STS-46

STS-46 was Atlantis' July-August 1992 Space Shuttle mission to deploy the European Space Agency's European Retrievable Carrier and operate the joint NASA/Italian Space Agency Tethered Satellite System. Loren Shriver commanded the mission, Andrew Allen served as pilot, Jeffrey Hoffman was payload commander, Franklin Chang-Diaz, Claude Nicollier, and Marsha Ivins were mission specialists, and Franco Malerba flew as an Italian Space Agency payload specialist. Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B on July 31 and landed on Runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility on August 8. EURECA was deployed one day late after a data-handling issue; an interrupted orbit-raising burn was later completed and the spacecraft reached its operational orbit before retrieval by STS-57 in 1993. TSS-1 reached only 840 feet from Atlantis instead of the planned 12.5 miles because of a jammed tether line, so the crew curtailed the operation and returned the hardware to Earth.