Page "Robert L. Gibson" Paragraph 15

On Gibson's fourth space flight, the fiftieth Space Shuttle mission, he served as commander of STS-47, Spacelab-J, which launched on September 12, 1992 aboard the Orbiter Endeavour.

The mission was a cooperative venture between the United States and Japan, and included the first Japanese astronaut and the first African-American woman, Mae Jemison, in the crew.

During the eight-day flight, the crew focused on life science and materials processing experiments in over forty investigations in the Spacelab laboratory, as well as scientific and engineering tests performed aboard the Orbiter Endeavour.

The mission ended with a successful landing on the runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after 126 orbits of the Earth on September 20, 1992.