On May 4, 1989, space shuttle Atlantis took off on its third flight, STS-30, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Its five-person crew of Commander David M. Walker, Pilot Ronald J. Grabe, and Mission Specialists Mark C. Lee, Norman E. Thagard, and Mary L. Cleave flew a four-day mission that deployed the Magellan spacecraft, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, to study Venus, uniting NASA’s human and interplanetary spaceflight programs. It also marked the first U.S. planetary launch since 1978. The astronauts deployed Magellan and its upper stage on…