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DART Team Earns Smithsonian Michael Collins Trophy for Successful Planetary Defense Test Mission
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By Space Force
The two provisional Integrated Mission Deltas in October, organizing service activities around mission areas instead of functional specialties to strengthen unity of command for readiness and energizing unity of effort for capability development, are reporting emerging successes
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By NASA
Dec. 4, 2023
MEDIA ADVISORY: M23-001
Four astronauts, including the current record-holder for the longest single stay in space aboard the International Space Station, will make their first public appearance in Houston since returning to Earth. The crew will be available for interviews at 5 p.m. CST Wednesday, Dec. 6, at Space Center Houston.
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, and Frank Rubio, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata, will be at NASA Johnson Space Center’s visitor center to share highlights from their missions during a free, public event at 6:15 p.m. At 7:40 p.m., the crew will help recognize key contributors to its mission success in an awards ceremony.
Reporters may request an in-person interview no later than 12 p.m. Dec. 6 by emailing Dana Davis at dana.l.davis@nasa.gov.
Crew-5
NASA’s SpaceX Crew mission launched in October 2022 with Mann, Cassada, and Wakata, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, on the fifth commercial crew rotation mission to the International Space Station. The crew spent 157 days aboard the space station, traveled 66,577,531 miles, and completed 2,512 Earth orbits, splashing down off the coast of Tampa, Florida, on March 11. This was the first spaceflight for Mann, Cassada, and Kikina. It was the fifth flight for Wakata who has now logged a total of 505 days in space.
Soyuz Crew
The international crew that flew on the Soyuz spacecraft served on Expeditions 68 and 69 aboard the space station. The flight launched on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft in September 2022 with Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. The crew spent 371 days aboard the space station, traveled 157,412,306 statute miles, and completed 5,963 Earth orbits, landing in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft on Sept. 27, 2023. This was the second spaceflight for Prokepyev and Petelin. This was Rubio’s first spaceflight mission and it broke the U.S. record for a single spaceflight by an American.
While on the station, the crew members conducted important scientific investigations and helped maintain the orbiting laboratory. While aboard they tested hydroponic and aeroponic techniques to grow plants without using soil, studied how liquids move in a container in simulated lunar gravity to generate data to improve Moon rover designs, and tested an on-demand system to produce specific quantities of key nutrients from yogurt, kefir, and a yeast-based beverage. The crew also released Uganda and Zimbabwe’s first satellites.
Stay current on space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the station Facebook and Instagram accounts and the space station blog.
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Chelsey Ballarte
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
chelsey.n.ballarte@nasa.gov
Dana Davis
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-244-0933
dana.l.davis@nasa.gov
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By NASA
“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 disappointed scientists who could not obtain the sharp images they had expected. But thanks to the Hubble’s built-in feature of on-orbit servicing, NASA devised a plan to correct the telescope’s optics during the first planned repair mission. The agency assigned one of its most experienced crews to undertake the complex tasks, naming Richard O. Covey, Kenneth D. Bowersox, Kathryn C. Thornton, Claude Nicollier of the European Space Agency, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, F. Story Musgrave, and Thomas D. Akers to the STS-61 first Hubble Servicing Mission. The first all veteran crew since the STS-26 return to flight mission in 1988 had a cumulative 16 previous missions among them and all had previous spacewalking experience. During their 11-day flight in December 1993, they repaired the telescope during an unprecedented five spacewalks in a single space shuttle mission, rendering it more capable than originally designed.
