30 Years Ago: STS-61, the First Hubble Servicing Mission

30 Years Ago: STS-61, the First Hubble Servicing Mission

“Trying to do stellar observations from Earth is like trying to do birdwatching from the bottom of a lake.”  James B. Odom, Hubble Program Manager 1983-1990. The discovery after its launch that the Hubble Space Telescope’s primary mirror suffered from a flaw...
30 Years Ago: STS-61, the First Hubble Servicing Mission

Hubble Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 1

In the pre-dawn hours on Dec. 2, 1993, the space shuttle Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a critical mission to repair NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble was designed to be serviced in space with components that astronauts can slide...
40 Years Ago: STS-9, the First Spacelab Science Mission

40 Years Ago: STS-9, the First Spacelab Science Mission

On Nov. 28, 1983, space shuttle Columbia took to the skies for its sixth trip into space on the first dedicated science mission using the Spacelab module provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). The longest shuttle mission at the time also included many other...
Spacelab 1: A Model for International Cooperation

Spacelab 1: A Model for International Cooperation

Forty years ago, in 1983, the Space Shuttle Columbia flew its first international spaceflight, STS-9. The mission included—for the first time—the European Space Agency’s Spacelab pressurized module and featured more than 70 experiments from American, Canadian,...
25 Years Ago: STS-95, John Glenn Returns to Space

25 Years Ago: STS-95, John Glenn Returns to Space

On Oct. 29, 1998, NASA astronaut John H. Glenn made history again when he returned to space aboard space shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission, nearly 37 years after becoming the first American in orbit during his February 1962 Friendship 7 mission. The...