Press Releases — 1993

The first Hubble Space Telescope (*) servicing mission ended this morning with a nighttime landing at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. The space shuttle Endeavour emerged from the Florida night sky and touched down at 0h26 a.m EST (06h26 a.m. CET).

The Hubble Space Telescope spread its wings this morning clearing the way for the release of the orbiting observatory. The telescope's twin European solar arrays slowly unfurled as shuttle Endeavour passed 593 kilometres above the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

The Hubble Space Telescope was fitted with a new set of solar arrays after a 6.5-hour spacewalk by Tom Akers and Kathy Thornton. These unique power-generating wings, supplied by the European Space Agency, will power the telescope for at least the remainder of the decade.Derek Eaton, ESA project manager, was overjoyed with the success of the day's spacewalk."To build two such massive arrays some years apart to such tight tolerances and have one replace the other with so few problems is a tribute to the design and manufacturing skills of ESA and British Aerospace, the prime contractor for the arrays", he said. "The skill of Kathy and Tom contributed greatly to this success".

The servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope(*) began today with an eight-hour spacewalk. One of the telescope's twin solar arrays was successfully rolled-up at the end of the day but the second array, which had one supporting beam that was bowed and twisted, failed to retract. The astronauts will jettison the troublesome right-hand wing and then proceed with replacement of the arrays as normal.

The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off in a blaze of light this morning on the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission(*). The spectacular pre-dawn lift-off, visible for hundreds of miles, occurred at 04h27 a.m. EST (10h27 a.m. CET). The launch was delayed from yesterday due to high crosswinds but the weather co-operated today and the shuttle lifted off on time into a clear, moon-lit sky.

At its 68th meeting on 4/5 November 1993, ESA's Science Programme Committee endorsed the recommendation of the Space Science Advisory Committee to implement ROSETTA, a comet rendezvous mission, as the third cornerstone and FIRST (the Far Infrared Space Telescope) as the fourth cornerstone of the Horizon 2000 programme. The launch dates will be 2003 and 2006, respectively. However, FIRST would return its scientific data earlier than ROSETTA, as the travel time to the comet is rather long.

The United States, Canada, Japan and Member States of the European Space Agency have been working together, on the basis of the Intergovernmental Agreement of 29 September 1988 on the Permanently Manned Civil Space Station, to design and develop a space station as the next milestone in the exploration of space.

After more than three years of efficient and successful operations, communications with ESA's scientific satellite Hipparcos were terminated on 15 August 1993. The Hipparcos satellite, a purely European undertaking, and the first space experiment dedicated to the highly accurate measurements of star positions, distances, and space motions, was launched in August 1989. Targeted for an operational lifetime of two and a half years, more than three years of high quality star measurements were eventually accumulated, and all of the original scientific goals of the mission have been fully accomplished.

Students attending the International Space University's (ISU) 1993 Summer session in Huntsville, Alabama, will have the opportunity to ask questions to the astronauts on board Space Shuttle Discovery (mission STS-51) on Monday July 19, 1993.

On Wednesday 7 July 1993, with its signature by Yuri Semenov, Director General of NPO Energia, and Fredrik Engstr.m, Director of Space Station and Microgravity at ESA, the agreement between ESA and NPO Energia concerning the missions to be undertaken by European astronauts on board the Mir space station in 1994 and 1995 was concluded.

Following the announcement by President Clinton that the United States were confirming their commitment to take part in developing a modular space station derived from the original Freedom concept, the ESA Director General Mr Jean- Marie Luton has expressed his satisfaction at this in a letter sent to Mr John Gibbons, the President's advisor on science and technology affairs.

On 9 June 1993, ESA's Ulysses spaceprobe became the first spacecraft to reach a latitude of more than 32 degrees relative to the Sun's equator. In doing so, Ulysses broke the existing record held by Voyager 1, which is currently exploring the depths of space beyond the solar system at a distance of more than 50 AU from the Sun (1 astronomical unit (AU) = 150 million km).

Space Shuttle Endeavour is now scheduled to lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre on 20 June 1993 for a 7 day mission highlighted by the retrieval of ESA's EURECA satellite. The launch window on June 20 opens at 9:38 hrs local time (15:38 hrs Paris time) and will extend for 1 hour and 11 minutes. In the nominal case, EURECA would be grappled and retrieved in the late afternoon hours of Wednesday 23 June.

ESA's Science Programme Committee, meeting at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk (the Netherlands) on 3 and 4 June 1993, has accepted the recommendations of the Space Science Advisory Committee and confirmed INTEGRAL (International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) as the second "medium sized" mission (M2) within the framework of the "Horizon 2000" scientific programme (see also ESA Information Note to the Press nr. 07-93 of 22 April 1993).

After 10 busy months in orbit at an altitude of about 500 km, the European Space Agency's Eureca satellite will be retrieved from Space by NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour, on the fourth day of the STS-57 mission currently scheduled for launch on 3 June 1993 (provisional launch window 2217h -2330h GMT = 0017h -0130h Paris time on 4 June). Physical contact between Endeavour's remote manipulator system (the robot arm in the Shuttle's cargo bay) and Eureca is planned to occur at 2324h GMT on 6 June (= 0124h Paris time on 7 June).

Mr Jean-Marie Luton, Director General of ESA, has today, Friday 7 May, selected the four ESA astronauts from among whom two will be chosen to take part in the precursor flights to Mir-1 scheduled in 1994 and 1995. They are Pedro Duque and Ulf Merbold for the ESA/Mir flight in September 1994 (mission 17), which will last 30 days, and Christer Fuglesang and Thomas Reiter for the ESA/Mir flight in August 1995 (mission 19), which will last 135 days.This selection was made on the recommendation of the ESA European Astronaut Centre, following a series of physical and medical tests.

After a successful lift-off on 26 April 1993 at 14:50 hrs, (UT) the second German Spacelab mission D-2 on board Space shuttle Columbia has reached orbit and operations have started as scheduled. On this occasion, ESA has sent up to space facilities hosting a number of European experiments to further expand the knowledge of basic phenomena in fluid physics and material sciences, and particularly to perform for the first time an integrated medical screening of the human body in the absence of gravity.

As announced by NASA, the Shuttle Columbia has had an aborted launch on Monday 22 March and it is presently expected that the countdown for the Spacelab D2 mission will not be resumed before three weeks.

Three interplanetary spacecraft, ESA's Ulysses and NASA's Mars Observer and Galileo, now quietly heading towards separate destinations (the poles of the Sun, Mars and Jupiter respectively), may soon prove the existence of waves in the universe's gravitational field by bobbing on ripples in space like corks bobbing on ripples in a pond.

With the countdown for the forthcoming D-2 mission on the Space Shuttle still running, ESA and European scientists are already preparing for ATLAS-2, the Shuttle's next mission. ESA sees its participation in this second flight of the "Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science" as a further step in preparing for utilisation of the Columbus Attached Laboratory.

March 21, 1993 has now been set as the launch date for Shuttle Mission STS-55. Shuttle Columbia and her seven- member crew will fly the second German Spacelab mission (D-2) on a nine day space journey dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of life sciences, material sciences, Earth observation and robotics. The launch window opens at 15h52, Paris time (9h52 local time at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida).This Spacelab flight- the 7th for the ESA developed manned orbiting laboratory- will carry 92 experiments. 32 of them have been developed with ESA's funding. The responsibility for the complete scientific programme is in the hands of DLR- the German Aerospace Research Establishment- which from its D-2 dedicated space operation control centre in Oberpfaffenhofen (Munich, Germany) will perform all payload operations.