Atlantis: Soon to Launch Toward Hubble’s Final Repair Mission
The Hubble Space Telescope, an orbiting observatory launched in 1990, circles Earth high above the atmosphere. Image credit: NASA
***********************************************************
It looks as if October 5th is going to be an exciting and full day for NASA’s Atlantis space shuttle, launching toward the Hubble Space Telescope for that final service call in space. Ahh…such memories we have of its early days with such breathtaking images that grabbed the imagination. A heartfelt mission which realizes it will be the final visit to see what NASA considers a dear old friend before the shuttles are retired. Hubble will be left to operate another five years, realizing it will never see its nearby companions ever again.
“The shuttle Discovery launched Hubble in 1990, and released it into an orbit 304 nautical miles above the Earth. Since then it’s circled Earth more than 97,000 times and provided more than 4,000 astronomers access to the stars not possible from inside Earth’s atmosphere. Hubble has helped answer some of science’s key questions and provided images that have awed and inspired the world.
“We’ve actually seen an object that emitted its light about 13 billion years ago,” said Hubble senior scientist Dave Leckrone. “Since the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that’s its infancy, the nursery. From the nearest parts of our solar system to further back in time than anyone has ever looked before, we’ve taken ordinary citizens on a voyage through the universe.”
As we speak, things are rapidly beginning to peak at the busy NASA centers in both New Orleans and Florida with the space shuttle launching three days earlier than originally scheduled. Not a definite thing as of yet for sure, but August 14th will verify that when the shuttle team managers have their meeting and decide whether or not to make the final early launch announcement. Other things moving the launch ahead is how well everything else is doing with the shuttle. So far–not a hitch.
A real plus is the finished repairs of Pad 39A’s flame trench involving 10,000 bricks to replace the 3,500 bricks blown away, with a fix-it spray of Fondue Fyre for heat-resistant concrete. Now that is a $2.7 million dollar fix-it job that has finished way ahead of schedule. And while that has been going on, a steady stream of “instruments and equipment” have been arriving for both of the space shuttles—Atlantis and also the Endeavour that will serve as a rescue ship—IF something critically goes wrong.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Mission History, Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