Left: The STS-61 crew of Kenneth D. Bowersox, sitting left, Kathryn C. Thornton, F. Story Musgrave, and Claude Nicollier of the European Space Agency; Richard O. Covey, standing left, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, and Thomas D. Akers. Middle: The STS-61 crew patch. Right: Endeavour rolls over from Launch Pad 39A to 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first Hubble servicing mission proved to be one of the most complex up to that time. With that in mind, on March 16, 1992, NASA named Musgrave, an astronaut since 1967 and a veteran of four previous missions including conducting the first spacewalk of the shuttle era, as the payload commander and one of the four spacewalkers for STS-61. On Aug. 28, NASA named Hoffman, Akers, and Thornton as the other three spacewalkers who in teams of two would carry out the five spacewalks on alternating days. Finally, on Dec. 3, NASA named Covey, Bowersox, and Nicollier as the commander, pilot, and flight engineer, respectively, for the mission. Nicollier also served as the prime operator of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), or robotic arm, with Bowersox as his backup. The seven-person crew trained intensely for the next year preparing for the complex tasks ahead, including simulating the spacewalks at the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the Weightless Environment Training Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Meanwhile, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, workers prepared space shuttle Endeavour for its fifth journey into space. They rolled the shuttle, assembled with its external tank and solid rocket booster, to Launch Pad 39A on Oct. 28. However, following a wind storm on Oct. 30 that contaminated the payload changeout room with sandy grit, managers decided to move Endeavour to neighboring Pad B on Nov. 15, in only the second roll around in shuttle history.
Left: Schematic of the Hubble Space Telescope’s major components. Middle: Workers inspect the Hubble Space Telescope’s 94-inch diameter primary mirror prior to assembly. Right: Astronauts release the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990 during the STS-31 mission.
The first concrete plan for placing an optical telescope in space, above the obscuring and distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, originated with Princeton University astronomer Lyman S. Spitzer in 1946. In 1972, NASA first proposed a plan to launch a Large Space Telescope (LST) and five years later Congress approved the funding. As envisioned, the LST would contain a 94-inch diameter primary mirror and launch on the space shuttle, then still under development, in 1983. With an expected on-orbit lifetime of 15 years, the LST’s instruments would make observations primarily in the visible and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. In 1983, managers abandoned the original plan to use the space shuttle to return the telescope to Earth for refurbishment and relaunch in favor of in-orbit maintenance and upgrades by astronauts during spacewalks in the shuttle’s payload bay. The same year, NASA renamed the LST after astronomer Edwin P. Hubble and set the launch for October 1986. The Challenger accident in January 1986 delayed the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope until April 24, 1990, during Discovery’s STS-31 mission. The shuttle flew to an unusually high 380-mile orbit to ensure that Hubble would operate above as much of the Earth’s atmosphere as possible. After initial on-orbit activation and checkout of the telescope’s systems, it was time for the much-anticipated “first light” images. The initial images, however, puzzled scientists as they showed stars not as single well-focused points of light but as blurred and fuzzy. Investigators learned that the telescope’s primary mirror suffered from a production error, its edges too flat by 0.003 mm, resulting in an optical problem called spherical aberration. While this significantly degraded the capability of several of Hubble’s instruments to return exceptionally detailed photographs, the telescope still produced some good images. NASA put in place a plan to fix the Hubble’s optical problems without resorting to repairing the mirror. With the spherical aberration well-defined, engineers designed a set of mirrors that astronauts could place aboard Hubble during the previously planned first servicing mission.
Left: Liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-61 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Middle: The Hubble Space Telescope as seen from Endeavour during the rendezvous, with the end of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), or robotic arm, visible at lower right. Right: On the shuttle’s flight deck, European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier operates the RMS to grapple Hubble.
Planning for the first servicing mission to Hubble began in 1988, two years before the launch of the telescope. With the post-launch discovery of spherical aberration, the scope of the first servicing mission changed dramatically. The primary goal now focused on correcting the telescope’s optics to ensure that its onboard instruments could function as planned. Engineers developed the Corrective Optics Space telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), a tool to correct Hubble’s blurry vision, consisting of five pairs of corrective mirrors placed in front of the Faint Object Camera, the Faint Object Spectrograph, and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) instruments. Installing COSTAR required the removal of the High-Speed Photometer, the sacrifice of one instrument outweighed by the saving of the other three. The astronauts also replaced the original Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC) with the more advanced WFPC2 to improve the telescope’s ultraviolet performance. The WFPC2 carried its own corrective optics. The astronauts also replaced fuses and the telescope’s two solar arrays, one of which imparted vibrations that prevented precise pointing. On Dec. 2, 1993, space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Pad 39B at 4:27 a.m. EST, after a one-day weather delay. Following insertion into an unusually high 360-mile orbit to reach Hubble, the astronauts began their initial on-orbit operations by opening the payload bay doors. The next day, Covey and Bowersox performed several engine burns as part of the rendezvous maneuvers. The astronauts checked out the rendezvous radar, the Ku-band antenna, the Canadian-built Remote Manipulator System (RMS) or robotic arm, and the spacesuits, and reduced the pressure inside the shuttle from 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) to 10.2 psi in preparation for the upcoming spacewalks to reduce the pre-breathe time required to prevent decompression sickness or the bends.
