2-860-709 - Heritage Space/Heritage Images

STS-93 landing, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA, July 27, 1999. Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-93 mission was the first to be commanded by a woman, Colonel Eileen M. Collins. The main goal of the mission was to deploy the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, a telescope designed to detect X-ray emission from extremely hot areas of the Universe, such as exploded stars. The astronauts also experimented on several plants, and took ultraviolet images of the Earth, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter.