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Planetary News: Hubble Space Telescope (2006)

A New Chapter for the Hubble Space Telescope -- NASA Approves Servicing Mission

October 31, 2006

The Hubble Space Telescope
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The Hubble Space Telescope
View of Hubble captured by astronauts from the space shuttle Columbia during mission STS-109, March 2002. The astronauts installed new solar arrays as well as the Advanced Camera for Surveys and repaired the NICMOS instrument. Credit: NASA

After more than a decade of astounding discoveries, The Hubble Space Telescope will soon be given a new start. Today, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced plans for a fifth servicing mission to Hubble during a meeting with agency employees at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center -- the agency center responsible for managing Hubble. The service mission will repair and upgrade the observatory to extend and improve its capabilities through 2013.

"We have conducted a detailed analysis of the performance and procedures necessary to carry out a successful Hubble repair mission over the course of the last three shuttle missions," Griffin said. "What we have learned has convinced us that we are able to conduct a safe and effective servicing mission to Hubble. While there is an inherent risk in all spaceflight activities, the desire to preserve a truly international asset like the Hubble Space Telescope makes doing this mission the right course of action."

"Hubble is a great instrument and making great discoveries about the universe" said Louis D. Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. "It will be terrific if we can keep it working even longer." In September 2005, The Planetary Society sent the U.S. Congress 10,000 signatures of support for keeping the Hubble Telescope in operation.

Griffin also announced the astronauts selected for the mission. Veteran astronaut Scott D. Altman will command the final space shuttle mission to Hubble. Navy Reserve Captain Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission specialists include veteran spacewalkers John M. Grunsfeld and Michael J. Massimino and first-time space fliers Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good, and K. Megan McArthur.

Altman will be making his fourth spaceflight and his second trip to Hubble. He commanded the STS-109 Hubble servicing mission in 2002. He served as pilot of STS-90 in 1998 and STS-106 in 2000. Johnson was selected as an astronaut in 1998 and will be making his first spaceflight. Grunsfeld, an astronomer, will be making his third trip to Hubble and his fifth spaceflight. He performed five spacewalks to service the telescope on STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109 in 2002. Massimino will be making his second trip to Hubble and his second spaceflight. He performed two spacewalks to service the telescope during the STS-109 mission in 2002. Feustel, Good, and McArthur were each selected as astronauts in 2000.

The flight is tentatively targeted for launch in mid-2008. Mission planners are investigating the best way to support a launch-on-need mission for the Hubble flight. The present option will keep Launch Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center available for a rescue flight should one be necessary.

Hubble Captures Colliding Galaxies
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Hubble Captures Colliding Galaxies
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team

The service mission includes installation of two new instruments: the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The COS -- the most sensitive ultraviolet spectrograph ever flown on Hubble -- will probe the cosmic web, the large-scale structure of the universe whose form is determined by the gravity of dark matter and is traced by the spatial distribution of galaxies and intergalactic gas.

WFC3 is a new camera sensitive across a wide range of wavelengths, including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. It will be able to examine the planets in our solar system as well as early and distant galaxies beyond Hubble's current reach.

Other planned work includes installing a refurbished Fine Guidance Sensor that replaces one degrading unit of the three already onboard. The sensors control the telescope's pointing system. An attempt will also be made to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. Installed in 1997, it stopped working in 2004. The instrument is used for high resolution studies in visible and ultraviolet light of both nearby star systems and distant galaxies, providing information about the motions and chemical makeup of stars, planetary atmospheres, and other galaxies.

"Today Hubble is producing more science than ever before in its history. Astronomers are requesting five times more observing time than that available to them" said Bob Fosbury, Head of ESA's Hubble group. "The new instruments will open completely new windows on the Universe. Extraordinary observations are planned in the coming years, including some of the most fascinating physical phenomena ever seen: Investigations of planets around other stars, digging deeper into the ancestry of our Milky Way and above all, gaining a much deeper insight into the evolution of the Universe."

The Hubble servicing mission is an 11-day flight. Following launch, the shuttle will rendezvous with the telescope on the third day of the flight. Using the shuttle's mechanical arm, the telescope will be placed on a work platform in the cargo bay. Five separate space walks will be needed to accomplish all of the mission objectives.

"Hubble has been rewriting astronomy text books for more than 15 years," said NASA Associate Administrator Mary Cleave, "and all of us are looking forward to the new chapters that will be added with future discoveries and insights about our universe."