Nov 8 1985
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA announced it would transfer on December 6, 1985, the title to the Space Shuttle orbiter Enterprise to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The NASA Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified Boeing 747, on November 16 would deliver Enterprise to Washington Dulles International Airport, where cranes would remove Enterprise from the top of the 747 and lower it to Dulles's tarmac.
Rockwell Internatl., NASA's Space Shuttle prime contractor, constructed Enterprise, which was the first orbiter built. NASA used Enterprise, Space Shuttle orbiter vehicle 101 (OV 101), to test airframe loads, flight dynamics characteristics, and other aspects of the orbiter as it flew through earth's atmosphere. NASA also used Enterprise as a test bed for manufacturing techniques, aerodynamics, and flight control tests, and mating and fit checks for the remainder of the Space Shuttle components-the external tank, solid-fuel rocket boosters, and mobile launch platforms at both Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg Air Force Base.
On September 17, 1976, Enterprise rolled out from Rockwell's assembly facility at Palmdale, California, and was first flown on February 15, 1977, aboard the modified 747 in taxi tests at Edwards Air Force Base.
There were then five approach and landing tests, commanded and piloted alternately by astronaut teams of Fred Haise, Jr. (commander) and Charles Gordon Fullerton (pilot) and Joe H. Engle (commander) and Richard Truly (pilot).
After ground vibration tests, engineers at Kennedy Space Center used Enterprise for fit checks with the other Space Shuttle components and the mobile launch systems. More recently, engineers used Enterprise for fit checks at the Space Shuttle launch complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base. (NASA Release 85-150)
The Indian Department of Space announced today the selection of two Indian astronaut candidates, one of whom would fly aboard the Space Shuttle carrying India's INSAT-1C satellite, FBIS Delhi Domestic Service in English reported. The candidates were N.C. Bhatt of the Indian Space Research Organization, Bangalore, and P. Radhakrishmam of Vikram Sarabhai Space Center, Trivandrum.
The chairman of India's Space Commission, Professor U. R. Rao, said the commission would select one of them to fly on the mission scheduled for July 1986. (FBIS Delhi Domestic Service in English, Nov 8/85)
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