STS-93
Report # 02 
Friday, July 23, 1999, 9:30 a.m. CDT 
 
  The Chandra X-Ray Observatory is flying free of the Shuttle Columbia
following a textbook deployment earlier this morning and the
successfully firing of its Inertial Upper Stage booster to place the
new telescope on course for an orbit which will take it almost
one-third of the way to the moon for its astronomical investigations.

  A little more than seven hours after Columbia and its five
astronauts were launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Chandra was
spring-ejected from a cradle in the shuttle^Òs cargo bay at 6:47
a.m. Central time, as Columbia flew over the Indonesian Island
chain. Commander Eileen Collins, the first female Shuttle Commander,
maneuvered Columbia to a safe distance away from the telescope as an
internal timer counted down to the first of a two-phase ignition of
the solid-fuel Inertial Upper Stage.

  The IUS lit up as scheduled at 7:47 a.m., and a few minutes later,
shut down as planned, sending Chandra on a highly elliptical orbit
which will be refined over the next few weeks by a series of firings
of telescope thrusters, designed to place Chandra in an orbit about
6900 x 87,000 statute miles above the Earth.

  After the IUS^Ò second stage shut down, Chandra^Òs solar
arrays deployed at 8:22 a.m. on command from telescope controllers at
the Chandra Operations Control Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who
will oversee the activation of the observatory^Òs systems and its
scientific activities. The IUS then separated from Chandra at 8:49
a.m. CDT, establishing it with the Hubble Space Telescope and the
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory as the third in a series of four
astronomical instruments designed by NASA to paint a comprehensive
portrait of the unknown mysteries of the universe.

  With Chandra safely on its way and the major objective of their
mission successfully completed, the astronauts will end their long day
and begin an eight-hour sleep period at 10:31 a.m. Central
time. They^Òll be awakened at 6:31 tonight to begin their second
day in orbit, a day devoted to secondary experiments in the
shuttle^Òs middeck area.

  Columbia is flying smoothly on in an orbit 187 x 176 miles above the
Earth, circling the planet every 90 minutes with its systems operating
in excellent shape.

  The next STS-93 status report will be issued at approximately 9:30
a.m. Central time this morning after Chandra^Òs Inertial Upper
Stage has been jettisoned to complete its work.  -END-

###

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