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Shuttle mission aims to make history
By Robin Lloyd (CNN) -- The space shuttle Columbia is set to nod back to man's first walk on the moon 30 years ago and make history itself as it launches July 20 from Kennedy Space Center carrying a huge telescope for release into Earth's orbit, astronauts said Wednesday. Columbia will be the first U.S. space mission with a woman commander, carry the heaviest payload ever in the shuttle's history and, if all goes well, deploy one of NASA's most ambitious telescopes ever. "This mission is a dream come true for all of us, not just to fly on the shuttle but to fly on this very important mission," said Eileen Collins, a U.S. Air Force colonel who became an astronaut in 1990. The STS-93 commander previously flew on two shuttle missions to the Russian space station Mir. Columbia, set for a 12:36 a.m. launch, will be making its 26th flight and the July 20 flight marks the 94th shuttle mission. The shuttle is scheduled to touch down back at Kennedy Space Center on July 24. The entire mission will cost $2.78 billion, making it one of NASA's last big-budget efforts.
The crew, which started training for the often-delayed mission 15 months ago, includes pilot Jeff Ashby, a U.S. Navy captain who will make his first shuttle flight with the mission. Ashby was a 15-year-old dishwasher when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, he said. He credited the mission with many technological advances in the areas of computers and miniaturization and said the same could be expected with Chandra. "We don't know what its (payoff) will be," he said. "But we do this in hopes that we will get a big return on our investment." The shuttle also is loaded with experiments and studies involving sensor calibration, high-definition television, an ultraviolet imaging system and a mid-deck telescope to be operated by Steve Hawley, a NASA astronaut with a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics. The crew members made their comments during a news conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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Artist's rendering of the Chandra X-ray Observatory |
Like a handful of other NASA orbiters, it will be released from the shuttle's cargo bays. Once the shuttle is 53 nautical miles above Earth, the telescope will be raised to a 58-degree angle before springs release it into space at a speed of 6 inches per second. It will fire its four rocket thrusters to put itself into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth. Solar panels will provide it with power over its mission, designed for at least five years.
The telescope works by collecting X-rays as they skip across four concentric mirrors, about four-feet in diameter in total, that focus the beams down to collecting and imaging instruments such as a high-resolution camera and an imaging spectrometer.
Scientists hope to open Chandra's telescope cover for its first observation about 20 days into its mission, focusing on supernova explosions in the constellation Cassiopeia.
The mission will be operated under contract with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The road to Chandra's launch was longer than expected, said Fred Wojtalik, project and program manager. The first congressional authorization for the X-ray telescope came in 1987. Initially, it was set for launch in August 1998.
Every safeguard has been taken to prevent a mirror design mishap such as that which afflicted the Hubble Space Telescope and set that mission back a few years, staffers for the current mission said.
Precautions have included extensive calibration tests on the ground, which was not done with Hubble, Wojtalik said. More scientists were included in the development phases of Chandra, than they were with Hubble, he said.
The telescope mission has more than one Achilles' heel: it cannot be serviced by astronauts, as Hubble was, once it is in space, and it cannot be returned to Earth once it is launched.
Also, once it is on its own, Chandra will rely on a booster rocket that failed during a classified U.S. Air Force launch in April 1999. Under an agreement with the Air Force, Wojtalik refused to reveal findings from an investigation of that launch, but he said the Air Force shared its findings with NASA and the agency is confident that the problem will not recur.
By now, everyone involved in the shuttle mission is tired of practicing, Wojtalik said.
"We're all enthusiastic," he said. "We're equipped to do the mission right and we're going to go forward and do the mission right ... and the world will be proud of us."
NASA scraps comet-lander mission
June 29, 1999
NASA's X-ray space telescope readied for launch pad
June 18, 1999
The space shuttle shell game
June 8, 1999
Next shuttle mission to deploy X-ray observatory
December 28, 1998
Chandra X-ray Observatory News
NASA Human Spaceflight
NASA Newsroom -- Chandra News
Kennedy Space Center
Chandra Xray Observatory
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