STS-61

STS-61 was the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The mission launched on 2 December 1993 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission restored the spaceborne observatory's vision, marred by spherical aberration, with the installation of a new main camera and a corrective optics package. This correction occurred more than three and a half years after the Hubble was launched aboard STS-31 in April of 1990. The flight also brought instrument upgrades and new solar arrays to the telescope. With its very heavy workload, the STS-61 mission was one of the most complex in the Shuttle's history. It lasted almost 11 days, and crew members made five spacewalks (EVAs), an all-time record. Even the re-positioning of Intelsat VI on STS-49 in May 1992 required only four. The flight plan allowed for two additional EVAs, which could have raised the total number to seven. The final two contingency EVAs were not made. In order to complete the mission without too much fatigue, the five extravehicular working sessions were shared between two pairs of different astronauts alternating their shifts.

STS-61 (disambiguation)

NASA flew a number of Space Shuttle missions in the early and mid-1980s with designations derived from STS-61.

The ambiguity was the result of a NASA decision to change designation of missions starting in Fiscal Year 1984. Previously, missions were designated in the order they were flown (i.e., STS-9 indicated the ninth shuttle mission). The new designation was designed to accommodate a dramatically increased launch manifest, address the addition of a west coast launch site and to resolve confusion from manifested missions not being flown in order due to delays. The new designation used a three-part designator following the term "STS". The first number represents the fiscal year of the launch, the second represents the launch location (1=Florida, 2=California) and the alphanumeric code represents the order launched (i.e., A is first, B is second, etc.). Therefore, the first mission using this designation, which was the tenth shuttle mission was STS 41B. It launched in FY 1984, from Florida and was the first to launch in that year.