William A. Pailes
American - (USAF)
Retired
Date of Birth: June 26, 1952
Age: 72
William Arthur Pailes (Colonel, USAF) (born June 26, 1952) was a USAF astronaut in the Manned Spaceflight Engineer Program during the mid-1980s. He served as a Payload Specialist on STS-51-J Atlantis (October 3–7, 1985).
Space Shuttle Atlantis / OV-104 | STS-51-J
National Aeronautics and Space Administration | United States of AmericaKennedy Space Center, FL, USA
Oct. 3, 1985, 3:15 p.m.
Status: Success
Mission:
STS-51-J was the twenty-first space shuttle mission and the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It was the second mission dedicated to deploying a Department of Defence payload. It was a classified mission however we do know that it deployed two 10 satellites.
Low Earth OrbitThe United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the USAF was established as a separate branch of the United States Armed Forces in 1947 with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947.
Long March 6A
Tianhui 5 Group 02
Launch Complex 9A - Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of ChinaA pair of satellites officially described as for cartographic surveying purposes, details TBD.
Firefly Alpha
FLTA005 (Noise of Summer)
Space Launch Complex 2W - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USAFifth flight of the Firefly Alpha small sat launcher, carrying eight cubesats for NASA's ELaNa 43 (Educational Launch of a Nanosatellite) mission.
Falcon 9
Starlink Group 8-9
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral, FL, USAA batch of 20 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
H3-22
Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 (ALOS-4)
Yoshinobu Launch Complex LP-2 - Tanegashima Space Center, JapanThe Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 (ALOS-4) is a Japanese satellite designed to observe the Earth's surface using a phased array type L-band syn…
Long March 7A
ChinaSat 3A
201 - Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of ChinaChinese communication geostationary satellite for unknown purposes.