Left: Endeavour continues its approach to the Hubble Space Telescope. Middle: Hubble secured onto its flight support structure in Endeavour’s payload bay. Right: The STS-61 crew poses on Endeavour’s flight deck, with Hubble visible through the windows.
On the third day, Covey brought Endeavour to within 30 feet of Hubble so Nicollier could grapple it with the RMS. Covey radioed Houston, “Endeavour has a firm handshake with Mr. Hubble’s telescope.” Nicollier berthed the giant telescope onto its turntable-like Flight Support System (FSS) in the shuttle’s payload bay. Nicollier then used the RMS cameras to perform an inspection of Hubble.
First spacewalk. Left: European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier operates the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) or robotic arm in support of the spacewalks. Middle: Astronaut F. Story Musgrave works on the Hubble. Right: Near the end of the first spacewalk, Musgrave releases bolts on the replacement solar arrays.
With Nicollier operating the RMS as he did for all five spacewalks, Hoffman and Musgrave conducted the mission’s first excursion on flight day four. They replaced two sets of Rate Sensing Units that contain gyroscopes to orient the telescope and replaced electrical control units and fuse plugs, providing the telescope with six healthy gyroscopes. Musgrave and Hoffman prepared for the next day’s spacewalk by loosening bolts on the replacement solar arrays, stored in the forward part of the payload bay. The pair spent 7 hours and 54 minutes outside on this first spacewalk. The ground commanded the two existing solar arrays on the telescope to retract, and while one did so the second one did not due to a bent support rod.
Second spacewalk. Left: Astronaut Kathryn C. Thornton, on the end of the Remote Manipulator System, releases Hubble’s old solar array that failed to retract properly. Middle: The solar array drifting away from space shuttle Endeavour. Right: Thornton disconnects Hubble’s retracted solar array.
On flight day five, Thornton and Akers stepped outside for the mission’s second spacewalk, lasting 6 hours 36 minutes. The primary tasks revolved around replacing the telescope’s two solar arrays. First, they disconnected the array that would not retract as planned, working only at night since the array generated electricity when exposed to sunlight. With Thornton on the end of the RMS, she released the partially open array as Nicollier pulled her away. Bowersox fired thrusters to separate from the array, the plumes impinging on it causing it to flap like a giant bird. Thornton and Akers then connected one of the new arrays, rotated the telescope on its FSS, disconnected the other array, stowing it in the payload bay for return to Earth, and replaced it with a new one.
Third spacewalk. Left: Astronauts Jeffrey A. Hoffman, left, and F. Story Musgrave have removed the old Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC) from Hubble, the black rectangle at upper left shows its former location. Middle: With European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier operating the Remote Manipulator System from inside the shuttle, Hoffman guides the new WFPC2 into position, with Musgrave ready to assist. Right: Musgrave, left, and Hoffman have installed WFPC2, the white triangle in the middle of the telescope, with Hoffman about to pick up WFPC1 temporarily stowed on the side of the payload bay and place it in its permanent location for return to Earth.
On the sixth day, Hoffman and Musgrave took their turn outside for the mission’s third spacewalk. Their primary task involved the replacement of the original WFPC with the more advance WFPC2 instrument. With Nicollier controlling the RMS, Hoffman removed the WFPC1 from the telescope and temporarily stowed it on the side of the payload bay. He then removed WFPC2 from its stowage location and he and Musgrave installed it into the telescope. After stowing WFPC1 in the payload bay for return to Earth, Hoffman replaced two magnetometers, essentially compasses the telescope uses to determine its orientation in space. This third spacewalk lasted 6 hours 47 minutes.
