Discovery lifts off on STS-85, a day late on account of fog

By the summer of 1997, NASA was flying at a pace it hadn't managed in years, eight shuttle missions in a single year, still counted as part of the "return to flight" era after Columbia's 1986 accident. On August 7, Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on STS-85, a day behind schedule after ground fog threatened the runway. Mission specialist Jan Davis used the shuttle's robot arm to release CRISTA-SPAS-2, a satellite bristling with telescopes and spectrometers, for nine days studying the middle atmosphere on its own before Discovery caught up and reeled it back in…