Space Shuttle but put the observatory above the Earth's radiation belts for most of its orbit. Spitzer history By the early 1970s, astronomers began to consider the possibility of placing an infrared telescope above the obscuring effects of atmosphere of Earth. Most of the early concepts, envisioned repeated flights aboard the NASA Space Shuttle. This approach was developed in an era when the Shuttle program was presumed to be capable of supporting weekly flights of up to 30 days duration. In 1979, a National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences report, A Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s, identified a Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) as "one of two major astrophysics facilities [to be developed] for Spacelab," a Shuttle-borne platform. The launch of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, an Explorer-class satellite designed to conduct the first infrared survey of the sky led to anticipation of an instrument using new infrared detector technology. By September 1983, NASA was considering the "possibility of a long duration [free-flyer] SIRTF mission". The 1985 Spacelab-2 flight aboard STS-51-F confirmed the Shuttle environment was not well suited to an onboard infrared telescope, and a free-flying design was better. The first word of the name was changed from Shuttle so it would be called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility. Great Observatory origin The concept of a Great Observatory program was first proposed in the 1979 NRC report "A Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s". This report laid the essential groundwork for the Great Observatories and was chaired by Peter Meyer (through June 1977) and then by Harlan J. Smith (through publication). In the mid-1980s, it was further advanced by all of the astrophysics Division Directors at NASA headquarters, including Frank Martin and Charlie Pellerin. NASA's "Great Observatories" program used four separate satellites, each designed to cover a different part of the spectrum in ways which terrestrial systems could not. This perspective enabled the proposed X-ray and InfraRed observatories to be appropriately seen as a continuation of the astronomical program begun with Hubble and CGRO rather than competitors or replacements. [Another citation for this paragraph should be two explanatory documents published by NASA and created for the NASA Astrophysics Division, then led by Charie Pellerin, and the NASA Astrophysics Management Working Group in the 1980s. Both are titled The Great Observatories for Space Astrophysics; the first bears NASA document number 21M585