On this day in 1985…
On this day: 30 October 1985, the launch of the Spacelab D1 mission on Space Shuttle Challenger STS-61A from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, carrying an international crew of eight astronauts including ESA’s Wubbo Ockels. Flight STS-61A marked a number of firsts in European human spaceflight, including the first Dutch citizen in space and the first Spacelab mission to be controlled from the German operations centre of the DFVLR (a precursor of today’s Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) at Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich. See http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2010/10/Launch_of_Space_Shuttle_Challenger_STS-61A_on_30_October_1985
