STS-51-F

C. Gordon Fullerton

• Birthday: 10/11/1936
• Role: Commander
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 03/22/1982
• Last Flight: 07/29/1985

Charles Gordon Fullerton was a United States Air Force colonel, a USAF and NASA astronaut, and a research pilot at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, California.[1] His assignments included a variety of flight research and support activities piloting NASA’s B-52 launch aircraft, the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), and other multi-engine and high performance aircraft. Fullerton, who logged more than 380 hours in space flight, was a NASA astronaut from September 1969 until November 1986 when he joined the research pilot office at Dryden. In July 1988, he completed a 30-year career with the U.S. Air Force and retired as a colonel. He continued in his position of NASA research pilot as a civilian. Fullerton and his wife and their two children lived in Lancaster, California.

Roy D. Bridges Jr.

• Birthday: 07/19/1943
• Role: Pilot
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 07/29/1985
• Last Flight: 07/29/1985

Roy Dubard Bridges Jr. is an American pilot, engineer, retired United States Air Force officer, test pilot, former NASA astronaut and the former Director of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center and Langley Research Center. As a command pilot, he has over 4,460 flying hours.

Anthony W. England

• Birthday: 05/15/1942
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 07/29/1985
• Last Flight: 07/29/1985

Anthony Wayne England better known as Tony England, is an American, former NASA astronaut. Selected in 1967, England was among a group of astronauts who served as backups during the Apollo and Skylab programs. Like most others in his class, he flew during the Space Shuttle program, serving as a mission specialist on STS-51F in 1985. He has logged more than 3,000 hours of flying time and 188 hours in space.

England helped develop and use radars to probe the Moon on Apollo 17 and glaciers in Washington and Alaska. He participated in and led field parties during two seasons in Antarctica.

John-David F. Bartoe

• Birthday: 11/17/1944
• Role: Payload Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 07/29/1985
• Last Flight: 07/29/1985

John-David Francis Bartoe (born November 17, 1944 in Abington, Pennsylvania) is an American astrophysicist. He is the Research Manager for the International Space Station (ISS) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. He provides oversight for the Program Manager concerning the research capability, research hardware, and research plans of the ISS. As a civilian employee of the US Navy, he flew aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist.

Karl Henize

• Birthday: 10/17/1926
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 07/29/1985
• Last Flight: 07/29/1985

Karl Gordon Henize, Ph.D. was an American astronomer, space scientist, NASA astronaut, and professor at Northwestern University. Henize was selected as a scientist-astronaut by NASA in August 1967. Henize was a mission specialist on the Spacelab-2 mission (STS-51-F) which launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on July 29, 1985.

He died in 1993, during a Mount Everest expedition. The purpose of this expedition was to test for NASA a meter called a Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (TEPC): testing at different altitudes (17,000 ft, 19,000 ft and 21,000 ft) would reveal how people’s bodies would be affected, including the way bodily tissues behaved, when struck by radiation, and this was important for the planning of long duration space missions.

Loren Acton

• Birthday: 03/07/1936
• Role: Payload Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 07/29/1985
• Last Flight: 07/29/1985

Loren Wilber Acton (born March 7, 1936) is an American physicist who flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist for the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory.

Story Musgrave

• Birthday: 08/19/1935
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 04/04/1983
• Last Flight: 11/19/1996

Franklin Story Musgrave, M.D. is an American physician and a retired NASA astronaut. He is a public speaker[2] and consultant to both Disney’s Imagineering group and Applied Minds in California. In 1996 he became only the second astronaut to fly on six spaceflights, and he is the most formally educated astronaut with six academic degrees.

STS-51-F

• Orbit: Low Earth Orbit
• Launch Cost: $450,000,000

STS-51-F was the nineteenth flight of the shuttle program and the eighth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. It flew in orbit for 8 days performing science in Spacelab 2.

Launch Complex 39A

Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

Launch Complex 39A has witnessed the launch of 174 rockets, including 173 orbital launch attempts, while Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA, has been the site for 232 rocket launches.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration 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). Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011.