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Publicly, Paul Weitz’ STS-6 crew was nicknamed ‘The F-Troop’.

A strange paradox occurred in the summer of 1976. For nearly a year, no Americans had ventured into orbit; nor would they do so for at least another four years. The space ambitions of the United States were by no means directionless, but its 30-strong astronaut corps faced a crisis: no missions were available in the foreseeable future, yet more astronauts were urgently required. By the time the Shuttle entered operational service sometime in 1980, NASA optimistically hoped that missions would be launching as often as once every fortnight.

Guy Bluford, the first black American spacefarer, laughed with excitement all the way into orbit on STS-8.

If Space Shuttle Challenger had been a sentient person, she would undoubtedly have been as confused as everyone else by the peculiar nomenclature with which her fourth mission was saddled. Following a nocturnal return to Edwards Air Force Base in California at the end of STS-8, she was slated to deploy two more communications satellites — one for the Indonesian government, a follow-on from Palapa-B1, and another for Western Union — on an eight-day flight in early 1984.

In spite of his desire to fly as often as possible, astronaut Mike Mullane considered himself fortunate to have been aboard none of Challenger’s 1985 missions, for all three carried a fate worse than death: a European-built research facility called Space-lab. “For Mission Specialists, the A-list astronauts were those who flew the Manned Manoeuvring Unit,” he recounted in his memoir, ‘Riding Rockets’. “At the bottom of the pile were those sorry souls doing actual science in the bowels of a Spacelab. While many scientists enjoyed Spacelab, most of the military Mission Specialists wanted nothing to do with it.

“Now don’t break our airplane,” Judy Resnik joked.