William Atkins
Sunday, 10 May 2009 18:49
Science -
Space
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As of the launch date, the Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit for over nineteen years.
The space observatory, a collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States and the European Space Agency (ESA) of the European Union, was launched by the space shuttle
Discovery on April 12, 1990.
The space shuttle
Atlantis crew numbers at seven for this high-profile mission.
Scott D. Altman will be the commander of the STS-125 mission to Hubble. Retired Navy captain Gregory C. Johnson will be the pilot of the space shuttle Atlantis. Mission specialists for the flight include previous spacewalking astronauts John M. Grunsfeld and Michael J. Massimino and first-time astronauts Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good, and K. Megan McArthur.
During their eleven-day mission, the STS-125 crew are scheduled to conduct five spacewalks, each one lasting for approximately 6.5 hours, to repair defective equipment on the space telescope, along with installing two new science instruments (Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) and replacing a Fine Guidance Sensor, six stabilizing gyroscopes, 125-pound batteries, and other equipment on Hubble.
One device to be replaced held up the mission for several months. On September 27, 2008, the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC&DH) unit failed onboard Hubble. Although the unit has a backup, NASA was concerned that if the backup unit would fail it would be disastrous for Hubble (because all science data is processed through the unit).
Therefore, the U.S. space agency delayed STS-125 from October 14, 2009, so they could prepare another one stored on Earth to be taken up and installed on Hubble.
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