US STS-8 Flight Cover USPS NASA Space Shuttle Challenger #94437, LOT 1-7-75

Description

US STS-8 Flight Cover USPS NASA Space Shuttle Challenger #94437, LOT 1-7-75.  Cover was flown on STS-8 and orbited the Earth 81 times, it was launched aboard the Challenger at the Kennedy Space Center on 30 August 1983 and returned to Earth at Edwards Air Force Base, California on 5 September, 1983.  The cover came in a commemorative USPS/NASA Folder which is included.
STS-8
was the eighth
NASA
Space Shuttle
mission and the third flight of the
Space Shuttle
Challenger
. It launched on August 30, 1983 and landed on September 5, conducting the first night launch and night landing of the Space Shuttle program. It also carried the first
African-American
astronaut,
Guion Bluford
. The mission successfully achieved all of its planned research objectives, but was marred by the subsequent discovery that a
solid-fuel rocket booster
had almost malfunctioned catastrophically during the launch.
The mission's primary payload was
INSAT-1B
, an
Indian
communications
and
weather observation
satellite, which was released by the orbiter and boosted into a
geostationary orbit
. The secondary payload, replacing a delayed NASA communications satellite, was a four-metric-ton dummy payload, intended to test the use of the shuttle's
"Canadarm" remote manipulator system
. Scientific experiments carried on board
Challenger
included the environmental testing of new hardware and materials designed for future spacecraft, the study of biological materials in electric fields under
microgravity
, and research into
space adaptation syndrome
(also known as "space sickness"). The flight furthermore served as shakedown testing for the previously launched
TDRS-1
satellite, which would be required to support the subsequent
STS-9
mission.