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Courtesy of NASA
Astronauts take fifth spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope
News story originally written on February 18, 1997
Astronauts Mark Lee and Steve Smith of the space shuttle Discovery completed
their fifth and last spacewalk in the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The
spacewalk lasted 5 hours, 17 minutes. Now that the spacewalks are complete, the
next step is to redeploy the telescope back into its initial orbit. The HST was initially
placed into Discovery's payload bay so that
repairs could be made.
The Space Shuttle Discovery mission began with liftoff on February 11, 1997, at
3:55 am. The ten-day mission consists of making significant repairs and
improvements to the HST. These repairs are expected to
improve the science capabilities of the HST.
Two old astronomy instruments are to be replaced and upgrades will be made on HST's
guidance system.
The Discovery Space Shuttle crew consists of the following: commander Ken
Bowersox, pilot Scott Horowitz, Joe Tanner, Steve Hawley, Greg Harbaugh, Mark
Lee, and Steve Smith.
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