The Challenger tragedy put future shuttle flights on indefinite hold and caused real concern about whether HUT would ever fly. Originally slated to launch in March 1986 to view Halley's comet, the mission was scrubbed when the previous flight in January 1986, involving the space shuttle Challenger, exploded shortly after liftoff. "It was about 14x18 inches, 2 inches thick, and weighed about 10 pounds! It was the first time any of us had seen a 'portable' computer!" "I remember one trip back where Sam had a cutting-edge NASA 'laptop' in tow, only available to astronauts," says research professor Bill Blair, who was also part of the HUT team. Preparations and training took Durrance away from JHU for long periods, but his returns were always exciting times for his JHU colleagues to get caught up on his latest activities and to provide status updates on HUT's instruments, most of which were developed on the first floor of the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy. Durrance was a key player in the construction and testing of HUT and in 1984 was selected as one of two payload specialists to fly with the telescope on the Astro-1 mission. HUT had been selected for development by NASA in 1978, with the intent of making multiple flights on the space shuttle. He was 79.ĭurrance came to JHU in 1980 as one of the first team members on the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, or HUT, project led by Professor Arthur Davidsen. Samuel Thornton Durrance, an astronomer who flew on two NASA space shuttle missions as a payload specialist, and who was a principal research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University from 1980 to 1997, died on May 5.
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