yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) (05/13/89)
Sarah Keegan Headquarters, Washington, D.C. May 12, 1989 RELEASE: 89-73 NASA ANNOUNCES UPCOMING SHUTTLE FLIGHT SEQUENCE NASA today announced the order of planned Space Shuttle flights between the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Astro Spacelab mission. No planning dates for the missions after Galileo have been determined yet, but a full manifest will be published in the next several weeks. After the Galileo mission, currently manifested for Oct. 12, 1989, the sequence of flights will be: the DOD mission, previously delayed to "protect" the Galileo launch window; the Syncom IV deployment/LDEF retrieval mission; a DOD mission; the Hubble Space Telescope mission; and the Astro mission. Three weeks ago NASA management decided to fly only one mission between Magellan and Galileo to be as certain as possible that the Shuttle program would be ready to launch Galileo early in its planetary window. The advantages of this approach were demonstrated by the recent launch of Magellan, which began its journey to Venus last week. The flight sequence set out today is the best possible solution given the tight constraints of all the payload communities involved.