30 Years Ago: STS-67, the Astro-2 Mission

NASA · March 4

On March 2, 1995, space shuttle Endeavour launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its eighth trip into space, on the STS-67 Astro-2 mission. The crew included Commander Stephen Oswald, Pilot William Gregory, Mission Specialists John Grunsfeld, Wendy Lawrence, and Tamara Jernigan – who served as payload commander on the mission – and Payload Specialists Samuel Durrance and Ronald Parise. During their then record setting 17-day mission, the astronauts used the three ultraviolet telescopes of the Astro-2 payload to observe hundreds of celestial objects. The mission ended with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Group photo of seven astronauts wearing orange spacesuits with no helmets, with a galaxy in the background. — Official photo of the STS-67 crew of Stephen Oswald, seated at left, Tamara Jernigan, and William Gregory; Ronald Parise, standing at left, Wendy Lawrence, John Grunsfeld, and Samuel Durrance.
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Circular crew patch with a space shuttle and telescopes pointing out of the payload bay toward stars and Jupiter, with the astronauts' names printed around the border. — The STS-67 crew patch.
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Square patch with a space shuttle and a stylized spiral galaxy and the word ASTRO-2 printed in yellow capitals. — The Astro-2 payload patch.
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In August 1993, NASA assigned Jernigan as the payload commander for Astro-2, for a weeklong flight aboard Columbia then targeted for late 1994. Jernigan, selected by NASA in 1985, had previously flown aboard STS-40 and STS-52. Two months later, NASA assigned Grunsfeld, a space rookie from the class of 1992, as a mission specialist. In January 1994, NASA rounded out the crew by assigning Oswald, Gregory, Lawrence, Durrance, and Parise. Oswald, from the class of 1985, had flown previously as pilot on STS-42 and STS-56, while STS-67 represented the first spaceflight for Gregory, selected in 1990, and Lawrence, chosen in 1992. Durrance and Parise, selected as payload specialists in 1984, had flown on STS-35, the Astro-1 mission.

Daytime view of a space shuttle approaching its launch pad during rollout. — Space shuttle Endeavour rolls out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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Group photo of seven astronauts wearing blue flight suits in the White Room at the launch pad. — The STS-67 crew during a countdown demonstration test.
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A group of seven astronauts wearing orange spacesuits without helmets walk out of a building to board a silver van. — The STS-67 astronauts walk out for their ride to the launch pad.
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The Astro-2 science payload consisted of three ultraviolet telescopes mounted on a Spacelab instrument pointing system in the shuttle’s cargo bay. The trio of telescopes flew previously on STS-35, the Astro-1 mission, in December 1990. That mission, originally planned to fly on STS-61E in March 1986, remained grounded following the Challenger accident. Due to equipment malfunctions, the Astro-1 mission only achieved 80% of its objectives, leading to the reflight of the instruments on Astro-2, originally planned as a seven-day mission aboard Discovery. A switch to Columbia enabled a mission twice as long, with significantly more observation time. A scheduled maintenance period for Columbia resulted in Astro-2 switching to Endeavour, with a new flight duration of more than 15 days, but a launch delay to February 1995. The three telescopes supported 23 different studies, observing more than 250 celestial objects including joint observations with the Hubble Space Telescope of the planet Jupiter.

Nighttime view of a space shuttle launch — The launch of space shuttle Endeavour on STS-67 to begin the Astro-2 mission.
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Image of a space shuttle payload bay with several telescopes pointing out of the bay toward a black sky, with a portion of the Earth visible. — The Astro-2 telescopes deployed in Endeavour’s payload bay.
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Endeavour returned to Kennedy following its previous flight, STS-68, in October 1994. After servicing the orbiter, workers rolled it to the vehicle assembly building on Feb. 3, 1995, for mating with its external tank and solid rocket boosters, and then out to Launch Pad 39A on Feb. 8. At 1:38 a.m. EST on March 2, Endeavour thundered into the night sky to begin the STS-67 mission. Eight and a half minutes later, the shuttle and its crew had reached space.

Shortly after reaching orbit, the crew opened the payload bay doors and deployed the shuttle’s radiators. Jernigan and Durrance activated the Spacelab pallet and its pointing system and the telescopes. The crew split into two shifts to enable data collection around the clock during the mission. Oswald, Gregory, Grunsfeld, and Parise made up the red shift while Lawrence, Jernigan, and Durrance comprised the blue shift.

Image of a male astronaut wearing a blue polo shirt and working on an experiment in the shuttle middeck. — Stephen Oswald conducts a session with the Middeck Active Control Experiment.
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Image of a female astronaut working on an experiment in the shuttle middeck. — Wendy Lawrence monitors a protein crystal growth apparatus.
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View of two male astronauts with a laptop working in the shuttle's aft flight deck. — John Grunsfeld, left, and Samuel Durrance at the controls of the telescopes on the shuttle’s aft flight deck.
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Image of a male astronaut in a blue and white polo shirt working on an experiment in the shuttle middeck. — William Gregory conducts a biotechnology experiment in Endeavour’s middeck.
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Image of a male and a female astronaut holding a fanlike arrangement of paper between them. — Samuel Durrance and Tamara Jernigan assemble the day’s teleprinter message.
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Image of a male astronaut floating near a shuttle overhead window. — Ronald Parise floats near the shuttle’s overhead window.
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For the remainder of the mission, the astronauts operated the telescopes, conducting 385 maneuvers of Endeavour to point the instruments at the celestial targets. The results met or exceeded preflight expectations. The crew also conducted a series of middeck investigations in technology demonstration and biotechnology. The Middeck Active Control Experiment studied the active control of flexible structures in space. Five years later, a newer version flew as one of the first experiments on the International Space Station.

View from space of a gulf with blue waters and brown land on both sides. — A selection of the STS-67 crew Earth observation photographs. Gulf of Batabano, Cuba.
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View from space of a desert coastline on the right and ocean on the left. — Antofagasta, Chile.
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View from space of a mid-ocean volcano. — Volcanic eruption on Barren Island, Andaman Islands.
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View from space of a desert coastline on the right, with a blue water channel with several islands on the left. — Disappointment Reach, Western Australia.
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Like all space crews, the STS-67 astronauts also spent time taking photographs of the Earth using handheld cameras. The mission’s long duration enabled them to image many targets.

Group photo of seven astronauts, three in front and four in back, on the shuttle's flight deck. — The seven-person STS-67 crew poses for an in-flight photo.
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Photograph of a space shuttle landing on a desert runway with the drag chute open. — Endeavour touches down at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
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On March 14, an eighth American joined the STS-67 crew in space when NASA astronaut Norman Thagard blasted off with two cosmonauts, headed for space station Mir. With three other cosmonauts already aboard Mir, the total number of humans in orbit grew to a then-record of 13. Two days later, Oswald and Thagard, who had flown together on STS-42, talked to each other via ship-to-ship radio.

Inclement weather at Kennedy thwarted the planned reentry on March 17, and the astronauts spent an extra day in space. On March 18, they again waved off a Kennedy landing and one orbit later, Oswald and Gregory piloted Endeavour to a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The crew had flown 262 orbits around the Earth in 16 days, 15 hours, and 9 minutes, at the time the longest space shuttle mission. A few hours later, a large crowd greeted the astronauts upon their return to Houston’s Ellington Field. Endeavour began its ferry flight back to Kennedy on March 26, arriving there the next day. Workers towed Endeavour to the processing facility to prepare it for its next flight, STS-73, then planned for September 1995.

Watch the crew narrate a video about the STS-67 mission.