Item: German Spacelab Mission D1 patch
Size: 10 x 11.5 cm.

Description: Space Shuttle Challenger flight STS-61A carried Wubbo Ockels, Ernst Messerschmid and Reinhard Furrer, and marked a number of firsts in European human spaceflight, including the first Dutch citizen in space.

etween 30 October and 6 November 1985, these three European astronauts served as payload specialists (science astronauts) on the first spaceflight with a crew of eight (STS-61A still holds the record for the largest crew aboard any single spacecraft for the entire period from launch to landing).

This was only the fourth flight of Spacelab, the ESA-designed laboratory module carried in the Shuttle’s payload bay, but this was the first time that an entire payload was controlled from outside NASA’s mission control centres.

Called the Spacelab D1 mission, it was the first to have German mission management and to be controlled from the German Space Operations Centre of the German Institute of Aviation and Spaceflight Research and Development (DFVLR, a precursor of present-day DLR) at Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich.

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ESA

Item: First day cover of the ESA's Giotto mission to Halley's Comet
Size: 16.5 x 9.5 cm
Publisher: Deutsche Bundespost

Description: The Giotto mission was launched by the European Space Agency in 1985 to study Halley's Comet. It was the first spacecraft to fly close to a comet and gather data from close range. The mission provided valuable insights into the composition, structure, and dynamics of comets, paving the way for future missions.