The Astro Mission

Abstract

The Astro Mission, an attached payload dedicated to astronomy, is now scheduled to fly May 9, 1990 in the shuttle Columbia. Four instruments make up the complement. Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT, Peter Serlemitsos, Principal Investigator GSFC) utilizes the Two Axis Pointing System (TAPS). The three ultraviolet instruments are Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT, Arthur Davidson, JHU), Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT, Ted Steccher, GSFC) and Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photopolarimeter Experiment (WUPPE, Art Code, UWI). The instruments are co-aligned in the Spacelabs Instrument Pointing System (IPS). Five of the seven astronauts are professional astronomers. Mission Specialists Mike Lounge, Jeff Hoffman, and Robert Parker, and Payload Specialists Samuel Durrance and Ron Parise. During the planned ten-day mission, over 290 shuttle manoeuvres will enable approximately 1000 individual instrument observations of 230 separate astronomical objects. The Astro mission is designed for multiple flights.