Space art Four original oil paintings by American artist Ellery Kurtz were flown in one of NASA's Get Away Special (G.A.S.) container mounted to a bridge in the shuttle cargo bay. These original works of art are the first oil paintings to enter Earth orbit. This NASA GAS canister, designated G-481, was the 46th such canister flown aboard a Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle "Columbia" orbited the Earth 98 times during its mission duration time of 6 days, 2 hours, 3 minutes and 51 seconds. "Columbia" was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 12, 1986 and landed at
Space Shuttle design process refurbishment, and the agency studied resupplying the satellite in space. The Air Force planned on having its own fleet of shuttles, and re-built a separate launch facility originally derived from the canceled Manned Orbiting Laboratory program at Vandenberg called Space Launch Complex Six (SLC-6). However, for various reasons, due in large part to the loss of the space shuttle "Challenger" on January 28, 1986, work on SLC-6 was eventually discontinued with no shuttle launches from that location ever taking place. SLC-6 was eventually used for launching the Lockheed Martin-built Athena expendable launch vehicles, which included the successful IKONOS commercial Earth