S89-30720 (29 March 1989) --- The spacecraft Magellan is in the payload bay of the orbiter Atlantis at launch pad 39-B. Magellan is scheduled to be released from Atlantis April 28, 1989, on NASA's STS-30 mission. Its mission will be the first U.S. planetary probe in over 10 years and it is the first deployed by the shuttle. The mission calls for the spacecraft to make the approximately 15-month journey to the planet Venus and perform radar mapping operations, transmitting the information back to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.