Fourth spacewalk. Left: Astronaut Kathryn C. Thornton works in shuttle Endeavour’s payload bay. Middle: With European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier controlling the Remote Manipulator System, Thornton, top, removes the Corrective Optics Space telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) from its storage location. Right: Astronaut Thomas D. Akers, inside the Hubble Space Telescope prepares to install the COSTAR.
For Akers and Thornton, the primary tasks of the fourth spacewalk on the mission’s seventh day focused on the removal of the HSP instrument and replacing it with the COSTAR system to correct the telescope’s optics. Akers opened the telescope’s shroud doors and with Thornton removed the HSP, temporarily stowing it on the side of the payload bay. Nicollier then maneuvered the RMS with Thornton to pick up COSTAR from its storage location and translate them to Hubble where Akers awaited to help with the installation. After closing the door and stowing the HSP, and installing an electronics package with additional computer memory, Akers and Thornton finished the 6-hour 50-minut spacewalk.
Fifth spacewalk. Left: Remote Manipulator System operator European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier translates Jeffrey A. Hoffman and F. Story Musgrave to the top of the Hubble Space Telescope. Middle: The second of two solar arrays unfurls as Hoffman and Musgrave continue working. Right: Hoffman celebrates the first Hannukah in space, with a spinning dreidel floating nearby.
On the morning of the eighth day, Bowersox used Endeavour’s thrusters to slightly raise and circularize Hubble’s orbit. Hoffman and Musgrave stepped outside for the mission’s fifth and final spacewalk. When the two newly installed solar arrays failed to deploy after ground commanding, they manually deployed them, and the arrays unfurled without incident. They next replaced the solar array drive electronics and fitted an electronic connection box on the GHRS instrument. Hoffman and Musgrave’s final task involved installing covers, manufactured by Bowersox and Nicollier on board the shuttle, on the telescope’s magnetometers. The final spacewalk lasted 7 hours 21 minutes, bringing the mission’s total spacewalk time to 35 hours 28 minutes. Once back inside Endeavour, Hoffman celebrated the first Hanukkah in space during a televised broadcast, displaying a traveling menorah, unlit of course, and a spinning dreidel.
Left: European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier grapples the Hubble Space Telescope, with its high-gain antenna deployed, just prior to release. Middle: After its release, Hubble slowly drifts away from Endeavour. Right: A distant view of Hubble, right, with a crescent Moon.
On flight day nine, Nicollier grappled Hubble with the RMS for the final time and lifted it above the payload bay. Ground controllers commanded its aperture door to open, and Nicollier released the telescope. Bowersox fired Endeavour’s thrusters to slowly back away from the telescope. The next day, the astronauts enjoyed a well-deserved day of rest. They returned the shuttle’s cabin pressure to 14.7 psi and tidied up the spacecraft. On the mission’s 11th day, Covey and Bowersox tested Endeavour’s flight control surfaces and practiced touchdowns using a laptop computer, all in preparation for deorbit, entry, and landing the following day.
Left: Astronaut Richard O. Covey guides Endeavour to a landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Middle: Workers at KSC continue to safe Endeavour following its landing. Right: Images of M100 galactic nucleus before, left, and after the first servicing mission showing the improved optical qualities.
On Dec. 13, 1993, their 12th and final day in space, the astronauts donned their pressure suits and prepared for the return to Earth. Due to predicted worsening weather conditions at KSC, Mission Control elected to bring them home one orbit earlier than planned. Covey guided Endeavour to a smooth landing at night at KSC, concluding a flight of 10 days, 19 hours, 59 minutes. They circled the Earth 163 times. Within a month, new images from Hubble indicated the repairs returned the telescope to its expected capabilities, providing astronomers with a unique observation platform. The lessons learned from planning and executing the complex series of spacewalks, with extensive coordination with teams on the ground, proved highly useful not only for future Hubble servicing mission but also for the difficult spacewalks required to assemble and maintain the International Space Station.
Left: Timeline of the Hubble Space Telescope’s instruments and their replacements during servicing missions. Right: Hubble as it appeared after its release during the final servicing mission in 2009.
