OTD…Oct. 20 and STS-73

A mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope blasted off on this date in 2002.

#OTD in 1990…Columbia launched to retrieve NASA’s Long duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) on the longest Shuttle flight to date.

Scott Carpenter launched atop an Atlas rocket to become the second American to orbit the Earth today in 1962, flying for 4 hours and 39 minutes aboard Aurora 7 while making three revolutions of the globe.