{"id":745,"date":"2012-03-24T12:55:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T12:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=745"},"modified":"2012-03-24T12:55:22","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T12:55:22","slug":"atlas-launch-no-not-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/atlas-launch-no-not-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"ATLAS Launch — No, Not the Rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, a rocket, and ATLAS, but not an Atlas rocket. Confused yet?<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago today — March 24, 1992– the Space Shuttle Atlantis<\/em> launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission to study atmospheric science and how space phenomena affect Earth’s environment.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(ATLAS-1 pallets in the shuttle’s payload bay. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThe STS-45<\/a> crew included U.S. astronauts Charles F. Bolden — the future NASA administrator — Brian Duffy, Kathryn D. Sullivan, David C. Leestma, C. Michael Foale, and Byron K. Lichtenberg, as well as Belgian astronaut Dirk D. Frimout. Their 8-day mission was the first launch of the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-1).<\/p>\n

ATLAS-1<\/a> consisted of a dozen instruments from seven different countries — the U.S., France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Japan — to study “atmospheric chemistry, solar radiation, space plasma physics and ultraviolet astronomy.” ATLAS-1 was not a free-flying platform, so it stayed on the SpaceLab platform in the shuttle’s cargo bay while it performed its observations.<\/p>\n

The ATLAS platform flew on subsequent shuttle missions to continue the atmospheric research.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, a rocket, and ATLAS, but not an Atlas rocket. Confused yet? Thirty years ago today — March 24, 1992– the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission to study atmospheric science and how space phenomena affect Earth’s environment. (ATLAS-1 pallets in the shuttle’s payload bay. \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,11,12],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}