HST - Flight Systems & Servicing Projects

The STS-82 mission was the second in a series of planned servicing missions to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope ("HST"), which had been placed in orbit on 24 April 1990 by Discovery during STS-31. The first servicing mission was done by Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-61. Work performed by Discovery's crew significantly upgraded the scientific capabilities of the HST and helped to keep the telescope functioning smoothly until the next scheduled servicing missions, which were STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109 in 2002.