NASA approves Atlantis for Hubble repair mission

William Atkins
Sunday, 10 May 2009 17:49

Science - Space

A new thermal blanket will also be installed onto Hubble to better protect (insulate) the telescope while in space.

The astronauts will also install a “soft-capture mechanism,” which will be used to attach a robotic spacecraft to safely de-orbit the telescope after its lifetime has ended.

The five spacewalks are scheduled to be filmed in 3D by the IMAX Corporation for use as a three-dimensional IMAX movie. For more information, read the iTWire article “Hubble repair mission to be on IMAX 3-D.”

The main camera will be swapped out for a bigger and better one--the Wide Field Camera 3, a panchromatic wide-field camera that films in the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet ranges of light (radiation).

In addition, an instrument (the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph) used to analyze in the far- and near-ultraviolet (far- and near-UV) range of the electromagnetic spectrum will be installed. It will be used to sense various characteristics of distant stars and exosolar planets (planets that orbit stars other than our Sun).

Ray Villard, a spokesperson for the Space Telescope Science Institute (Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.), which manages the space observatory project, stated, “It’s like looking for a ladybug on a headlight.” [Orlando Sentinel: “Hubble: Our heavenly view of amazing space”]

Villard was comparing these exoplanets (“ladybugs”) that can be drowned out by their stars (“headlights”), which are often billions of times brighter than their orbiting planets.

The Hubble Space Telescope, with the successful repair and servicing by the Atlantis crew, is expected to remain functional to at least the year 2014, and might even make it as far out as the year 2021. Its near-circular low-earth orbit is about 347 miles (559 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth.

The May 10, 2009 FindingDulcinea article “The Hubble Telescope: From First Launch to Last Repair Mission” provides a good overview of the Hubble mission over the years.