CAPTAIN MICHAEL L. COATS - COMMEMORATIVE ENVELOPE SIGNED CO-SIGNED BY: ANTHONY ENGLAND, SHANNON W. LUCID, COLONEL FREDERICK D. GREGORY, COLONEL L. BLAINE HAMMOND, CAPTAIN JAMES D. WETHERBEE - HFSID 304921

NASA ASTRONAUTS
Astronauts Wetherbee, Hammond, Coats, Gregory, England and Lucid sign an envelope with ink stamp cachet commemorating the landing of Challenger's landing at Edwards Air Force Base,
Commemorative Envelope signed: "Jim Wetherbee", "Blaine Hammond", "Mike Coats/A/E CAPCOM", "Fred Gregory/ASC/ENT", "Tony England", Shannon Lucid", 6½x3¾ envelope. Six signatures in all. Ink stamp cachet the landing of space shuttle Challenger mission STS-61-A at Edwards Air Force Base, November 6, 1985, postmarked Edwards, California on that date. The signers here, all spaceflight veterans, were not the crew of STS-61-A. As a US Navy pilot, MICHAEL COATS (b. 1946) flew 315 combat missions in Southeast Asia (1970-1972). He was a test pilot before entering the astronaut corps in 1979. Coats traveled into space aboard the Orbiter Discovery 3 times: on its maiden flight in 1984, and on addition missions (as spacecraft commander) in 1989 and 1991. In December 2005, Coats was named Director of the Johnson Space Flight Center. Biochemist Dr. SHANNON LUCID (b. 1943) flew aboard space shuttles Discovery, Atlantis (four times) and Columbia. She currently holds the U.S. single mission space flight endurance record of 188 days aboard the Russian Space Station Mir (March, 1996 - September, 1996), where she performed experiments in microgravity science, space sciences and Earth observation. She traveled over 75 million aboard the Mir. FREDERICK D. GREGORY (b. 1941), a US Air Force helicopter rescue pilot during the Vietnam War, became an astronaut in 1978. He was the pilot of Challenger 51-B (1985) and the commander of Discovery STS-33 (1989) and Atlantis STS-44 (1991). Aerospace engineer and US Navy pilot JAMES "JIM" WETHERBEE (b. 1952) joined the astronaut corps in 1985. He logged 696 hours in space on six shuttle missions (1990-2002). As he notes on this photo, he was pilot on the first mission (STS-32); he was mission commander on the other five, a record number of flights in that role. Wetherbee's last three shuttle missions took him to the Mir and to the International Space Station. BLAINE HAMMOND (b. 1952), a former US Air Force colonel and test pilot, was the pilot on Discovery STS-39 (1991) and Discovery STS-64 (1994). A support crewman for two Apollo moon landings, Anthony "TONY" ENGLAND (b. 1952) was a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger's Spacelab-2 mission (July-August, 1985). STS-61-A, the final mission in the Spacelab series, conducted microgravity experiments and launched the GLOMR satellite. It was the last successful mission of Challenger, which exploded with the loss of all crew members on January 28, 1986. Fine condition.