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The ornament of the heavens: Hubble Space Telescope's date with fix-up crew
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Hot on the exhaust trail of the STS-126 "home improvement" mission to the International Space Station, NASA has announced a flight date for the muchly-delayed STS-125 Hubble Space Telescope fix-up mission. Atlantis and its crew will perform the final servicing of the Hubble during an 11-day mission now set to launch May 12, 2009.
It could be said that Hubble itself is an ornament of the heavens, given its 18 years of service. An example is the image shown above, a composite that shows us a "snow globe" view of the globular custer M13:
Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is easily found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules. This image is a composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Observations from four separate science proposals taken in November 1999, April 2000, August 2005, and April 2006 were used. The image includes broadband filters that isolate light from the blue, visible, and infrared portions of the spectrum.
The STS-125 mission will include five spacewalks. It's considered to be so dangerous that another shuttle will be on standby to perform a rescue mission, if needed. Launch processing for the mission, first scheduled for this fall, had to be worked around a series of hurricanes. Then it was delayed by the failure of an onboard Hubble data unit. Engineers hope to have the replacement unit at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in early spring, 2009.
STS-125 is an 11-day flight featuring five spacewalks to extend Hubble's life into the next decade by refurbishing and upgrading the telescope with state-of-the-art science instruments and swapping failed hardware. Scott Altman will command STS-125, with Gregory C. Johnson serving as pilot. Mission specialists are veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: C. Bailyn (Yale University), W. Lewin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), A. Sarajedini (University of Florida), and W. van Altena (Yale University)
Holiday gift idea: a telescope for yourself or that special person. AstronomyToday offers a good guide to buying a telescope and getting started sky-watching with scope or binoculars.
Then add a subscription to Sky and Telescope. They also offer a guide to buying equipment.
Wnat your own Hubble? HubbleSite offers dowloads, plans, and step-by-step advice for building your own scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope. Gather the materials, wrap them up, and give someone the gift of your time and attention building a model together.
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