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STS-7

        The Challenger's second flight began at 7:33 a.m. EST, June 18,
1983, with another on-time liftoff.  It was the first flight of an
American woman in space -- Sally K. Ride -- and also the largest crew
to fly in a single spacecraft up to that time, five persons.

        Crew members included Robert L. Crippen, commander, making his
second Shuttle flight; Frederick C. Hauck, pilot; Ride, John M.
Fabian and Norman Thagard, all mission specialists.  Thagard
conducted medical tests of the Space Adaptation Syndrome nausea and
sickness frequently experienced by astronauts during the early phase
of a space flight.

        Two communications satellites -- Anik C-2 for Telesat of Canada, and
Palapa B-l for Indonesia -- were successfully deployed during the
first 2 days of the mission.  The mission also carried the first
Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-l) built by
Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, a West German aerospace firm.  SPAS-l was
unique in that it was designed to operate in the payload bay or be
deployed by the RMS as a free-flying satellite.  It carried 10
experiments to study formation of metal alloys in microgravity, the
operation of heat pipes, instruments for remote sensing observations,
and a mass spectrometer to identify various gases in the payload bay.
 It was deployed by the RMS and flew alongside and over Challenger
for several hours while a U.S.-supplied camera took pictures from the
SPAS-1 of the orbiter performing various maneuvers.  The RMS later
grappled the pallet and returned it to the payload bay.

        This mission also carried seven GAS canisters which contained a wide
variety of experiments, as well as the OSTA-2 payload, a joint
U.S.-West German scientific pallet payload.  Finally, the orbiter's
Ku-band antenna was able to relay data through the Tracking and Data
Relay Satellite to a ground terminal for the first time.

STS-7 was scheduled to make the first Shuttle landing at the Kennedy
Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility.  However, unacceptable
weather forced a change to Runway 23 at Edwards AFB.  The landing
took place June 24, 1983, at 6:57 a.m. PDT.  The mission lasted 6
days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds.  It covered about 2.2 million
miles during 97 orbits of the Earth.  Challenger was returned to KSC
on June 29.