The beleaguered Hubble Space Telescope can finally look forward to getting a much needed pick-me-up in May when NASA sends its fourth, and last, manned space shuttle mission to the satellite.
The aging observatory was due for an upgrade this past October, when NASA had planned to launch seven astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis to install new science instruments and change out old hardware.
But in September a major glitch cost the orbiting telescope its ability to send images and information back down to Earth. Since then, Hubble was revived with a back-up system onboard, but engineers have been scrambling to ready a replacement instrument to swap with the hardware that failed. The new mission date is May 12, 2009.
In the meantime, Hubble is still plugging along while it waits for its upgrade. On Thursday NASA released a new Hubble image showing hundreds of thousands of stars in the globular cluster M13 (above).
When it does eventually get off the ground, the planned servicing mission is set to run 11 days, with five spacewalks during which astronauts will work to install a new camera, a new spectrograph, and a set of six new and improved gyroscopes, which help stabilize the telescope. The astronauts also plan to repair some broken instruments aboard the observatory and bring new batteries and thermal blankets that should help the telescope operate until at least 2013.
If the overhaul goes as planned, experts say Hubble should be in the best shape it's ever been. Sadly, though, all good things must come to an end. When Hubble breaks down, NASA plans to send the satellite on a controlled dive down to Earth to burn up in the atmosphere.
And speaking of depressing news and delays, NASA announced that its Mars Science Laboratory rover will launch two years later than planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission, which aims to study the early environmental history of Mars, has been held up by "testing and hardware challenges," NASA says. Since it won't be able to make its hoped-for 2009 launch date, it will have to wait quite a while, because the relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to the red planet only a few weeks every two years.
See Also:
- Hubble Back to Taking Spectacular Images
- Hubble in Trouble, But It Could Have Been Double
- Hubble Failure Impacts People, Schedules
Image: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
