Another four months elapsed before she flew STS-54 in January 1993, launching a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) and featuring a dramatic EVA by astronauts Greg Harbaugh and Mario Runco. Amongst the crew was the first black female astronaut, Mae Jemison, and Japan’s first professional spacefarer, Mamoru Mohri, together with the first married couple ever to journey into orbit together, Mark Lee and Jan Davis. Photo Credit: NASAįour months later, in September 1992, on STS-47, Endeavour roared aloft a second time, carrying the Japanese Spacelab, dedicated to life sciences and materials research in the strange microgravity environment. The first Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1) in Endeavour’s payload bay. The mission concluded with a record-breaking fourth EVA, in which Akers and astronaut Kathy “K.T.” Thornton rehearsed Space Station Freedom construction techniques and a landing which showcased the shuttle’s safety-enhancing drag chute. It was a remarkable success and a remarkable example of NASA’s can-do spirit. Although the rendezvous was successfully completed, two back-to-back EVAs by Thuot and Hieb failed to install a capture bar and physically seize the satellite, forcing some radical thinking: in the world’s first-ever-and so far only-three-man EVA, astronauts Thuot, Hieb and Tom Akers ventured outside together to manually grab Intelsat and bring it into Endeavour’s payload bay. The early part of the mission did not go well. Under a $90 million contract between the satellite’s manufacturer, Hughes, and NASA, the giant Intelsat would be brought into Endeavour’s payload bay, whereupon a new rocket motor would be fitted by STS-49 spacewalkers Pierre Thuot and Rick Hieb and it would be reboosted to geosynchronous altitude. Its Commercial Titan III launch vehicle had failed to properly insert it into geosynchronous orbit and instead left it lingering in low-Earth orbit. STS-49 was tasked with the retrieval, repair and redeployment of the Intelsat 603 satellite, a critical telecommunications platform which was destined to provide coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Truly, Endeavour’s career would see the shuttle program live up to its original billing: shuttling hardware and humans from terra firma to low-Earth orbit. Her nine-day STS-49 flight was the longest maiden voyage of any of the shuttles and, even today, she retains a unique record for having staged and first (and only) three-person Extravehicular Activity (EVA). From the outset, she began to set records. As detailed in yesterday’s AmericaSpace history article, Endeavour-also known as Orbiter Vehicle-105 (OV-105)-arose as the replacement for the fallen Challenger and launched for the first time on. Twenty-five years have now passed since the maiden voyage of Endeavour, the youngest member of NASA’s Space Shuttle fleet, which went on to complete no less than 25 missions into low-Earth orbit during the course of her career. STS-61 was one of the most ambitious and dramatic missions in the 30-year Space Shuttle Program. In December 1993, Endeavour’s fifth crew successfully captured, repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
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