STS-7

Lore & Background

STS-7 was the second mission for the Space Shuttle Challenger and the first spaceflight of an American woman, Sally Ride. The crew also included Robert Crippen (commander), Frederick Hauck (pilot), and mission specialists John M. Fabian and Norman Thagard. It was the largest crew to fly in a single spacecraft up to that time, and the first flight to include members of NASA's Group 8 astronaut class, selected in 1978. President Ronald Reagan sent his favorite Jelly Belly jelly beans with the astronauts.

Reader's Guide

STS-7 deployed two communications satellites—Anik C2 for Canada and Palapa B1 for Indonesia—during the first two days. It also carried the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1), built by West German firm MBB, which was deployed by the Canadarm and flew alongside Challenger for several hours. The mission carried seven Getaway Special canisters and the OSTA-2 payload, a joint U.S.-West German scientific pallet. The orbiter's Ku-band antenna relayed data through the TDRS satellite to a ground terminal for the first time. STS-7 experienced the first known Space Shuttle external tank bipod ramp foam shedding event during launch, a root cause of the later loss of Columbia. While on orbit, a window was non-critically damaged by space debris. Sally Ride was presented approximately 100 tampons by NASA workers before launch, should she experience menstruation during the 6-day orbit. The mission was scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center but diverted to Edwards Air Force Base due to weather, landing on Runway 15—the only time a shuttle landed there aside from Enterprise's 1977 tests.

From Palmdale to the Pad

Rockwell International's Southern California facilities produced the orbiter that would become one of NASA's most storied workhorses. Designated OV-104, Atlantis was the fourth operational Space Shuttle and the second-to-last of the fleet to be built. The company completed the vehicle in roughly half the time required for Columbia, and when it rolled out of the Palmdale assembly plant it weighed 68,635 kilograms—nearly three and a half short tons less than its predecessor. Its physical footprint was substantial: 37.2 meters long, 17.2 meters tall, with a wingspan of 23.7 meters. Atlantis arrived at Kennedy Space Center in April 1985, just weeks before its October 3 maiden flight. It shared a unique capability with Challenger: both were the only orbiters fitted to carry the Shuttle-Centaur upper-stage booster. The vehicle's name honors the RV Atlantis, a two-masted sailing ship that served as the principal research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution between 1930 and 1966.

The STS-27 Tile Crisis

During the 1988 launch of STS-27, a fragment of insulation broke free from the right solid rocket booster and slammed into the belly of the orbiter. The impact shattered more than seven hundred thermal-protection tiles and knocked one completely away. The crew was directed to fly the remote manipulator arm beneath the vehicle to inspect the right wing's underside, and they confirmed extensive tile loss. Because the mission carried classified payloads, the only photographs relayed to mission control were encrypted and of very low resolution. Controllers interpreted what they saw as mere 'lights and shadows' and told the crew to continue the flight as planned—a decision that deeply angered the astronauts aboard. When Atlantis finally touched down, it held the distinction of being the most heavily damaged shuttle ever to make a safe landing. The crew's survival is credited to a steel L-band antenna plate that happened to sit directly beneath the missing tile. A comparable tile-strike scenario would later prove fatal to Columbia in 2003, though that incident involved the more vulnerable reinforced carbon-carbon panels.

Pioneering Science and Station Assembly

Atlantis became the first Space Shuttle to deploy an interplanetary probe when it released the Magellan Venus mapper on STS-30 in 1989; four months later it sent Galileo toward Jupiter on STS-34. In 1991 it carried the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory into orbit. The orbiter's role in international cooperation began with STS-71 in 1995, a flight that marked the hundredth American crewed spaceflight, the first Shuttle-to-Mir docking, and the first on-orbit crew swap; when linked, the combined vehicle was the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. Atlantis then made seven consecutive Mir visits. Its contributions to the International Space Station were equally vital: the Destiny laboratory arrived on STS-98 in February 2001 (during which astronauts completed NASA's hundredth spacewalk), the Quest Joint Airlock was installed on STS-104 that July, the P3/P4 truss and solar arrays flew on STS-115 in 2006, and the Columbus module—ESA's largest single ISS contribution—was delivered on STS-122 in 2008. In May 2009, Atlantis carried a seven-person crew to Hubble for Servicing Mission 4, completing five spacewalks totaling thirty-seven hours to install new cameras, batteries, and a gyroscope.

Closing the Shuttle Era

On July 8, 2011, Atlantis lifted off for STS-135, its thirty-third and final mission, which also marked the last flight of the entire Space Shuttle program. The mission had been authorized in October 2010, after Endeavour's STS-134 was initially expected to be the program's swan song. STS-135 cleverly leveraged the processing work already underway for a contingency 'Launch on Need' rescue mission that would have been required if STS-134's crew had become stranded in orbit. Atlantis touched down at Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011, bringing its career to a close. Over the course of its thirty-three flights, the orbiter had circled the Earth 4,848 times and traveled nearly 126 million miles—over 203 million kilometers—a distance more than five hundred twenty-five times the span between the Earth and the Moon. Today, the retired vehicle stands on public display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, a tangible reminder of three decades of American spaceflight.

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