"6_2_2_3_14.TXT" (2933 bytes) was created on 01-02-89

STS 41-G

        On Oct. 5, 1984, Challenger returned to flight with its launch at
7:03 a.m. EDT, marking the start of the STS 41-G mission.  It was
Challenger's sixth mission and the 13th liftoff in the Space Shuttle
program.

        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; pilot Jon A.
McBride; three mission specialists -- David C. Leestma, Sally K. Ride
and Kathryn D. Sullivan -- (the first time two female astronauts had
flown together); and two payload specialists, Paul Scully-Power and
Marc Garneau, the first Canadian citizen to serve as a Shuttle crew
member.

        Astronaut Sullivan became the first woman to walk in space when she
and David C. Leestma performed a 3 hour EVA on Oct. ll demonstrating
the Orbital Refueling System (ORS) and proving the feasibility of
refueling satellites in orbit.

        Nine hours after liftoff, the 5,087-lb, Earth Radiation Budget
Satellite (ERBS) was deployed from the payload bay by the RMS arm,
and its on-board thrusters boosted it into an orbit 350 miles above
the Earth.  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, operation of the Shuttle Imaging
Radar-B (SIR-B) was conducted.  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 70mm still cameras.

        The SIR-B effort was an improved version of a similar device flown
on the OSTA-l package during STS-2.  It had an eight-panel antenna
array measuring 35 by 7 feet.  It operated throughout the flight but
problems were encountered with the 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 originally planned.

        Payload Specialist Scully-Powers, an employee of the U.S. Naval
Research Laboratory, performed a series of oceanography observations
during the mission.  Garneau conducted experiments sponsored by the
Canadian government, called CANEX, which were related to medical,
atmospheric, climatic, materials and robotic sciences.  A number of
GAS canisters covering a wide variety of materials testing and
physics were also flown.

        STS 41-G was an 8-day, 5-hour, 23-minute, 33-second mission which
traveled 4.3 million miles and completed 132 orbits.  It landed at
the Shuttle Landing Facility at KSC -- the second Shuttle landing
there -- on Oct. 13, at 12:26 p.m. EDT.