STS-34 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission using Atlantis. It was the 31st shuttle mission overall, and the fifth flight for Atlantis. STS-34 launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on October 18, 1989, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on October 23. The primary payload, the Galileo spacecraft with its attached Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), was successfully deployed on its journey to Jupiter. STS-34 was only the second shuttle flight to deploy a planetary spacecraft, the first being STS-30, which deployed the Magellan spacecraft. Galileo became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet and to penetrate the atmosphere of an outer planet. Also, the spacecraft was scheduled to make the first extended observations of the Jovian system and first direct sampling of Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as the first asteroid flybys.