Two communications satellites had been left stranded in useless orbits earlier in 1984, and in November Discovery flew a mission to go get them — a cosmic salvage operation with no precedent. Using the jet backpacks pioneered earlier that year, spacewalkers Joe Allen and Dale Gardner flew out to the drifting satellites one at a time, wrestled them under control by hand, and guided them into the payload bay for the ride home.
Gardner famously held up a "For Sale" sign for the cameras once both were secured. In the same flight the crew deployed two new satellites, so Discovery both delivered and retrieved on a single trip. It remains one of the boldest things the programme ever attempted, and the insurers who had written off the lost satellites got them back to refurbish and resell.
Nine months after two satellites were abandoned in the wrong orbit, Discovery went up to get them back. Nothing like it had been attempted: the targets were not designed to be captured, they were spinning, and they had no handholds. The solution was a spear-like device called the stinger, which an astronaut on a jet backpack would fly into the satellite's engine nozzle and lock in place.
It worked twice. Joe Allen and Dale Gardner flew out, speared Palapa B2 and then Westar VI, and wrestled each into the payload bay — though when a clamping fixture would not fit, Allen ended up simply holding a half-tonne satellite steady with his hands for the better part of an hour while Gardner worked. In weightlessness mass still resists, and the footage of a man bracing a spacecraft by main force is quietly extraordinary.
With both satellites stowed, Gardner held up a hand-lettered placard reading “For Sale” for the cameras, and the picture ran everywhere. The flight also carried Anna Fisher, the first mother to go to space, who had a fourteen-month-old daughter at home. It remains the only mission ever to retrieve two satellites and bring them back to Earth, where both were refurbished and sold on.
