Bidspirit auction | Astronaut Gary Payton signed secret

Astronaut Gary Payton signed secret STS-51-C Mission signed NASA FDC. Missions STS-51-C. Payton served as a spacecraft test controller from 1976 to 1980, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. He was selected for the USAF Manned Spaceflight Engineer Program in February 1980. Payton flew on the STS-51-C mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in January 1985 which launched and returned to land at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. STS-51C was the first dedicated Space Shuttle Department of Defense mission. The mission carried an Inertial Upper Stage and deployed a DoD satellite. This was the first shuttle mission that most on-orbit details were classified and not publicized. Payton traveled over 1.2 million miles in 48 Earth orbits, and logged more than 73 hours in space.