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Shuttle Discovery blasts off on Hubble service mission
February 11, 1997
Web posted at: 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 GMT)CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- NASA's space shuttle Discovery briefly turned the Florida night into day early Tuesday as it thundered into space on its 22nd flight, an upgrade mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.
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Discovery lifted off into a partly cloudy sky at the appointed hour of 3:55 a.m. EST with Commander Ken Bowersox and Pilot Scott Horowitz at the controls and five mission specialists riding shotgun.
The 10-day mission is the second of four planned visits to the orbiting Hubble telescope. Discovery's visit to the Hubble should leave it with spectacularly improved capabilities.
"With a little luck and a couple weeks, the best telescope in the universe will be even better than it is now," Bowersox said just before the $2 billion reusable spaceship blasted off.
NASA officials had worried Monday that the launch might be delayed or scrubbed due to readings of unusually high levels of oxygen in Discovery's fuselage.
Tests ruled out a leak in the shuttle's fuel cell power system, which combines extremely cold liquid oxygen with liquid hydrogen. The system also generates drinking water as a by-product of its operation.
NASA engineers concluded that they were seeing either a faulty sensor reading from gas detectors, or that the nitrogen gas used to ventilate the fuselage contained air.
Once in orbit, Discovery's astronauts will begin preparation for the capture of the school bus-size Hubble on Thursday. Astronaut and astronomer Steve Hawley, who helped place the Hubble in orbit seven years ago, is scheduled to capture the telescope with the shuttle's robotic arm and place it in the cargo bay for servicing.
Four spacewalks are planned to install $300 million worth of upgraded components and two new instruments. The latter, a near-infrared camera and a two-dimensional spectrograph, will allow the Hubble to see even farther into the depths of the universe and with greater detail.
Also making a return visit to the Hubble is Bowersox. He took part in the 1993 mission that fixed the telescope's defective optics.
"I'll never forget what I saw on the first flight as we were coming up over the telescope," recalled Bowersox. "You could see the blue of the ocean reflected by the silver of the telescope, and it just seemed to be glowing out the window."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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CNN Interactive's extended coverageRelated stories:
- Anxious NASA officials watch high readings on shuttle - February 10, 1997
- NASA looks for oxygen leak; shuttle liftoff still on schedul - February 9, 1997
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- Hubble Space Telescope Science
- Johnson Space Center Shuttle Countdown STS-82
- Space Station Mir Info Page
- Tracking the mission
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