The Fix Is In For Hubble

Meaning, the Hubble Telescope repair mission is ON.

Fix will give Hubble major boost
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News, Austin, TX

NASA has announced details of a challenging mission to "rescue" the Hubble Space Telescope.

Without the mission, the multi-billion dollar orbiting observatory is likely to fail in 2010 or 2011.
The upgrade will provide a massive boost to Hubble's capabilities, giving it greater sensitivity and a larger field of view.

The mission, by space shuttle Atlantis, will make Hubble 90 times more powerful than its original version.

It could also extend the telescope's lifetime by more than a decade. (more of the story at the link here.

-Named after the great US astronomer Edwin Hubble

-Launched in 1990 into a 600km-high circular orbit

-Equipped with a 2.4m primary mirror and five instruments

-Length: 15.9m; diameter: 4.2m; Mass: 11,110kg

-Shuttle Discovery will grab Hubble with a robotic arm and pull it on to a work platform to allow astronauts easy access to its interior

-Hubble has six gyroscopes that are critical to its control and pointing systems. These have started to fail and all will have to be replaced

- Six new batteries will rejuvenate the electrical system; astronauts will attach new thermal blankets to insulate sensitive components

-The telescope has two instrument bays; the COS and WFC3 will be slid into racks made vacant by the removal of older instruments

-An attempt will also be made to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) which stopped working in 2004