This week in 1991, space shuttle Atlantis, mission STS-37, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California following a successful five-day mission. The primary payload — the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory — was deployed on the third day of its mission, following an unscheduled spacewalk to manually deploy the observatory’s high-gain antenna. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center designed and managed the Burst and Transient Source Experiment, one of four major science instruments aboard the Compton. Compton was part of the Great Observatories program, which also included the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, Marshall manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage. (NASA)