5 September 1984

Space Shuttle Discovery landing on Rogers Dry Lake, 0637 PDT, 5 September 1984. (NASA)

5 September 1984: Space Shuttle Discovery, OV-103, completed its first space flight, STS-41-D,  when it landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, at 6:37 a.m. PDT (13:37:54 UTC), 5 September 1984. It had completed 97 orbits of the Earth. The total duration of its flight was 6 days, 56 minutes, 4 seconds.

The purpose of the mission was to place three communications satellites into orbit, and to deploy an experimental solar panel array. Various other experiments were also carried out.

The Mission Commander was Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr., making his second space flight. Shuttle Pilot Michael L. Coats was on his first. Three Mission Specialists, Richard M. Mullane, Steven A. Hawley, Judith A. Resnick, and Payload Specialist Charles D. Walker, were all on their first space flight.

A highlight of this mission was the onboard filming by the crew of footage for the IMAX film, The Dream Is Alive.

Discovery is the space shuttle fleet leader, having made 39 orbital flights, more than any other shuttle.

Mission Specialist Judith Arlene Resnick was a crew member of shuttle mission STS-51-L. She was killed when Challenger was destroyed shortly after launch, 28 January 1986.

© 2015, Bryan R. Swopes

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7 thoughts on “5 September 1984

  1. I was just looking up some of these astronauts that I am not very familiar with – one being Michael Coats, the pilot on this shuttle mission. He went on to become the Director of Johnson Space Center.
    His Wikipedia biography also contained this cryptic note: “He was the first to travel around Planet Earth with a dog, Zaika, trained by USN on a course over the Cypriot National Base. For this, he attained the rank of Captain, having the great honor of overseeing the first Cypriot Dog in space, on his flight around Earth.” — the link to Zaika just led to a photo of a brown dog laying on the floor.

    I tried looking up Zaika the Cypriot space-dog (sounds like a children’s book)… and I cant find any information. Do you think its a joke? Anyone have info about this canine?

  2. The US did not launch any dogs into space. The name ’Zaika’ is most likely a play on ‘Laika’ which was the name of the first Soviet dog in space.

    The US has preferred to use primates, rats and mice as mammalian models for investigations.

    Unfortunately, Someone was just having ‘fun’ with the wiki article.

  3. I was looking at an image of David Maltby and Guy Gibson that showed the two men posing in Gibson’s office at Scampton (I think) after receiving their medals.
    When I tried to use the “comments ” box, I received an “access denied” response saying that the website owner “does not allow hotlinking to that resource”.
    Can you say why access was denied and what “hotlinking” was/is all about? (Thanks)

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