This mission's purpose was to deploy a Syncom/Leasat satellite into a geosynchronous orbit and retrieve and return the Long Duration Exposure Facility, whose orbit was decaying slowly after doing its mission. The crew would've consisted of 5 NASA astronauts and 2 Payload Specialists: Commander Dan Brandenstein, Pilot John Creighton, Mission Specialists Steve Nagel, John Fabian, and Shannon Lucid, and Payload Specialists Greg Jarvis and Charlie Walker. Scheduled for launch in either March or April of 1985, the orbiter that would've flown STS-51D was Discovery. There was some bad news, which was not about IUS problems this time: the STS-51E mission was cancelled and the crews changed missions; Brandenstein's crew moved to 51G and Bobko 's crew moved to the newly remanifested STS-51D flight. Charlie Walker chose to stay on this mission, because of the experiments he had to perform. So, an original member of STS-51E, Patrick Baudry, moved to STS-51G and Charlie Walker retained his spot as Payload Specialist 1.
This is Randy Hunt's replica version of the patch. The rounded tab corners and distinct color banding on the back are easy tells. One piece construction.
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