STS-87

STS-87 was Columbia's November-December 1997 Shuttle mission built around the fourth United States Microgravity Payload and a broad set of international microgravity, solar-physics, and life-science investigations. Kevin Kregel commanded the flight, Steven Lindsey served as pilot, and Kalpana Chawla, Winston Scott, Takao Doi, and Ukrainian payload specialist Leonid Kadenyuk completed the flight crew. Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B on November 19, 1997, and landed at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility on December 5 after 15 days, 16 hours, 34 minutes, and 4 seconds in orbit. The mission's USMP-4 science program included materials science, combustion research, fundamental physics, and technology experiments, while Kadenyuk supported the Collaborative Ukrainian Experiment in plant biology. Chawla served as the primary robotic-arm operator, and Lindsey operated the AERCam Sprint free-flying camera demonstration. The mission also deployed the Spartan 201-04 solar-observation free flyer, but its planned automated observing sequence did not complete as expected after attitude-control trouble. Winston Scott and Takao Doi performed two EVAs during the flight. Their first spacewalk included the manual capture of Spartan, and Doi became the first Japanese citizen to walk in space. The second EVA tested tools and procedures for future International Space Station assembly work. NASA reported the orbiter's performance as nominal and summarized the mission's primary microgravity payload work as successful, while preserving the Spartan recovery as a major operational lesson from the flight.