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Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off on a mission to NASA's Hubble Telescope - Source: Reuters -
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Space shuttle Atlantis and seven astronauts blasted off on
Tuesday on an ambitious 11-day mission to refurbish the Hubble
Space Telescope, an icon of modern astronomy that has changed
scientists' understanding of the universe.
The shuttle lifted off its seaside launch pad at 6:0am NZT, heading
toward an orbit 563 km above the planet and a Thursday rendezvous
with the Hubble telescope.
Once the telescope is anchored in the shuttle's cargo bay,
spacewalking astronauts plan five consecutive days of work to
install two new cameras, repair two other science instruments,
replace Hubble's positioning gyroscopes and batteries and attach
new thermal insulation.
"On this mission, we're going for broke," said Hubble project
scientist David Leckrone.
NASA has dispatched space shuttle crews to repair and upgrade
Hubble four times since it was put into orbit in 1990. But
Atlantis' mission is the first since the 2003 Columbia accident,
which changed the way NASA did business.
Because the Atlantis astronauts will be too far to reach the
International Space Station in case their ship sustained major
damage during launch, NASA has a second shuttle at the launch site
ready to mount a rescue mission if necessary.
NASA hopes that with the upgrades Hubble, which has cost about $10
billion so far, will last until at least 2014, at which time its
replacement should be in orbit and operational.
Hubble's observations have been important in all areas of
astronomical research, including the still-unexplained discovery
that the universe is expanding at an increasingly faster rate and
that galaxies formed quite early after the Big Bang explosion that
created the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
