Crew & Mission

On the Space Shuttle Discovery's aft flight deck, the astronauts pose for the traditional inflight crew portrait. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), latched down in Discovery’s cargo bay, is partially visible in the background. A total of five days of Extravehicular Activity (EVA) were used to service the orbiting observatory. Front row, left to right, are astronauts Scott J. Horowitz, pilot; Kenneth D. Bowersox, commander; and Steven A. Hawley, mission specialist. On the back row are mission specialists Steven L. Smith, Gregory J. Harbaugh, Mark C. Lee (payload commander) and Joseph R. Tanner.

The Artwork

(STS082-S-001 - December 1996) --- STS-82 is the second mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The central feature of the patch is HST as the crew members will see it through Discovery's overhead windows when the orbiter approaches for rendezvous, retrieval and a subsequent series of spacewalks to perform servicing tasks. The telescope is pointing toward deep space, observing the cosmos. The spiral galaxy symbolizes one of MST's important scientific missions, to accurately determine the cosmic distance scale. To the right of the telescope is a cross-like structure known as a gravitational lens, one of the numerous fundamental discoveries made using HST Imagery. The names of the STS-82 crew members are arranged around the perimeter of the patch with the extravehicular activity's (EVA) participating crew members placed in the upper semicircle and the orbiter crew in the lower one.