ERBS during deployment
|Mission type||Satellite deployment
|Mission duration||8 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes, 33 seconds|
|Distance travelled||5,293,847 kilometres (3,289,444 mi)|
|Spacecraft||Space Shuttle Challenger|
|Launch mass||110,120 kilograms (242,780 lb)|
|Landing mass||91,746 kilograms (202,266 lb)|
|Payload mass||8,573 kilograms (18,901 lb)|
|Members||Robert L. Crippen
Jon A. McBride
Kathryn D. Sullivan
Sally K. Ride
David C. Leestma
Paul D. Scully-Power
|Start of mission|
|Launch date||5 October 1984, 11:03:00UTC|
|Launch site||Kennedy LC-39A|
|End of mission|
|Landing date||13 October 1984, 16:26:33UTC|
|Landing site||Kennedy SLF Runway 33|
|Perigee||351 kilometres (218 mi)|
|Apogee||391 kilometres (243 mi)|
STS 41-G was the 13th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the sixth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. Challenger launched on 5 October 1984, and conducted the second shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center on 13 October. It was the first shuttle mission to carry a crew of seven, including the first crew with two women (Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan), the first American EVA involving a woman (Sullivan), and the first Canadian astronaut (Marc Garneau).
STS-41-G was the third shuttle mission to carry an IMAX camera on board to document the flight. Film footage from the mission (including Sullivan and David Leestma's EVA) appeared in the IMAX movie The Dream is Alive.
|Commander||Robert L. Crippen
Fourth and last spaceflight
|Pilot||Jon A. McBride
|Mission Specialist 1||Kathryn D. Sullivan
|Mission Specialist 2||Sally K. Ride
Second and last spaceflight
|Mission Specialist 3||David C. Leestma
|Payload Specialist 1||Marc Garneau, CSA
|Payload Specialist 2||Paul D. Scully-Power
|Payload Specialist 1||Robert Thirsk, CSA|
|Payload Specialist 2||Robert Stevenson|
- Leestma and Sullivan – EVA 1
- EVA 1 Start: 11 October 1984
- EVA 1 End: 11 October 1984
- Duration: 3 hours, 29 minutes
Crew seat assignments
Seats 1–4 are on the Flight Deck. Seats 5–7 are on the Middeck.
|S1||Robert Crippen||Robert Crippen|
|S2||Jon McBride||Jon McBride|
|S3||Kathryn Sullivan||David Leestma|
|S4||Sally Ride||Sally Ride|
|S5||David Leestma||Kathryn Sullivan|
|S6||Paul Scully-Power||Paul Scully-Power|
|S7||Marc Garneau||Marc Garneau|
On 5 October 1984, Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center at 7:03 am EDT, marking the start of the STS 41-G mission. On board were seven crew members – the largest flight crew ever to fly on a single spacecraft at that time. They included commander Robert L. Crippen, making his fourth Shuttle flight and second in six months; pilot Jon A. McBride; three mission specialists – David C. Leestma, Sally K. Ride and Kathryn D. Sullivan – and two payload specialists, Paul Scully-Power and Marc Garneau, the first Canadian citizen to serve as a Shuttle crew member, as well as the first Canadian in space. The mission also marked the first time two female astronauts had flown together.
Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space when she and Leestma performed a 3-hour EVA on 11 October 1984, demonstrating the Orbital Refueling System (ORS) and proving the feasibility of refueling satellites in orbit.
Nine hours after liftoff, the 5,087 pounds (2,307 kg) Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) was deployed from the payload bay by the RMS robot arm, and its on-board thrusters boosted it into orbit 350 miles (560 km) above the Earth. The ERBS was the first of three planned satellites designed to measure the amount of energy received from the Sun and reradiated into space. It also studied the seasonal movement of energy from the tropics to the polar regions.
Another major mission activity was the operation of the Shuttle Imaging Radar-B (SIR-B). The SIR-B was part of the OSTA-3 experiment package in the payload bay, which also included the Large Format Camera (LFC) to photograph Earth, another camera called MAPS which measured air pollution, and a feature identification and location experiment called FILE, which consisted of two TV cameras and two 70 mm still cameras.
The SIR-B was an improved version of a similar device flown on the OSTA-1 package during STS-2. It had an eight-panel antenna array measuring 35 feet by 7 feet (11 m by 2 m). It operated throughout the flight, but problems were encountered with Challenger’s Ku band antenna, and therefore much of the data had to be recorded on board the orbiter rather than transmitted to Earth in real-time as was originally planned.
Payload Specialist Scully-Power, an employee of the U.S. Naval Research Lab, performed a series of oceanography observations during the mission. Garneau conducted a series of experiments sponsored by the Canadian government, called CANEX, which were related to medical, atmospheric, climatic, materials and robotic science. A number of GAS canisters, covering a wide variety of materials testing and physics experiments, were also flown.
A claim was later made that the Soviet Terra-3 laser testing center was used to track Challenger with a low-power laser on 10 October 1984. This supposedly caused the malfunction of on-board equipment and the temporary blinding of the crew, leading to a U.S. diplomatic protest. However, this story has been comprehensively denied by the crew members.[not in citation given]
During the 8-day, 5-hour, 23-minute, 33-second mission, Challenger traveled 3,289,444 miles (5,293,847 km) and completed 132 orbits. It landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center – becoming the second shuttle mission to land there – on 13 October 1984, at 12:26 pm EDT.
The STS 41-G mission was later described in detail in the book Oceans to Orbit: The Story of Australia's First Man in Space, Paul Scully-Power by space historian Colin Burgess.
The thirteen complete stars in the blue field of the U.S. flag of the mission insignia symbolize the flight's numerical designation in the Space Transportation System's mission sequence (the 17 stars in the black field were indicative of the flight's original designation as STS-17). Gender symbols are placed next to each astronaut's name, and a Canadian flag icon is placed next to Garneau's name.
NASA began a tradition of playing music to astronauts during the Gemini program, and first used music to wake up a flight crew during Apollo 15. Each track is specially chosen, often by the astronauts' families, and usually has a special meaning to an individual member of the crew, or is applicable to their daily activities.
|Day 2||"Flashdance – What A Feeling"||Irene Cara|
|Day 3||"Theme from Rocky"|
- "STS-41G". Spacefacts. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
- Lieutenant Colonel Boris Kononenko (June 1996). "Federation of American Scientists – "Silent Space Is Being Monitored"". Retrieved 11 December 2006.
- STS-41-G. Astronautix.com. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
- Fries, Colin (25 June 2007). "Chronology of Wakeup Calls" (PDF). NASA. Retrieved 13 August 2007.
- NASA mission summary
- STS-41G Video Highlights
- The Dream is Alive IMAX film with footage from STS-41-G
- STS 41-G NST Program Mission Report