STS-61 was the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The mission launched on 2 December 1993 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission restored the spaceborne observatory's vision, marred by spherical aberration, with the installation of a new main camera and a corrective optics package. This correction occurred more than three and a half years after the Hubble was launched aboard STS-31 in April 1990. The flight also brought instrument upgrades and new solar arrays to the telescope.
Space Shuttle Endeavour (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-105) is a retired orbiter from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the fifth and final operational Shuttle built. The United States Congress approved the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, which was destroyed in 1986. Structural spares built during the construction of Discovery and Atlantis were used in its assembly. NASA chose, on cost grounds, to build Endeavour from spares rather than refitting Enterprise or accepting a Rockwell International proposal to build two Shuttles for the price of one.
Space Shuttle Endeavour (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-105) is a retired orbiter from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the fifth and final operational shuttle built. It embarked on its first mission, STS-49, in May 1992 and its 25th and final mission, STS-134, in May 2011. STS-134 was expected to be the final mission of the Space Shuttle program, but with the authorization of STS-135, Atlantis became the last shuttle to fly. The United States Congress approved the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, which was lost in 1986. Structural spares built during the construction of Discovery and Atlantis were used in its assembly. NASA chose, on cost grounds, to build Endeavour from spares rather than refitting Enterprise.
Space Shuttle Details
Date of
Birth: Aug. 19, 1935
Age: 86
Date of
Birth: Nov. 2, 1944
Age: 77
Date of
Birth: Aug. 17, 1952
Age: 69
Date of
Birth: May 20, 1951
Age: 71
Date of
Birth: Aug. 1, 1946
Age: 75
Date of
Birth: Sept. 2, 1944
Age: 77
The Hubble Space Telescope recently garnered headlines for a software anomaly that caused the iconic observatory to enter safe mode as its control teams worked to successfully restore the telescope to operational status.
Launch contracted by the U.S. Space Force for the Rocket Systems Launch Program (RSLP), with payloads provided by the DoD Space Test Program (STP) as…
Two US national security payloads. The first is the Space Force's Wide Field of View (WFOV) Testbed satellite, the second is a multi-manifest satelli…
DS-EO is an electro-optical multispectral Earth observation satellite for DSTA from Singapore. Secondary payloads are NeuSAR and SCOOB-I, both also f…
Geostationary communications satellite
CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is a 12-U cubesat mission to test operations in nea…
Gaofen is a series of civilian Earth observation satellites developed and launched for the China High-definition Earth Observation System (CHEOS), a …
The X-ray Quantum Calorimeter Experiment (XQC) is a payload from the University of Wisconsin. Its objective is to measure X-rays with unprecedented p…
3 Chinese reconnaissance satellites.
Measat-3d is a Malaysian geostationary communications satellite built by Airbus Space Systems. GSAT 24 is a communications satellite of the Indian Sp…