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.