MOOMEENNTTSS IINN SSPPAACCEE HHIISSTTOORRYY
NASA
Spacelab crew, left to right, Robert Parker, Byron Lichtenberg, Owen Garriott and German physicist Ulf Merbold prepare for Spacelab’s first flight on Nov. 28, 1983.
COSMIC ALLIANCE
NASA’s Spacelab program with the European Space Agency
charted the course for the International Space Station
A reusable laboratory flown on
the space shuttles, Spacelab’s
launch from the Kennedy Space
Center on Nov. 28, 1983, paved the way
for the International Space Station.
Spacelab housed scientific experiments
in low-Earth orbits, contributed vast
scientific research results and created a
legacy of international cooperation over
its 17 years of flights.
Former space center payload operations
planner Ann Bolton, 79, worked
on Spacelab in its early phase. Her
bachelor’s degree in math from Rollins
College’s then-Patrick Air Force Base
campus prepared her well for computer
systems analysis. Shortly after 1980, she
was assigned to a team that traveled
to Bremen, Germany, for work on the
project. NASA and the European Space
Agency had agreed nearly a decade
earlier to collaborate on the lab.
“It was before people even knew that
Spacelab was coming,” Bolton says in
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a telephone interview from her Cocoa
Beach home. “It was brand new.”
Bolton’s time in Europe was spent
planning before the lab being built in
Europe was completed and delivered
to the Kennedy Space Center. “We were
wide-eyed listening to everyone,” Bolton
recalls of many meetings in Germany and
Holland.
In February 1982, Vice President George
H.W. Bush presaged Spacelab’s legacy
By Lucinda Coulter
>>
Moments in
Space History
features milestones
in space history
achieved on
the Space Coast.
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