Although the STS-61 crew’s work left the Hubble Space Telescope in better condition than originally designed, over the years it required additional servicing to ensure it met its expected 15-year on-orbit life. Four additional shuttle crews serviced the telescope between 1997 and 2009, and today it carries a suite of instruments far more advanced than its original complement. During the five servicing missions, 16 space walking astronauts conducted 23 spacewalks totaling more than 165 hours, or just under 7 days, to make repairs or improvements to the telescope’s capabilities. To summarize the discoveries made by scientists using data from the Hubble Space Telescope is well beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that during its more than 30 years of operation, information and images returned by Hubble continue to revolutionize astronomy, literally causing scientists to rewrite textbooks, and have dramatically altered how the public views the wonders of the universe. On the technical side, the launch of Hubble and the servicing missions to maintain and upgrade its capabilities have proven conclusively the value of maintainability of space-based scientific platforms.
Watch the STS-61 crew narrate a video of their Hubble servicing mission.
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Last Updated Dec 04, 2023 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Delegates from around 200 countries are convened at the United Nations COP28 summit in Dubai to assess the action they are taking to combat the climate crisis. With satellites fundamental to understanding and monitoring climate change, ESA has awarded a contract to Airbus to take the TRUTHS satellite mission to its next development phase.
TRUTHS is set to provide the gold reference for climate measurements, thereby giving decision-makers more confidence in the data they use for climate action.
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By NASA
6 min read
Hubble Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 1
Astronaut F. Story Musgrave works in the space shuttle Endeavour’s cargo bay while the solar array panels on the Hubble Space Telescope are deployed during the final Servicing Mission 1 spacewalk. NASA 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 in and out of place. But prior to launch, no one expected the first servicing mission to be of such urgency.
For three years, Hubble had been the punchline of late-night comics and editorial cartoons: the telescope that couldn’t see straight. Since its deployment in 1990, the telescope had been beaming blurry images back to Earth, the result of a flaw in the shape of its primary mirror. Though the mirror was off by only one-fiftieth the width of a human hair, the error had devastating consequences: the light from the mirror didn’t focus quite right. While the images were still better than those taken from Earth and science was still possible, their quality was not what the world expected.
The sense that you got was everybody was looking at the servicing and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope as the mission that could prove NASA’s worth … There was this overarching focus and pressure on the success of this mission.
Richard Covey
Servicing Mission 1 Astronaut
Servicing Mission 1 was the solution. Aboard the shuttle were the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), along with other critical components to upgrade the telescope. WFPC2, responsible for the telescope’s visually impactful images, had built-in corrective optics to compensate for the mirror flaw and would replace the Wide Field/Planetary Camera that Hubble launched with. COSTAR was a refrigerator-sized component containing a constellation of mirrors, some only the size of a U.S. nickel, intended to correct and redirect light to the telescope’s other cameras and spectrographs.
Astronaut Kathryn C. Thornton grips a tool to perform servicing mission tasks on the Hubble Space Telescope during the fourth spacewalk of Servicing Mission 1. NASA The shuttle’s crew of seven astronauts was aware that not only Hubble’s fate was on their shoulders, but the public perception of NASA and its space program as well.
“If the Hubble repair is a failure, we can write off space science for the foreseeable future,” John Bahcall, the late astrophysicist who advocated for the telescope and a member of its science working group, told the New York Times in 1993.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Grace Weikert On Dec. 2, 2023, NASA commemorates the 30th anniversary of Servicing Mission 1 and its success in transforming Hubble into one of NASA’s greatest triumphs: a shining example of human ingenuity in the face of adversity.
During one of the most complex spacewalking missions ever attempted, astronauts conducted five extravehicular activities, totaling over 35 hours. They removed the High Speed Photometer instrument to add COSTAR and swapped out the original Wide Field/Planetary Camera for the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. They also installed other critical components to upgrade the telescope.
