|
|
|
|
| STS-93 MISSION MARKS MILESTONES IN SPACE FLIGHT HISTORY |
| NASA will mark milestones in both human space flight history and astronomy on the 95th Space Shuttle mission with the launch of the first female Shuttle Commander and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Columbia is scheduled to liftoff at 12:36 a.m. EDT from Launch Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center on July 20 on the STS-93 mission, carrying Chandra to orbit to join the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory as the next in NASA's series of "Great Observatories". Chandra will spend at least five years in a highly elliptical orbit which will carry it one-third of the way to the moon to observe invisible and often violent realms of the cosmos containing some of the most intriguing mysteries in astronomy ranging from comets in our solar system to quasars at the edge of the universe. At 50,162 pounds, Chandra, along with its two-stage, solid-fuel Inertial Upper Stage booster and associated cargo bay equipment is the heaviest payload ever launched on the Shuttle. Chandra is named after the famed Nobel Laureate astrophysicist, Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Columbia's 26th flight is led by Air Force Col. Eileen Collins, who will become the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission following two previous flights as Pilot. Collins, 42, flew to the Mir Space Station on STS-63 in 1995 in the first Shuttle rendezvous with the Russian space outpost and revisited Mir during the STS-84 mission in 1997. Her Pilot is Navy Captain Jeff Ashby, 45, who will be making his first flight into space. Air Force Lt. Col. Catherine "Cady" Coleman, 38, will be responsible for the deployment of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in this, her second flight into space. Steven A. Hawley, Ph.D., 47, who deployed the Hubble Space Telescope nine years ago, will be the flight engineer during launch and landing and will be responsible for many secondary experiments, including operation of the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System, a small telescope which will be mounted in the middeck of Columbia. This is Hawley's fifth flight. French Air Force Col. Michel Tognini, 49, of CNES, the French Space Agency, rounds out the crew. Tognini is making his second trip into space after spending two weeks on the Mir Space Station as a visiting cosmonaut in 1992. Columbia's planned five-day mission is scheduled to end with a night landing at the Kennedy Space Center just after 11:30 p.m. EDT on July 24 to wrap up the second Shuttle flight of the year. |
