![]() ![]() Highlights of the Hubble Space Telescope results after this first servicing included, as stated in Space Times in 1995:Ĭompelling evidence for a massive black hole in the center of a giant elliptical galaxy located 50 million light years away. The results from Hubble touched on some of the most fundamental astronomical questions of the twentieth century, including the existence of black holes and the age of the universe. The first reports from the newly repaired HST indicated that the images being returned now were more than an order of magnitude (10 times) greater than those obtained before.īecause of the servicing mission, the HST dominated space science activities throughout the next several years. During a weeklong mission, Endeavour’s astronauts conducted a record five spacewalks and successfully completed all programmed repairs to the spacecraft. No flights demonstrate the flexibility of the Space Shuttle more effectively than this servicing mission, the first of five such efforts on behalf of the HST. Because of the difficulties with the mirror of the HST, in December 1993 NASA launched the shuttle Endeavour on a repair mission to insert corrective equipment into the telescope and to service other instruments. At first many believed that the spherical aberration would cripple the 43-foot-long telescope, and NASA received considerable negative publicity. Deployed in orbit by another shuttle in 1990, the HST had a “spherical aberration” that resulted in a hazy ring, or halo, that degraded the imagery. First, this shuttle proved exceptional in the hands of the STS-61 crew that performed the first servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Two missions stand out in Endeavour’s history. Constructed beginning in 1987, Endeavour flew the first of its 26 space missions in May 1992 (STS-49) and closed its career with its last mission in May 2011 (STS-134). After the loss of Challenger on January 28, 1986, NASA built the replacement orbiter Endeavour (OV-105), the namesake of Captain James Cook’s HMS Endeavour of his first voyage between 17. NASA initially built four spaceworthy orbiters- Columbia (OV-102), Challenger (OV‑099), Discovery (OV‑103), and Atlantis (OV‑104)-and named them for famous ships of exploration and scientific discovery. The quest for a reusable spaceplane extends far back into the 1920s, but it only found realization with the inaugural flights of the Space Shuttle in the early 1980s. Space Shuttle Endeavour on launch pad 39A prior to mission STS-127, May 31, 2009. ![]()
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