October 5, 2015 - Musical Shuttles

Musical Shuttles A combination of equipment malfunctions, pre-flight tests, and bad weather caused something of a space shuttle ballet as three separate missions (STS-35, STS-41, and STS-38) jockeyed for position during the fall of 1990. The space shuttle Discovery (STS-41), seen here, hurtled into space twenty-five years ago this week as sister ship Columbia (STS-35) stands by at Launch Pad 39A. Columbia was then moved to the vacated pad 39B where it underwent testing to pinpoint the source of a liquid hydrogen leak, while Atlantis (STS-38) moved to Pad 39A for pre-launch processing. Discovery carried a crew of five on a four-day mission that saw the deployment of Ulysses, a solar-observing spacecraft, decommissioned in 2009, that traveled in a polar orbit that stretched out beyond Jupiter.

Image credit: NASA

Weekly Calendar

October 5-11, 2015

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

Monday 5

1882: Robert Goddard born
1923: Edwin Hubble finds Cepheid variable stars in galaxy M-31
1962: European Southern Observatory founded
1984: STS-41G Challenger launched

Tuesday 6

1990: STS-41 Discovery launched
1992: NASA and RASA sign Human Spaceflight Agreement to share astronauts and cosmonauts
2008: MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second flyby of Mercury

Wednesday 7

1885: Niels Bohr born
1959: Luna 3 returns first images of the lunar far side
2002: STS-112 Atlantis launched
2010: Soyuz TMA-01M launched carrying ISS Expedition 25/26 crew