STS-34: Galileo Jupiter Orbiter Launch from Atlantis Space Shuttle Postflight Press Conference 1989 NASA

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Galileo Jupiter Orbiter launch from Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-34

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

STS-34 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission using Atlantis. It was the 31st shuttle mission overall, and the fifth flight for Atlantis. STS-34 launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 18 October 1989, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on 23 October. During the mission, the Jupiter-bound Galileo probe was deployed into space...

Atlantis lifted off from Pad B, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), at 12:53 EDT on 18 October 1989. It carried the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft in its cargo bay. The countdown was delayed at T-minus 5 minutes for 3 minutes and 40 seconds to update the onboard computer for a change in the Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) site. The TAL site was changed from Ben Guerir Air Base, Morocco, to Zaragoza Air Base, Spain, because of heavy rain at Ben Guerir.

The launch was originally targeted for 12 October 1989, the first day of a 41-day launch period during which the planets were properly aligned for a direct flight to Jupiter. The liftoff was rescheduled for 17 October 1989 to replace a faulty main engine controller for Space Shuttle Main Engine No. 2. It was postponed again until 18 October 1989 because of rain-showers within 20 miles (32 km) of Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility. The weather conditions were in violation of the launch commit criteria for a Return To Launch Site (RTLS) landing in the event of an aborted flight.

The primary payload, the Galileo spacecraft with its attached Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), was successfully deployed on its journey to Jupiter. STS-34 was only the second shuttle flight to deploy a planetary spacecraft, the first being STS-30, which deployed the Magellan spacecraft.

Galileo became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet and to penetrate the atmosphere of an outer planet. Also, the spacecraft was scheduled to make the first extended observations of the Jovian system and first direct sampling of Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as the first asteroid flybys...

Because of high winds predicted at the nominal landing time, the landing was moved two orbits earlier to 12:33 EDT on 23 October 1989. Atlantis landed on Runway 23 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, after a mission duration of 4 days, 23 hours and 40 minutes.

Payload and experiments

The mission's primary task was to deploy the Galileo spacecraft with its attached IUS booster. Deployment occurred on schedule at 19:15 EDT on 18 October, slightly more than six hours after launch, and the IUS successfully boosted Galileo toward Venus on the first leg of its six-year journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft was injected on a Venus transfer orbit at 20:20 EDT, and separated from the IUS 47 minutes later.

Galileo required a triple gravity assist – from Venus, Earth, and then Earth again – to propel it from the inner part of the solar system to Jupiter in the outer system. The trajectory made it possible to also observe asteroids 951 Gaspra and 243 Ida. Galileo had two major components: an orbiter which examined Jupiter and its four largest moons for eight years, and a probe which descended into the Jovian atmosphere to take direct samplings before being destroyed by the gas giant's heat and pressure.

Besides the Galileo spacecraft, Atlantis' payload bay held two canisters containing the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) experiment. SSBUV, which made its first flight on STS-34, was developed by NASA to check the calibration of the ozone sounders on free-flying satellites, and to verify the accuracy of atmospheric ozone and solar irradiance data. The experiment operated successfully.

STS-34 carried a further five mid-deck experiments...