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The mission was during December 1999 on Discovery and was designated STS-103. Training for the mission occurred with Joint Integrated Simulations (JISs) involving people on their stations and consoles just like it would occur in the mission.
At the final hardware walkdown at the Kennedy Space Center on 9/11/99.
The ring that I am standing next to is the location where the HST
will be fastened to the Shuttle during the mission. It is
placed onto this point by the Shuttle robot arm.
This is the crew entry hatch for the orbiter. You can see the
'Discovery' on the
shroud covering the hatch on the left. Also note the blue
placard
on the
entry pedestal. It reads: STS-103 (the mission designation), Discovery
(name
of the orbiter), and OV-103 (the disignator for Discovery).
Standing underneath the three big main engines of the
shuttle.
The striped object
in the left background is one of the Solid Rocket Boosters.
Standing next to the exterior of the flight deck. The name of
the orbiter
appears on the outside by the crew window.
We saw the rollout of the next shuttle mission, STS-99. The
massive
crawler transports the
Shuttle atop of the Mobile Launch Platform. Note the size of
cars. This crawler moves at
a slow walking pace (about 1mph).
'
STS-103 on launch day. Since they were about to tank up (note
cap on the External
Tank) access was very limited. I shot this thru a pair of
binoculars!
This is the image without the binoculars. Shot with Frank
'Cepi'
Cepollina,
the head of Hubble Servicing.
One of the persons viewing the launch had a REALLY big lens (Thane
Taylor) and
Christopher wanted to look into it. It was about as big as he
was.
The launch was at night so it was very spectacular.
View of the launch shot through Thane's big lens.
After a few nights of working planning shift (where we lay out the
next day's space walk and tests),
we were PRETENDING to sleep for this picture. From left to
right:
Jill Holte, Kevin McAveety, Pete Salerno, Nick Jedrich, Ray Lundquist,
John Nidhiry, Bob Harm, and me. The mission lasted thru
Christmas.
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