The crew of Servicing Mission 1 poses for a portrait on the space shuttle. In the front row from left to right are Swiss scientist Claude Nicollier, mission specialist; Kenneth D. Bowersox, pilot; and Richard O. Covey, mission commander. In the back row are the spacewalkers on this flight: F. Story Musgrave, payload commander; Jeffrey A. Hoffman, mission specialist; Kathryn D. Thornton, mission specialist; and Thomas D. Akers, mission specialist. NASA At 1 a.m. on December 18, 1993, about a week after the mission had ended, astronomers gathered around computers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore to witness the first new image from the telescope: a star, shining clear and pristine in the image without the hazy effects of Hubble’s flawed mirror. The new images were so dramatically different that even though the telescope needed around 13 weeks for adjustment to reach its full capabilities, NASA released them early. “It’s fixed beyond our wildest expectations,” said Ed Weiler, Hubble chief scientist during SM1, at a January 1994 press conference.
The look on people’s faces as this picture came up – this was an old [cathode ray] tube-type TV. It took a while for it to build up, but it got clearer and clearer and clearer. Everybody starts shouting.
Ed Weiler
Hubble chief scientist during SM1
Images of spiral galaxy M100 show the improvement in Hubble’s vision between Wide Field/Planetary Camera and its replacement instrument, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. NASA, STScI Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who had advocated diligently for Hubble, was the first to show off the new images to the public at the Jan. 13 press conference. “I’m happy to announce today that after its launch in 1990 and some of its earlier disappointments, the trouble with Hubble is over,” she said.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski displays a picture showing the difference between a star image taken before COSTAR’s installation and the same star after Servicing Mission 1 during the Jan. 13, 1993 press conference announcing the success of the mission. NASA Though Servicing Mission 1 is best remembered for its resolution of Hubble’s blurry vision, it accomplished a host of additional tasks that helped transform the telescope into the astronomical powerhouse it remains today.
By the time Servicing Mission 1 launched, the telescope’s gyroscopes – delicate pieces of equipment required to steer and point Hubble – were already breaking down. Three of the six gyroscopes, or gyros, aboard Hubble had failed. The other three – typically kept as backups – were in operation, the minimum number needed to keep Hubble collecting science data. Astronauts replaced four gyroscopes, a fix that would help keep the telescope running smoothly for several years.
Early in Hubble’s time in orbit, NASA discovered that the telescope’s solar arrays would expand and contract excessively in the alternating heat and cold of space as the telescope traveled in and out of sunlight, causing them to vibrate. This forced engineers to use Hubble’s computing capacity to compensate for the “jitter” and reduced observation time. Astronauts replaced Hubble’s solar arrays with new versions that brought the natural jitter down to acceptable levels.
Astronauts also performed an augmentation whose vital importance would become clear a year later: upgrading Hubble’s flight computer with a co-processor and associated memory. Just weeks before the disintegrating comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter in 1994, Hubble went into a protective “safe mode” due to a memory unit problem in the main computer. Engineers were able to use that co-processor’s memory to fix the problem, capturing stunning images of the gas giant being pummeled by comet fragments.
Hubble Memorable Moments: Comet Impact
Find out more about Servicing Mission 1 and its accomplishments
Servicing Mission 1’s impact echoed far beyond Hubble. The mission was a showcase for tasks that could be done in space, proving humanity’s ability to perform highly complex work in orbit. The lessons learned from training for Hubble and from the servicing work itself would be built upon for other astronaut missions, including the four subsequent servicing visits to Hubble between 1997-2009. These additional missions to Hubble would enable the installation of new, cutting-edge instruments, repair of existing science instruments, and the replacement of key hardware, keeping Hubble at the forefront of astrophysics exploration.
Further, the lessons learned from Servicing Mission 1 were a guiding force for work on the International Space Station, and for missions yet to occur. “A lot of the knowledge that was developed there transferred directly to construction of the International Space Station and it’ll transfer to the things we do with [the future orbiting lunar space station] Gateway someday,” said Kenneth Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, who was also astronaut on Servicing Mission 1. “And it’ll apply to things we do on the Moon and in deep space, going to Mars and beyond. It all links.”
To celebrate Servicing Mission 1, NASA is releasing a series of videos over the next two weeks featuring key players – astronauts, scientists, engineers, and more – as they reflect on the struggles and triumphs of that time, as well as the emotional and personal impact that Hubble and SM1 had on their lives. Follow @NASAHubble on X, Instagram, and Facebook, or go to nasa.gov/hubble to watch as the series kicks off this weekend.
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Last Updated Dec 01, 2023 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Contact Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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