STS-61 was NASA’s first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The mission launched on December 2, 1993, from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission restored the space-borne observatory’s vision (marred by spherical aberration in its mirror) with the installation of a new main camera and a corrective optics package (COSTAR). 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. With its very heavy workload, the STS-61 mission was one of the most complex in the Shuttle’s history. STS-61 lasted almost 11 days, and crew members made five spacewalks (extravehicular activities (EVAs)), an all-time record; even the re-positioning of Intelsat VI on STS-49 in May 1992 required only four. The flight plan allowed for two additional EVAs, which could have raised the total number to seven; the final two contingency EVAs were not made. In order to complete the mission without too much fatigue, the five EVAs were shared between two pairs of different astronauts alternating their shifts. During the flight, mission specialist Jeffrey A. Hoffman also spun a dreidel for the holiday of Hanukkah to a live audience watching via satellite. We celebrate this mission with a scale model of the Space Shuttle …

Buying my Art

You can have selected pictures of mine printed on Pixieset (Selective Coloration), PictRS (Landscapes) or VIEWBUG (Both and more), if you like them. Please click on one of the links above or the buttons below …
PictRS is also accessible via the QR code:
Meine Kunst Kaufen

Sie können einige ausgewählte Bilder bei Pixieset (Selective Kolorierung), bei PictRS (Landschaften) oder VIEWBUG (Beide und mehr) kaufen, falls Sie Ihnen Diese gefallen, klicken Sie auf einem der obigen Links oder den einer den unteren Buttons…
PictRS ist auch über den QR Code erreichbar:


December 2
If you are interested what else happened on this day, please click on the calendar or press the button below:



