| Hubble Space Telescope To Get One Final Shuttle Visit |
[Oct. 31st, 2006|11:32 pm] |
NASA announced today that a space shuttle will visit the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in a scheduled 11-day voyage in 2008 to perform the final servicing mission of the great orbiting observatory. The servicing mission (the fifth overall) should keep the HST operational until 2013.
(personal note: too bad there won't be another shuttle visit after this one in 2008 to bring the HST back to Earth and place it in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum).
The major risk in the mission is the fact the HST and the International Space Station do not have the same orbit plane, making it impossible for the shuttle to get to safe refuge at the ISS in case of heat shield damage. NASA has decided to put another shuttle on standby as a safety measure. If damage is done to the shuttle visiting the HST, the backup shuttle would be launched and rescue the astronauts and bring them back to Earth safely.
The shuttle to be used for the mission and the shuttle to be used as backup have not been determined yet.
What has been determined is the crew for the HST servicing mission. Scott Altman will command the mission and Gregory Johnson will serve as the pilot. Mission Specialists include John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino, Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur. Interestingly enough, Grunsfeld will be making his third servicing mission to the HST, so he is quite familiar with the HST.
Two new instruments to be added to the HST during the mission are the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). A refurbished Fine Guidance Sensor will be installed and an attempt to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph will be made -- the instrument quit working in 2004. |
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
go_topes's journal
