The fifth and final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope
was a long time coming.
After a delay in the fall of 2008,
on 11 May 2009,
the Space Shuttle crew headed for the mission of a lifetime.
This is the Hubblecast!
News and images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Mission Accomplished: Healing Hubble
After 26 years of activity,
Hubble is the veteran of space telescopes.
Opening our eyes to the Universe that hosts us,
Hubble has looked far and deep to reveal fundamental scientific truths.
Hubble isn’t without its battle scars
but the latest servicing mission has left it more capable than ever.
Astronauts had just five spacewalks to complete the tasks set before them:
the installation of two completely new instruments and the repair of two others.
And not to mention hundreds of smaller — but still vital — tasks.
This kind of “space mechanics” was never intended
and likely never even dreamed of by Hubble’s creators.
A dedicated team of ESA engineers
headed to the U.S. to support the mission
by ensuring the solar arrays’ drive electronics and mechanisms were functioning properly.
The very lifeblood of Hubble,
the panels must be monitored constantly
so that astronauts can do the work that they need to do
while avoiding damage to the panels themselves.
But before anyone could support the mission,
it first had to get off the ground.
A bright morning looked promising for an on-time departure.
Invited guests, scientists and engineers and the press
gathered across Kennedy Space Center
to watch Space Shuttle rise in the sky.
At 20:01, Atlantis roared off the launch pad
and into the sky on its way to its historic rendezvous.
After Atlantis was safely in the air,
the ESA team moved north to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
There, the ESA team worked closely with the Goddard team
to ensure both the safety of spacewalking astronauts and the solar panels.
Astronauts put in over 36 hours of spacewalks during the 13-day mission.
The workhorse WFPC2 camera
was replaced by its more powerful descendant Wide Field Camera 3,
for providing enhanced field of view and broader waveband.
Removing a refrigerator-sized instrument is no small task.
Astronauts John Grunsfeld & Andrew Feustel
removed Hubble’s COSTAR package to make way for the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
COS will study the large-scale structure of the Universe
and the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets.
It will also help determine the formation of elements considered essential for life,
such as carbon and iron.
Astronauts didn’t just perform “transplant surgery”;
they also did corrective operations on two existing instruments.
The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was affected by a power failure.
Astronauts had a particularly difficult time repairing STIS
due to a stubborn bolt on the instrument’s handrail.
But after Houston gave astronaut Mike Massimino the go-ahead to “use brute force”,
he was able to break the handrail and access STIS.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys, was also down due to a power failure.
The Servicing Mission 4 repair has brought it new life.
As astronaut Megan McArthur released Hubble from the Shuttle’s grip
and the pilots carefully manoeuvred away,
it was a bittersweet moment for the astronauts
as well as the NASA and ESA support personnel on the ground
— the last time humans would visit the telescope
that has taught us so much about our origin and our place in the vast Universe.