Discovery’s First Flight Led to a Legacy of Historic Achievements

The Maiden Voyage of Discovery – Part 2

By Bob Granath

In the ten months since the arrival of the Space Shuttle Discovery at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the processing team was able to overcome numerous hurdles. The late August day dawned with clear skies on a hot summer day. The launch team and the astronaut crew were ready.

The countdown began four days earlier with “Call to Stations” which started the clock ticking toward zero. The crew of Hank Hartsfield, Mike Coats, Judy Resnik, Richard Mullane, Steve Hawley and Charlie Walker arrived the same day to begin their final preparations for the scheduled six-day mission.

Even on the day of the launch, there was one more brief delay. A private airplane strayed into restricted airspace surrounding the Florida spaceport, requiring a 6 minute, 50 second hold. But this time, the Launch Team would not be denied.

Discovery lifted off on its maiden voyage at 8:41 a.m. EDT on Aug. 30, 1984. Crowds of space center employees cheered as the newest orbiter to join NASA’s fleet climbed into the azure sky on a bright pillar of flame.

The Shuttle Processing Team’s work was rewarded with a flawless liftoff.

Click here to read more about preparations for Space Shuttle Discovery’s first flight.

‘100 percent performing vehicle’

“The launch team is very happy to get the maiden voyage (of Discovery) off,” NASA’s Director of Shuttle Management and Operations at Kennedy, Tom Utsman, said during a news conference after the shuttle was safely in orbit.

NASA launch director Bob Sieck also had praise for the team.

“They would make any launch director look good,” he said. “They performed in a professional manner.”

In addition to the personnel involved, Sieck was pleased with the performance of the Shuttle.

“(Today’s) final flight vehicle processing was right per the time line,” Sieck said. “We have a 100 percent performing vehicle in orbit.”

Once in space, Coats recalls his first view of his home planet.

“I remember being impressed when I looked out the window and saw the Earth and how colorful and beautiful it was and how black everything else was.” he said during a Nov. 9, 2012 interview for the Johnson Space Center’ Oral History Project. “I must have stared at it for a minute because Hank said, ‘OK, that’s enough, we got to get to work.’”

Delivering Satellites to Orbit

The crew immediately began preparing to release the first satellite, SBS-4, for Satellite Business Systems.

“We deployed three satellites — two commercial satellites and a Syncom for the U.S. Navy,” said Hartsfield during an Oral History interview on June 15, 2001. “That was the first time we launched three satellites on the same (Space Shuttle) flight.”

During the crew’s second flight day, they deployed the Syncom IV-2, a Hughes-built satellite leased to the U.S. Navy. It was the first designed specifically to be launched from the shuttle. That was followed on the third day with deployment of Telstar 302 for Telsat of Canada.

Another objective of STS-41D was testing the Solar Array Experiment for NASA’s Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology. It included several advanced space technology experiments using a common data system. Resnik deployed the solar array to 70 percent of its length to conduct tests on the structure. On the fourth day, she extended it to its full length.

“It was extended out of a canister that was mounted on a truss in the payload bay,” Hartsfield said. “When fully extended, it was really spectacular to look at.”

The experiment featured a Lockheed Missiles and Space Company-built collapsible solar array that was unfolded from the shuttle’s cargo bay. The panels were so cleverly designed that the solar array unfolded from a seven-inch box that, once fully extended, stretched to a height of 102 feet. The array was designed to tap into the sun’s energy for a future orbiting laboratory. Similar solar panels now provide electrical power for the International Space Station.

As a payload specialist, Walker operated the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System. He was the first commercial payload specialist. The operation was designed to develop pharmaceuticals that could only be made in the microgravity of low-Earth orbit.

Hartsfield explained that the system could easily develop a hormone called erythropoietin.

“It’s a hormone that stimulates production of red blood cells,” he said. “On the ground it can be separated out with a protein separation device, like electrophoresis. But it’s very slow and it’s very expensive. With electrophoresis in microgravity you could get five times the purity that you could on the Earth because of no gravity.”

During the mission, Hartsfield and Coats both served as cinematographers shooting scenes for the 1985 IMAX documentary film The Dream is Alive about NASA’s Space Shuttle program. IMAX is a 70-mm high-resolution film format known for projection on large screens with a tall aspect ratio. The Dream is Alive was the first IMAX film shot in space and was funded primarily by Lockheed Corporation.

The film was produced and directed by Graeme Ferguson, one of the co-founders of IMAX Corporation. Along with scenes from STS-41C and STS-41G, footage was recorded during STS-41D showing satellite deployments, extension of the solar array and crew activities inside Discovery. According to the weekly entertainment newspaper, Variety, the film is one of the most successful IMAX movies to date.

‘Get Everything Done’

After a little more than six days in space, Discovery and its crew returned to Earth as the Sun was rising over the California desert. The shuttle touched down at Edwards Air Force Base at 6:37 a.m. PDT on Sept. 5, 1984.

As recovery crews moved into position to safe Discovery and assist the crew, mission 41-D already was being hailed as one of the most successful shuttle flights to date.

“I’m ecstatic and just delighted,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight Jesse Moore.

The crew was committed to mission success explains Coats, who would go on to fly two more times and later become director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“You’re motivated and almost overwhelmed with the desire to get everything done that we possibly can,” he said. “So many people worked so hard to get us here. Let’s accomplish every test objective, every mission objective we possibly can.”

Future Discovery crews embraced that attitude, leaving a legacy of historic achievements.

The spacecraft’s missions included deploying the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and launching Mercury astronaut John Glenn’s legendary return to space in 1998. Discovery was the orbiter that returned the Space Shuttle Program to flight following the loss of Challenger and Columbia, and it supported 13 construction and operational flights to the International Space Station.

When the Space Shuttle Discovery touched down at Kennedy on its final mission, STS-133, on March 9, 2011. It had flown 149 million miles on 39 missions, completing 5,830 orbits, spending 365 days in Earth orbit.

Discovery departed its home port at Kennedy for the final time on April 17, 2012. The spacecraft now is an inspirational centerpiece for future generations at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia, near the nation’s capital.

Did you work at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center during the Space Shuttle Program?

If so, did you support missions of the Space Shuttle Discovery? If so, tell us about it in the Comment section below.

© 2022 SpaceAgeChronicle.com All Rights Reserved