Hubble Space Telescope Hits 100,000 Orbits Milestone

August 11, 1:16 PMSpace News ExaminerPatricia Phillips

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Space News Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Hubble Space Telescope Above Earth

My Dad always said:  "You don't know how good a car you have until it goes 100,000 miles."  Today, the Hubble Space Telescope hit a new mission milestone: 100,00 orbits of Earth in in its 18 years of service.

The actual mileage is incredible: 2.72 billion miles. Hubble, launched in April, 1990, travels about five miles per second. Hubble, easily one of the most  well-known and popular NASA science missions to ever hit  the galaxy, is a super star--but it had some start-up problems.

After launch delays, astronomers and scientists were delighted to get the Hubble's sophisticated instruments working. Then came the bad news: Hubble's main mirror, a Cassegrain reflector, had been ground to the wrong specifications.

Astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman Works on Hubble

Hubble was peering at the universe with fuzzy vision--a problem NASA soon fixed with an incredibly complex and daring mission, STS-61 in 1993. Astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour caught up with Hubble, captured it, and hauled it into the payload pay for some shade-tree-mechanic tinkering. After five days of hard work,  Hubble got the right prescription lens, and two new instruments.

Three more Hubble servicing missions were flown: STS-82  in 1997, STS-103 in 1999, and STS-109 in 2002. During these service calls astronauts have  replaced gyroscopes, electronic boxes,  and other components.

Hubble Captures Our Glowing Universe

STS-125, tentatively set to launch October 8, 2008, will be the final servicing mission for the faithful instrument. Astronauts Michael J.  Massimino, Michael T. Good,  Gregory C. Johnson (pilot), Scott D. Altman  (commander), Megan McArthur, John M. Grunsfeld and Andrew J. Feustel. They'll  install two new instruments: he Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3.

Working from Space Shuttle Endeavour, the astronauts will also fix a few  things. Their mission plans include spacewalks and tasks so complex that Lead Flight Director Tony Ceccacci calls "more like brain surgery than construction."

To celebrate Hubble's 100,000 orbital milestone in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., aimed Hubble at a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of this nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left).

Nice trip photo, Hubble. Turns out my Dad was right--when a good vehicle hits 100,000 miles, or orbits, it just keeps on going.