GREG JARVIS - COMMEMORATIVE ENVELOPE SIGNED CO-SIGNED BY: COLONEL RICHARD "DICK" COVEY, MIKE (JOHN M.) LOUNGE, WILLIAM FISHER, MAJOR GENERAL JOE ENGLE, JAMES D. A. VAN HOFTEN - HFSID 28922

GREG JARVIS and DISCOVERY STS-51ICREW: JOE ENGLE, DICK COVEY, MIKE LOUNGE, WILLIAM "BILL" FISHER and JAMES "OX" VAN HOFTEN
The five members of the Discovery STS-51I crew and Jarvis (who was removed from the crew at the last minute) pen their names on this commemorative envelope
Commemorative Envelope Signed: "Greg Jarvis", "Joe Engle", "Dick Covey", "Mike Lounge", "Bill Fisher" and "Ox van Hoften", 6½x3½. Kennedy Space Center cachet, 22¢ U.S. flag stamp affixed. Pictorially postmarked Kennedy Space Center, FL, August 27, 1985. Hughes Aircraft engineer GREG JARVIS (1944-1986) was the payload specialist on flight 51L, the Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds after its January 28, 1986 liftoff, killing Jarvis and his six colleagues. Jarvis was originally assigned to be on Discovery 51-G but he and Charlie Walker were replaced by the first Arab in space and the first Frenchman on a U.S. flight, launched June 17, 1985. Jarvis was then reassigned to Discovery 51I and he signed this envelope at the upper left after the other five crewmembers signed, before the launch. He was removed from the crew before the mission began. In November, Jarvis was reassigned to the ill-fated Challenger mission 51L. JAMES "OX" VAN HOFTEN (b.1944), who holds a Ph.D. in hydraulic engineering, was a U.S. Navy pilot from 1969 to 1974, flying 60 combat missions in Southeast Asia. After a stint teaching engineering at the University of Houston and publishing several scientific articles, Van Hoften became an astronaut in 1979. He flew on two space missions aboard Challenger (1984) and Discovery (1985), logging 330 hours in space with 22 hours of activity outside the spacecraft. He joined the Bechtel Corporation in 1986, rising to Senior Vice President. Aeronautical engineer RICHARD "DICK" COVEY (b.1946), a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and Purdue University, flew two combat fighter tours in Southeast Asia (1970-1974) before becoming a test pilot. Joining the astronaut corps in 1979, Covey flew on space shuttle missions STS-85, 88, 90 and 93, amounting to a combined 640 hours in space. He was mission commander of both the Atlantis and the Endeavor on the both of the crafts' final respective missions. Covey was Mission Control spacecraft communicator on the ill-fated final flight of Challenger, voicing the command, "Challenger, go at throttle up." After leaving NASA, Covey was Chief Operating Officer of United Space Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin (2006-2007). JOE H. ENGLE (1932-2024), who was named a NASA astronaut in 1966, tested the X-15, flew the STS-2, STS-51I and was a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. During the second orbital test flight of Columbia, Engle became the first and only pilot to manually fly an aerospacecraft from Mach 25 to landing. Over the course of his career, he flew more than 155 types of aircraft. Engle is also the only human being to have flown two different types of winged vehicles in space (X-15 & Space Shuttle) and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2001. WILLIAM "BILL" FISHER (b.1946) is a medical doctor who officially became a NASA astronaut in 1981. He was a mission specialist on the highly successful Discovery STS-51I mission. MIKE LOUNGE (1946-2011) was an engineer who, after nine years of exemplary service in the Navy, went on to become an astronaut. He was a crewmember of three different Space Shuttle flights: On the STS-51I, he served as a mission specialist, and on STS-26 he functioned as the flight engineer. He worked at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center beginning in 1978, and retired from his post at NASA in 1991. Fine condition.