STS-61 Mission

Launch Service Provider

Lockheed Space Operations Company

Vehicle

Space Shuttle

Crew

Richard O. Covey

Ken Bowersox

Claude Nicollier

Kathryn C. Thornton

Thomas Akers

Jeffrey Hoffman

Story Musgrave

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 1990. The flight also brought instrument upgrades and new solar arrays to the telescope.