11 February
1997: On 11 February 1997, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was set to have its scientific capabilities upgraded by a shuttle servicing mission.
The space shuttle Discovery was launched on mission STS-82. This was the second in a series of planned servicing missions to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope which was placed in orbit on 24 April 1990.
During a record five spacewalks, astronauts performed repairs to Hubble. Two older instruments were replaced with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).
