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The day after the SPAS pallet's dramatic free flight and re-birthing in the cargo bay, the pallet was again removed from the bay for a series of tests of the manipulator arm. With SPAS attached to the arm, Challenger's jets were fired in pulses, to test the arm's and the vehicle's stability with a 2,278 kg (5,022 lb.) weight on the remote manipulator. This is part of a continuing series of arm/vehicle motion test that began with lighter objects during the shuttle's early test flights.

Throughout the mission, such payloads as the Gateway Specials, the OSTA-2 materials processing experiments and the Monodisperse Latex Reactor were turned on or off at various times as required by the crew, after which they operated automatically. Only the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System required tending by Ride and Fabian at different times during the mission, as they added sample fluids to the system or collected the final separated products. Results from these payload experiments will be evaluated on the ground.

Crew Health Studied

Norman Thagard, a mission specialist astronaut as well as a medical doctor, was added to the already training STS-7 crew in December, 1982, specifically to conduct medical tests in orbit that might lead to an understanding of the causes of Space Adaptation Syndrome, the space sickness that has affected a number of shuttle astronauts, just as it did those in earlier manned programs.

During the STS-7 mission, Thagard performed tests on himself and on the other crew members, measuring fluid motion and pressure increase inside the head, and checking eye movement and visual perception- researchers believe one cause of space sickness may be the conflict of signals sent by the inner ear's balancing system and the strange, often upside-down visual world of being weightless in orbit.

With all duties and experimental operations completed as planned, the crew of STS-7 prepared for a return to Earth early on the morning of June 24. It had been hoped that Challenger would make the first landing on the 3-mile long runway at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, since it costs time and money to ferry the orbiter back east from Edwards Air Force Base in California, where all but one shuttle mission had landed (STS-3 returned to White Sands, New Mexico).

Because of cloudy skies and rain in Florida, however, Challenger was not landed at Kennedy Space Center, but at the backup site on the Kennedy Space Center, but at the backup site on the desert landing strip at Edwards. The orbiter was dropped out of its orbit on the 97th revolution, after which it glided back to Earth and landed perfectly on target at 9:57 a.m. EDT, June 24. Six days, two hours and 24 minutes after it had launched from Florida, the successful STS-7 mission came to an end.

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1983-381-566:121

25TH Anniversary
1958-1983