 | S99-08214 (28 July 1999) --- Astronaut Jeffrey S. Ashby, pilot, speaks to the large crowd which turned out at Ellington Field to welcome home the STS-93 astronauts. |
 | S99-08215 (28 July 1999) --- Astronaut Catherine G. (Cady) Coleman, mission specialist, speaks to the large crowd which turned out at Ellington Field to welcome home the STS-93 astronauts. |
 | S99-08216 (28 July 1999) --- Astronaut Steven A. Hawley, mission specialist, speaks to the large crowd which turned out at Ellington Field to welcome home the five STS-93 astronauts. |
 | S99-08218 (28 July 1999) --- Astronaut Michel Tognini, mission specialist, speaks to the large crowd which turned out at Ellington Field to welcome home the STS-93 astronauts. Tognini represents France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). |
 | S99-08226 (28 July 1999) --- Astronaut Eileen M. Collins, mission commander, signs autographs for several members of the large crowd which turned out at Ellington Field to welcome home the STS-93 astronauts. Collins, the first woman shuttle mission commander, spoke to the well wishers from a lectern in a large Ellington Field hangar. She joined her four crew members, NASA officials and Vice-President Al Gore in doing so. |
 | S99-08235 (28 July 1999) --- Johnson Space Center Director George W.S. Abbey greets astronaut Catherine G. (Cady) Coleman following the STS-93 crew arrival at Ellington Field, near the Johnson Space Center (JSC). Looking on are Joshua Simpson (left) and Pat Youngs, husbands of Coleman and astronaut Eileen M. Collins, respectively. |
 | S99-08236 (28 July 1999) --- Pat Youngs and his daughter listen to members of the STS-93 crew responding to a giant welcome they receieved at Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center (JSC). Their wife and mother, astronaut Eileen M. Collins, had successfully landed the Space Shuttle Columbia in Florida about 12 hours earlier. Collins, the initial woman shuttle commander, was the first of the STS-93 astronauts to address the large crowd of well wishers. |
 | S99-08237 (28 July 1999) --- Joseph Rothenberg, NASA Associate Administrator for Spaceflight, addresses a large crowd of well wishers on hand to welcome home the STS-93 crew members following their five-day mission in Earth orbit. Astronaut Eileen M. Collins, the first woman shuttle mission commander, is in the background. The ceremony took place in a hangar at Ellington Field, near the Johnson Space Center (JSC). |
 | S99-08357 (27 July 1999) --- A Johnson Space Center photographer recorded the fly-over of Space Shuttle Columbia for STS-93 above the Johnson Space Center's Rocket Park. The Saturn V is below the streak left by the shuttle Columbia re-entering the atmosphere. The image was captured with a Hasselblad 503cx medium format camera with a 30mm Hasselblad lens. The image was captured with an 8-second exposure with the aperture set to f/8. The film was Kodak PMZ 1000 color negative film. The photographer was Mark Sowa of the NASA/Johnson Space Center's photography group. |
 | STS093 (S)-001 (Sept. 1998) --- The STS-93 mission patch, as designed by the five crew members. The STS-93 mission will carry the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) into low Earth orbit initiating its planned five-year astronomy mission. AXAF is the third of NASA's great observatories, following the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. AXAF will provide scientists an order-of-magnitude improvement over current capabilities at X-ray wavelengths. Observations of X-ray emissions from energetic galaxies and clusters, as well as black holes, promise to greatly expand current understanding of the origin and evolution of our universe. The STS-93 patch depicts AXAF separating from the Space Shuttle Columbia after a successful deployment. A spiral galaxy is shown in the background as a possible target for AXAF observations. The two flags represent the international crew, consisting of astronauts from both the United States and France. |
