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. NASA image.)
The STS-45 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).
ATLAS-1 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.
The ATLAS platform flew on subsequent shuttle missions to continue the atmospheric research.
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