Editing STS-9 (section)

== Mission background ==
STS-9's six-member crew, the largest of any human space mission at the time, included John W. Young, commander, on his second shuttle flight; Brewster H. Shaw, pilot; Owen K. Garriott and Robert A. Parker, both mission specialists; and Byron K. Lichtenberg and Ulf Merbold, payload specialists – the first two non-NASA [[astronaut]]s to fly on the Space Shuttle. Merbold, a citizen of [[West Germany]], was the first foreign citizen to participate in a Space Shuttle flight. Lichtenberg was a researcher at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT). Prior to STS-9, the scientist-astronaut Garriott had spent 56 days in orbit in 1973 aboard [[Skylab]]. Commanding the mission was veteran astronaut John W. Young, making his sixth and final flight over an 18-year career that saw him fly twice each in [[Project Gemini]], [[Apollo (spacecraft)|Apollo]], and the Space Shuttle, which included two journeys to the [[Moon]] and making him the most experienced space traveler to date. Young, who also commanded ''Columbia'' on its maiden voyage [[STS-1]], was the first person to fly the same space vehicle into orbit more than once. STS-9 marked the only time that two pre-Shuttle era astronaut veterans (Garriott and Young) would fly on the same Space Shuttle mission. STS-9 was also the first Space Shuttle mission to have more than one veteran astronaut.

The mission was devoted entirely to [[Spacelab]] 1, a joint NASA/[[European Space Agency]] (ESA) program designed to demonstrate the ability to conduct advanced scientific research in space. Both the mission specialists and payload specialists worked in the Spacelab module and coordinated their efforts with scientists at the [[Marshall Space Flight Center]] (MSFC) Payload Operations Control Center (POCC), which was then located at the [[Johnson Space Center]] (JSC) in [[Texas]]. Funding for Spacelab 1 was provided by the ESA.