Aug 4 1985
From The Space Library
In a study important to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) missile defense program, Space Shuttle crew aboard Challenger on mission 51-F briefly fired the orbiter's rocket engines while scientists in Australia attempted to analyze the effect on the ionosphere, the Washington Post reported.
Challenger's engines burned 600 lb. of fuel as the spacecraft passed over an observatory in Tasmania where telescopes measured the effect of the rocket exhaust on the charged gas particles, called plasma, that made up the ionosphere.
A second shorter rocket firing took place over observatories in Massachusetts. (W Post, Aug 5/85, A4)
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