STS-61-A (also known as Spacelab D-1) was the 22nd mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program. It was a scientific Spacelab mission, funded and directed by West Germany – hence the non-NASA designation of D-1 (for Deutschland-1). STS-61-A was the ninth and last successful flight of Space Shuttle Challenger before the STS-51-L disaster. STS-61-A holds the current record for the largest crew—eight people—aboard any single spacecraft for the entire period from launch to landing.
The mission carried the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Spacelab module into orbit with 76 scientific experiments on board, and was declared a success. Payload operations were controlled from the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, West Germany, instead of from the regular NASA control center. This was the first spaceflight to include multiple crewmembers from any single country other than the United States or Soviet Union. The crew also included the first Dutch citizen astronaut, payload specialist Wubbo Ockels.
Crew
Crew seat assignments
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
! Seat
! Launch
! Landing
|rowspan=9| 150px<br />Seats 1–4 are on the flight deck.<br />Seats 5–8 are on the mid-deck.<br />Seat 8 is located directly ahead of Seat 5. The first seven-person Shuttle mission had been STS-41-G in October 1984. but Wubbo Ockels became the first Dutch citizen in space.
Guion S. Bluford at the time was already the first African-American in space, having previously flown on STS-8. With STS-61-A he became the first African-American to fly in space twice. He would later go on to fly on STS-39 in 1991 and on STS-53 in 1992. Bluford was a member of the U.S. astronaut class of 1978.