At Launch Pad 39-B, the Chandra X-ray Observatory sits inside the payload bay of Space Shuttle Columbia, waiting for the doors to close. Chandra is the primary payload on mission STS-93, scheduled to launch aboard Columbia July 20 at 12:36 a.m. EDT. The combined Chandra/Inertial Upper Stage, seen here, measures 57 feet long and weighs 50,162 pounds. Fully deployed with solar arrays extended, the observatory measures 45.3 feet long and 64 feet wide. The world's most powerful X-ray telescope, Chandra will allow scientists from around the world to see previously invisible black holes and high-temperature gas clouds, giving the observatory the potential to rewrite the books on the structure and evolution of our universe KSC-99pp0853
Summary
At Launch Pad 39-B, the Chandra X-ray Observatory sits inside the payload bay of Space Shuttle Columbia, waiting for the doors to close. Chandra is the primary payload on mission STS-93, scheduled to launch aboard Columbia July 20 at 12:36 a.m. EDT. The combined Chandra/Inertial Upper Stage, seen here, measures 57 feet long and weighs 50,162 pounds. Fully deployed with solar arrays extended, the observatory measures 45.3 feet long and 64 feet wide. The world's most powerful X-ray telescope, Chandra will allow scientists from around the world to see previously invisible black holes and high-temperature gas clouds, giving the observatory the potential to rewrite the books on the structure and evolution of our universe
The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.