The maiden of flight of arguably the most well-known U.S. space shuttle took off without a hitch, although the launch itself had to be aborted three times prior — and on the day of the successful fourth, launch had to be delayed for nearly seven minutes as a private aircraft strayed into the no-fly zone. But the Discovery finally launched, on its way to deliver three satellites and test a large solar-cell array.

On this day, September 5, in 1984, the space shuttle Discovery, returning from its first flight, touched down as planned at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The Discovery delivered the SBS-D for satellite for the telecommunications firm Satellite Business Systems, a Telstar 3-C for the Telesat telecom firm of Canada (which enabled it to reach Northern Canada for the first time), and SYNCOM IV-2 for Hughes.