STS-41-B
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| Mission Insignia |
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| Mission Statistics |
| Mission: | STS 41-B |
| Shuttle: | Challenger |
| Launch Pad: | 39-A |
| Launch: | February 3, 1984, 8:00:00 a.m. EST |
| Landing: | February 11, 1984, 7:15:55 a.m. EST, Kennedy Space Center |
| Duration: | 7/23:15:55 |
| Orbit Altitude: | 189 nautical miles |
| Orbit Inclination: | 28.5 degrees |
| Miles Traveled: | 3,311,380 |
| Crew Photo |
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Seated from left to right are Vance Brand, crew commander, and Robert "Hoot" Gibson, pilot. Both men are wearing shuttle blue flight suits. Standing from left to right are mission specialists Robert L. Stewart, Ronald McNair and Bruce McCandless. Both Stewart and McCandless are wearing extravehicular mobility units (EMU). |
STS 41-B was the tenth flight of a Space Shuttle and the fourth for Challenger. The mission featured the first unteathered spacewalks and executed the first landing at Kennedy Space Center.
Crew
Mission Highlights
This flight marked the first untethered space walks by McCandless and Stewart, using the manned maneuvering unit. WESTAR-VI and PALAPA-B2 satellites deployed, unsuccessfully because the Payload Assist Module-D (PAM-D) rocket motors failed, leaving them in radical low-Earth orbits. The German-built Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS), first flown on STS-7, became the first satellite to be refurbished and flown again. SPAS remained in the payload bay since there was an electrical problem with the Remote Manipulator System (RMS). This flight marked the first use of the RMS manipulator foot restraint and offered astronauts an opportunity to practice procedures for the Solar Maximum satellite retrieval and repair conducted on STS-41-C. An internal failure scrubbed the Integrated Rendezvous Target (IRT) exercise. Five Get Away Special canisters flew in the cargo bay and the crew used a Cinema-360 camera to document their flight. Other payloads: Acoustic Containerless Experiment System (ACES); Monodisperse Latex Reactor (MLR); and Radiation Monitoring Equipment (RME), and Isoelectric Focusing (IEF) payload.
Astronaut Bruce McCandless exercises the Manned Maneuvering Unit. Photo courtesy NASA.
Bruce McCandless demonstrates the MMU floating in space above a clouded Earth.
External links
Referenced By
Challenger Space Shuttle | Extra-vehicular activity | List of crewed space missions chronologically | List of human spaceflights, 1961-1986 | List of human spaceflights by program | List of human spaceflights chronologically | List of manned space missions chronologically | List of space shuttle missions | OV-99 | STS-41-C | STS-9 | Shuttle Orbiter Challenger | Space Shuttle Challenger | Space walk | Spacewalk
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