Space Shuttle Discovery March 9, having spent a cumulative total of almost a full year in space. "Discovery" performed both research and International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions. It also carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. "Discovery" was the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by "Endeavour" and then "Atlantis". The name "Discovery" was chosen to carry on a tradition based on ships of exploration, primarily , one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook during his third and final major voyage from 1776 to 1779, and Henry Hudson's , which was used in 1610–1611 to explore Hudson Bay and
Hubble Space Telescope 0.5–1.0 arcseconds, compared to a theoretical diffraction-limited resolution of about 0.05 arcsec for a telescope with a mirror in diameter. Second, a space-based telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light, which are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere. Spitzer devoted much of his career to pushing for the development of a space telescope. In 1962, a report by the US National Academy of Sciences recommended the development of a space telescope as part of the space program, and in 1965 Spitzer was appointed as head of a committee given the task of defining scientific objectives for a large space telescope. Space-based