STS-61-F was a NASA Space Shuttle mission planned to launch on 15 May 1986 using Challenger.

The main objective of STS-61-F was to deploy the Ulysses solar probe, which would travel to Jupiter and use it as a gravitational slingshot in order to be placed into polar orbit around the Sun.

[1] The flight was risky enough that Commander Hauck gave his crewmates an option to leave the crew if they considered the mission to be too unsafe.

Covey and a third Mission Specialist (George D. "Pinky" Nelson) was added to the crew.

Ulysses was eventually deployed from Discovery on STS-41, using the solid-fueled Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) and Payload Assist Module (PAM-S) instead of the Centaur-G, which had been canceled after the Challenger disaster.