STS-61-H was a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

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 ...

mission planned to launch on 24 June 1986 using ''Columbia''. However, it was canceled after the ''Challenger'' disaster.

Crew

Backup crew

Crew notes

Before Buchli was assigned to STS-61-H, Norman E. Thagard was the potential Mission Specialist 3 for this flight.

Mission objectives

The main task of the mission was to bring two commercial satellites into orbit – Palapa B3 and Westar-6S, and military communication satellite - Skynet-4A, The British Skynet and the

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

n Palapa were supposed to be accompanied by an astronaut from the two countries. After the ''Challenger'' disaster, the deployment of commercial satellites by the Space Shuttle was stopped, and for several years no international astronauts were nominated. Thus, neither the British nor the Indonesian payload specialists got a second chance for a spaceflight. The NASA crew however stayed together and participated in a 56-hour-long simulated mission known as STS-61-M(T) in 1987. The crew finally flew on STS-29, with Anna L. Fisher being replaced by James P. Bagian. Skynet 4A was launched on 1 January 1990 with a

Titan III Titan was a family of United States expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005. The Titan I and Titan II were part of the US Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet until 1987. The space launch vehicle versions contribut ...

, Westar-6S was renamed Galaxy-6 and launched on 12 October 1992 by an

Ariane 44L The Ariane 4 was a European expendable space launch system, developed by the '' Centre national d'études spatiales'' (CNES), the French space agency, for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was manufactured by ArianeGroup and marketed by Ari ...

. Palapa-B3 was renamed to Palapa B2P and was launched on 20 March 1987 with a Delta-3920.

References

External links