimental, newly produced and modified aircraft with specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques.Stinton, Darrol. ''Flying Qualities and Flight Testing ..., aerospace engineering, aerospace engineer, and retired astronaut. He traveled into space four times: as Pilot of STS-1 in April 1981, the first Space Shuttle mission; and as Commander of STS-7 in June 1983, STS-41-C in April 1984, and STS-41-G in October 1984. He was also a part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT), Apollo–Soyuz, ASTP support crew member, and the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) for the Space Shuttle. In 1986, Crippen participated in the recovery operations for the remains of crew members after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Space Shuttle ''Cha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Norman Thagard
Norman Earl Thagard, M.D. (born July 3, 1943; Capt, USMC, Ret.), is an American scientist and former U.S. Marine Corps officer and naval aviator and NASA astronaut. He is the first American to ride to space on board a Russian vehicle, and can be considered the first American cosmonaut. He did this on March 14, 1995, in the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft for the Russian Mir-18 mission. Experience Thagard held a number of research and teaching posts while completing the academic requirements for various earned degrees. In September 1966 he entered active duty with the United States Marine Corps Reserve. He achieved the rank of Captain in 1967, was designated a Naval Aviator in 1968 and was subsequently assigned to duty flying F-4 Phantom IIs with VMFA-333 at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina. He flew 163 combat missions in Vietnam while assigned to VMFA-115 from January 1969 to 1970. He returned to the United States and an assignment as aviation weapons division o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Frederick Hauck
Frederick Hamilton "Rick" Hauck (pronounced "Howk"; born April 11, 1941) is a retired captain in the United States Navy, a former fighter pilot and NASA astronaut. He piloted Space Shuttle mission STS-7 and commanded STS-51-A and STS-26. Personal data He was born April 11, 1941, in Long Beach, California, but considers Winchester, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. to be his hometowns. His parents were the late Captain and Mrs. Phillip F. Hauck. His maternal grandfather, Olaf M. Hustvedt, was a United States Navy vice admiral who commanded battleships during World War II. Hauck is married to Susan Cameron Bruce. Education * 1958: Graduated from St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. * 1962: Received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Tufts University. While attending Tufts he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. * 1966: Received a Master of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology * 1971: Graduated U.S. Naval Test Pil ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 official name, Space Transportation System (STS), was taken from a 1969 plan for Space Transportation System, a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. It flew 135 missions and carried 355 astronauts from 16 countries, many on multiple trips. The Space Shuttle—composed of an Space Shuttle orbiter, orbiter launched with two reusable Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, solid rocket boosters and a disposable Space Shuttle external tank, external fuel tank—carried up to eight astronauts and up to of Payload (air and space craft), payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would atmospheric reentry, reenter the Earth's atmosphere and land like a glider (aircr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Space Shuttle Challenger
Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the commanding ship of a nineteenth-century scientific expedition that traveled the world, ''Challenger'' was the second Space Shuttle orbiter to fly into space after '' Columbia'', and launched on its maiden flight in April 1983. It was destroyed in January 1986 soon after launch in an accident that killed all seven crewmembers aboard. Initially manufactured as a test article not intended for spaceflight, it was utilized for ground testing of the Space Shuttle orbiter's structural design. However, after NASA found that their original plan to upgrade ''Enterprise'' for spaceflight would be more expensive than upgrading ''Challenger'', the orbiter was pressed into operational service in the Space Shuttle program. Lessons learned from the first orbital flights of ''Columbia'' led to ''Challenger''s design possessing fewer thermal protectio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Getaway Special
Getaway Special was a NASA program that offered interested individuals, or groups, opportunities to fly small experiments aboard the Space Shuttle. Over the 20-year history of the program, over 170 individual missions were flown. The program, which was officially known as the ''Small, Self-Contained Payloads program'', was canceled following the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster on February 1, 2003. History The program was conceived by NASA's Shuttle program manager John Yardley, and announced in the fall of 1976. The "Getaway Special" nickname originated from a special vacation fare for flights between Los Angeles and Honolulu being advertised by Trans World Airlines at the time around the program's conception. The first Getaway Special was purchased by Gilbert Moore of Thiokol on October 12, 1976, and donated to Utah State University. It was flown on '' Columbia'' during STS-4 in June/July 1982. The program was canceled after the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster on F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially 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. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development. The first ( STS-1) of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights (STS-5) beginning in 1982. Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. They launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), conducted science experiments in orbit, participated in the Shuttle-''Mir'' program with Russia, and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station (ISS). ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jon McBride
Jon Andrew McBride (born August 14, 1943), is a retired NASA astronaut and American naval officer. Over the course of his career with the United States Navy, McBride served as an aviator, a fighter pilot, a test pilot, and an aeronautical engineer. He had achieved the rank of captain when he retired in 1989. McBride was also an astronaut with NASA, a role in which he piloted STS-41-G, and would have been commander of STS-61-E had the mission not been cancelled in the wake of the ''Challenger'' disaster. Early life, education and personal life Jon McBride was born August 14, 1943, in Charleston, West Virginia, but considers Beckley, West Virginia, to be his hometown. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, Beckley, West Virginia in 1960, then attended West Virginia University 1960–1964, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1971. He did graduate work in Human Resource Management at Pepperdin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |