Bill Nelson Nelson was a Payload Specialist on 's STS-61-C mission from January 12 to 18, 1986. The Space Shuttle "Columbia" landed at Edwards AFB at 5:59 a.m. PST, on January 18. The mission's elapsed time was 6 days, 2 hours, 45 minutes, and 51 seconds. This flight was the last successful space shuttle flight prior to the "Challenger" accident, which occurred only ten days after the return of the "Columbia". In 1988, Nelson published a book about his space flight experience entitled "Mission: An American Congressman's Voyage to Space". In 1972, Nelson was elected to the Florida House of Representatives as
Space Shuttle Flight in Seattle. Mission Simulation and Training Facility's fixed simulator will go to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and the motion simulator will go to the Texas A&M Aerospace Engineering Department in College Station, Texas. Other simulators used in Shuttle astronaut training will go to the Wings of Dreams Aviation Museum in Starke, Florida and the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia. Until another U.S. manned spacecraft is ready, crews will travel to and from the International Space Station (ISS) exclusively aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. A planned successor to STS was the "Shuttle II", during the 1980s