STS-47 (Endeavour)

STS-47 was the 50th flight of the Space Shuttle and was co-sponsored by NASA and Japan. The crew performed 44 life and materials science experiments. The flight marked the first (and to date, only) time a married couple has flown in space together.

The first reusable launch and landing spacecraft, the Space Shuttle began a new chapter of human space exploration. It launched like a rocket but landed on a runway like a plane. Shuttle crews deployed dozens of commercial satellites and two interplanetary probes to Venus and Jupiter. The Shuttle served as a mini space station and hosted hundreds of biomedical, psychological, physiological, materials science, and physics experiments that have directly benefited life on Earth. The five flight-worthy Shuttles -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions over 30 years. The Shuttles helped construct the Russian Mir space station and brought nearly 80% of the International Space Station to orbit. Shuttles also deployed and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope.

Space Shuttle

Four Frogs

United States of America

NASA

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

STS-61-C (Columbia)

Space Shuttle Columbia returned to service after a major overhaul and upgrade with this mission. The crew included U.S. Congressman Bill Nelson of Florida. The flight deployed Satcom K1, which would prove to be the last commercial communications satellite launched by the Shuttle. It was the last successful human spaceflight before the Challenger Disaster. This mission was retroactively called "The End of Innocence" by its Commander.

STS-41-B (Challenger)

During this flight, Challenger deployed two communications satellites for Western Union and Indonesia, and McCandless became the first person to perform a free-flying, untethered spacewalk. Challenger conducted the first Space Shuttle landing at the Kennedy Space Center and was the first Shuttle flight to use the new numbering scheme. Since the Shuttle was supposed to launch from both Florida and California, NASA switched to STS-41-B numbering scheme where the first number after "STS-" was the fiscal year of the program the mission was to fly in; the second number was either a "1" for Kennedy or a "2" for Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; and the "-letter" was the order the missions for a particular fiscal year and launch site were originally planned in. Thus, STS-41-B was the second planned launch from the Kennedy Space Center in the fourth year of the program.

STS-27 (Atlantis)

This Atlantis mission almost didn't make it back to Earth. During launch, debris from the Solid Rocket Booster critically damaged 700 of Atlantis' heat shield tiles, nearly leading to a burn-up and the loss of Atlantis and her seven-member crew during reentry and landing. The classified nature of the mission prevented NASA from doing extensive damage assessment during orbit.

STS-71 (Atlantis)

In a historic step toward the International Space Station, Atlantis performed the first docking of a U.S. Space Shuttle to the Russian space station Mir. A U.S. astronaut permanently joined Mir's crew.

Robert L. Gibson

STS-82 (Discovery)

The second Hubble Space Telescope upgrade mission. Discovery's crew improved Hubble's instruments and boosted its altitude to 620 km, the farthest from Earth a Space Shuttle ever traveled.

STS-64 (Discovery)

This multifaceted science mission brought together life and materials science experiments, laser pulse observations of Earth, testing of new spacewalk equipment, and a free-flying release and recapture satellite on a single flight.

STS-30 (Atlantis)

Atlantis' five-person crew deployed the Magellan spacecraft to study Venus. This was the first human mission to deploy a spacecraft to another planet.

Mark C. Lee

STS-59 (Endeavour)

The Space Radar Laboratory-1 mission provided researchers an opportunity to study Earth's ecosystems from space.

STS-79 (Atlantis)

This fourth Space Shuttle docking to the Russian space station Mir delivered another NASA crewmember to the outpost.

STS-37 (Atlantis)

Atlantis' crew deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory after an unplanned spacewalk to unstick the Observatory's communications antennas. The crew also practiced moving equipment and people around a future space station using a small mock-up in the Shuttle's payload bay.

Jerome Apt III

This astronaut is in the top 5% for number of missions.

Frequent Flyer

STS-85 (Discovery)

This Discovery science mission deployed and re-captured an Earth atmospheric observation satellite and tested potential International Space Station hardware and robotics.

STS-66 (Atlantis)

This was the third Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Sciences mission.

STS-95 (Discovery)

NASA’s STS-95 mission launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on October 29th, 1998, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew included Commander Curtis L. Brown Jr., Pilot Steven W. Lindsey, Mission Specialists Scott E. Parazynski, Stephen K. Robinson, and Pedro Duque, Payload Specialist Chiaki Mukai, and Payload Specialist John H. Glenn Jr., a U.S. senator and former Mercury astronaut returning to space. STS-95’s main objectives included scientific experiments on aging, life sciences, and materials science, while deploying and operating the Spartan solar-observing satellite. Notably, the mission studied the effects of space on the aging process, with John Glenn serving as the key participant. Discovery successfully landed back at Kennedy Space Center on November 7th, 1998, completing the mission.

STS-103 (Discovery)

The third servicing and upgrade mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

STS-77 (Endeavour)

This multinational Space Shuttle mission saw Endeavour fly with a mix of NASA- and commercially-developed and procured payloads to test advanced biotechnology, electronics, and agriculture space products for the commercial market.

Curtis L. Brown Jr.

STS-60 (Discovery)

This was the first flight of the Shuttle-Mir program, the first time a Russian launched on an American rocket, and the first time a U.S. crew communicated with a Russian crew on the Mir space station. The mission also performed several immune system and crystal growth experiments.

N. Jan Davis

First African American Woman in Space

Mae C. Jemison

NASDA

STS-99 (Endeavour)

The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission was a joint NASA-German flight to create the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth.

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