Nov 17 1984
From The Space Library
NASA technicians today began preparing the Space Shuttle Discovery for a top-secret DOD flight in January 1985. Discovery was towed into a processing hangar just a few hours after the ship and its crew had recovered two satellites from useless orbits. Jesse Moore, director of the Shuttle program, reported that Discovery "looks like she's in excellent shape," and there should be little trouble getting it ready for the next mission scheduled to start January 21 or 22, 1985.
The Space Shuttle Challenger was originally scheduled to fly the secret DOD payload on December 8, but that spacecraft was undergoing extensive repairs to thermal tiles damaged in its last mission in October and would not be ready for several weeks. Because of the high priority the Pentagon placed on the mission, it was decided to shift Discovery to the assignment, and the Spacelab flight that Discovery originally had been scheduled to fly in January was being delayed.
Moore said that the retrieved satellites, Palapa B2 and Westar VI, would be removed from Discovery's cargo bay and taken to a nearby facility for servicing. Later in the month they would be flown to Hughes Aircraft Company plant in El Segundo, Calif., for refurbishing. (NY Times, Nov 18/83, A-3)
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