NASA
It was 30 years ago today that space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B in Florida to embark on STS-61...the first servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope!
This was an immensely important flight—as it was discovered just weeks after its April 1990 launch that Hubble's primary mirror had a manufacturing defect, causing initial images to be blurry. On STS-61, Endeavour carried new instruments—such as the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and COSTAR (Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement)—that had built-in adjustable mirrors which compensated for the defect.
Endeavour's flight was hugely successful...with sharp images of spiral galaxies taken by Hubble being unveiled by NASA less than a year after the repair mission.
I was so stoked for STS-61 and how it concluded successfully that I managed to get a page devoted to this historic flight in my elementary school yearbook (as shown below)! I was an 8th grader back in late 1993, and being on the yearbook staff that year, I convinced my yearbook adviser that this "huge space mission" (I believe those were my exact words to her) was worth putting in the publication.
I'm glad that my adviser agreed! Happy Saturday.
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