By Ben Evans, on April 25th, 2020
Steve Hawley releases the Hubble Space Telescope from Discovery’s robotic arm, on this day in 1990. Photo Credit: NASA
Thirty years ago today, the hands of humans and robots parted company with the Hubble Space Telescope for the final time before it began its momentous voyage to explore the Universe. Almost two decades in […]
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By Ben Evans, on April 24th, 2020
Discovery roars into orbit, 30 years ago today, to deliver NASA’s showpiece Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In three decades of operational service to date, Hubble had done nothing less than rewrite the astronomy textbooks and reinvent our awareness of our place in the Universe. Photo Credit: NASA
Thirty years ago today, shuttle Discovery and […]
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By Ben Evans, on March 8th, 2020
Christina Koch (right), newly returned from the longest single space mission ever undertaken by a woman, is also pictured with Expedition 61 crewmate Jessica Meir. Last October, the duo performed the world’s first all-female EVA. Photo Credit: NASA
As America and the world observes International Women’s Day this Sunday (8 March), the AmericaSpace team […]
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By Ben Evans, on March 26th, 2017
Atlantis lands in Florida at the end of STS-45. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Twenty-five years ago, this week, seven individuals from three sovereign nations—five Americans, the first Belgian citizen to enter space and a British-born astronaut—orbited Earth aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. Their STS-45 mission carried a battery of experiments in the […]
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By Ben Evans, on March 25th, 2017
Flown 25 years ago, in March 1992, ATLAS-1 represented the first Space Shuttle payload fully dedicated to exploring the relationship between the Earth’s atmosphere and its interaction with the Sun. Photo Credit: NASA
A quarter-century ago, this week, Space Shuttle Atlantis roared into orbit on a mission intensely focused on Planet Earth; a […]
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By Ben Evans, on April 25th, 2015 Twenty-five years after its April 1990 launch, the iconic Hubble Space Telescope remains functional. Photo Credit: NASA
Twenty-five years ago, yesterday, on 24 April 1990, one of the most important missions in the annals of scientific discovery got underway, with the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. As described in yesterday’s AmericaSpace history […]
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By Ben Evans, on April 24th, 2015 The moment of deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), as seen from the IMAX Cargo Bay Camera (ICBC). Photo Credit: NASA
“If there were ever two missions that were completely opposite in terms of the public attention that was given to them,” astronaut Loren Shriver once said, “it would be my first […]
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By Ben Evans, on March 29th, 2015 Terry Virts is pictured working on cable-routing activities in support of the future International Docking Adapters (IDAs) during EVA-29 on 21 February 2015. This was the first spacewalk in the 50th anniversary year since Alexei Leonov’s pioneering EVA. Photo Credit: NASA
Less than a month ago, on 1 March 2015, U.S. astronauts Barry […]
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By Ben Evans, on March 22nd, 2015 During his historic untethered EVA with the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) on 7 February 1984, Bruce McCandless ventured as far as 300 feet (90 meters) from Challenger. Photo Credit: NASA
Ironically, the spacecraft from which the most Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) were performed—the space shuttle—was not originally intended to carry the capability for spacewalking […]
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By Ben Evans, on October 5th, 2014 Dave Leestma (with red stripes on the legs of his suit) and Kathy Sullivan work on the refuelling experiment during their historic EVA. Photo Credit: NASA
Thirty years ago, today (on 5 October 1984), history was made when Shuttle Challenger rocketed into orbit on Mission 41G, an ambitious science and technology flight. On-board […]
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