February 27, 2017 - Sprucing Up Hubble
Sprucing Up Hubble When it was deployed in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was designed to be regularly serviced and upgraded as new technology became available. It’s fitting, then, that the fourth servicing mission, STS-109, which was launched fifteen years ago this week, was undertaken by the shuttle Columbia, which itself had recently undergone nearly three years of renovations. Seen here, astronaut Richard Linnehan (facing camera) and John Grunsfeld (partially visible behind Linnehan) work to replace the starboard solar array on the Hubble in Columbia’s cargo bay. Linnehan is standing on a foot restraint connected to Columbia’s robot arm. Other upgrades to Hubble during STS-109 included installing the Advanced Camera for Surveys and a new Power Control Unit.
Image credit: NASA
Weekly Calendar
February 27 - March 5, 2017
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 27
Mars 0.6° north of Uranus
1897: Bernard Lyot born
1970: HL-10 sets lifting body altitude record of 90,300 feet
Tuesday 28
Venus 10° north of Moon
1959: Discoverer 1 launched
1966: Gemini IX primary crew, Bassett & See, killed in plane crash
1990: STS-36 Atlantis launched
2007: New Horizons spacecraft flies past Jupiter en route to Pluto
Wednesday 1
Ash Wednesday
Uranus 4° N of Moon
Mars 4° N of Moon
Neptune in conjunction with Sun
1927: George Abell born
1966: Venera 3 impacts on Venus
1982: Venera 13 returns first color photos from the surface of Venus
2002: STS-109 Columbia launched
2016: ISS crew completes one-year mission
Thursday 2
Venus appears stationary
Ceres 0.8° north of Moon
1972: Pioneer 10 launched
1995: STS-67 Endeavour launched (Astro-2 mission)
2004: Rosetta cometary probe launched
Friday 3
Moon at perigee
1959: Pioneer 4 launched
1969: Apollo 9 launched
Saturday 4
Aldebaran 0.2° south of Moon
1979: Jupiter’s rings discovered
1994: STS-62 Columbia launched
Sunday 5
First Qtr Moon 6:32 AM ET
1512: Gerardus Mercator born
1978: Landsat 3 launched
1979: Voyager 1 flies by Jupiter
1982: Venera 14 lands on Venus, returns color photos of Venus’s surface