STS-34

STS-34 was Atlantis' October 1989 Space Shuttle mission to deploy NASA's Galileo spacecraft toward Jupiter. NASA lists Donald Williams as commander, Michael McCulley as pilot, and Shannon Lucid, Franklin Chang-Diaz, and Ellen Baker as mission specialists. Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B on October 18, 1989, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base on October 23. The primary payload was Galileo with its attached Inertial Upper Stage. The crew deployed the spacecraft a little over six hours into the flight, and the upper stage sent Galileo onto a gravity-assist path that ultimately carried it to Jupiter. The mission also carried the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet experiment in the payload bay and several middeck investigations, including plant, polymer, lightning, imaging, and student experiments. Adding this mission fills Franklin Chang-Diaz's remaining missing Shuttle link from the reviewed sequence and connects the full five-person STS-34 crew to Atlantis, the Shuttle family, Launch Complex 39B, Edwards Air Force Base, and NASA as operator.