WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

A rare sight in Houston is the appearance of the spacecraft whose flights are monitored from that city, but with the brief stopover of NASA's new space shuttle Challenger, thousands of area residents were afforded that opportunity yesterday as part of a nationwide special July 4 celebration. Here, the Challenger and its NASA 905 (a modified Boeing 747 aircraft) transport vehicle are readied for the completion of the journey from California to Florida. The Columbia landed in California yesterday and the Enterprise was already there, so three shuttlecraft were together as appropriate backdrops for a space-oriented July 4 speech by President Ronald Reagan. Crew for the NASA 905 for Challenger's Florida trip from Houston were Pilot Joseph S. Algranti, Co-Pilot Francis R. (Dick) Scobee.