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From: rjnoe@riccb.UUCP (Roger J. Noe)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Mission 23/61B touchdown
Message-ID: <596@riccb.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Dec-85 17:03:16 EST
Article-I.D.: riccb.596
Posted: Tue Dec  3 17:03:16 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Dec-85 05:28:19 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Rockwell International - Downers Grove, IL
Lines: 22

Space shuttle Atlantis touched down on runway 22 at NASA's Dryden Flight
Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California at the end of its
second mission at 13:34 PST today, 3 December 1985.  Mission 61-B was
pronounced an unqualified success by NASA managers.  Three communications
satellites were launched, including one each for Mexico and Australia.
The third, Satcom Ku-2, used for the first time a larger version of the
McDonnell Douglas PAM (Payload Assist Module) used by other communications
satellites to reach geosynchronous orbit.  A set of experiments was
conducted in two days of extravehicular activity by astronauts Jerry Ross
and Sherwood Spring that paves the way for future assembly of space structures
including the space station.

Mission 24/61C is currently scheduled for launch from Kennedy Space Center
in Florida on December 18.  It will be orbiter vehicle Columbia's seventh
mission.  Columbia was last used two years ago on mission 9/41A, Spacelab 1.
Since then it has undergone extensive refurbishment and upgrading from the
flight test equipment it originally had (unlike the other orbiter vehicles).
Since this newsgroup can go for two years named after a non-functioning space
shuttle vehicle, couldn't it just as well be named after a permanently non-
functioning vehicle, the FIRST flying shuttle, Enterprise?
--
Roger Noe			ihnp4!riccb!rjnoe