I Thought It Was Gonna Die

Good news! They're going to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope.

When astronauts overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope this summer, they will leave behind a vastly more powerful orbital observatory to scan the universe.

Set to launch aboard NASA's shuttle Atlantis on Aug. 7, the Hubble servicing mission will be the fifth - and final - sortie to upgrade the aging space telescope.

"We're not only going up to Hubble to refurbish it, but also to expand its grasp tremendously," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, in a recent briefing. "We expect to make the very best discoveries of the entire two-decade plus Hubble program with the new instruments to be installed."

"This refurbished Hubble [will be] a new telescope," said astronomer Sandra Faber of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We estimate that at the end of this repair Hubble will be 90 times more powerful than when it was first launched."

"When the astronauts leave Hubble for the last time, it will be at the apex of its capabilities," said senior project scientist David Leckrone of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It will be the first time since 1993 that there will be five working instruments aboard."

The result, researchers said, is about five extra years of science for Hubble before its controlled deorbit sometime after 2020. To prepare for the space telescope's eventual demise, spacewalkers will also attach a connecting port that will allow a robotic tug to dock with Hubble.

"None of us could have imagined what this fourth-generation suite of instruments can do," said Stern, adding the 90-fold jump in observation power for Hubble will be unprecedented. "We will have the capability, literally, of approximately 100 Hubbles [circa] 1990 when this mission is done."

Yea!

The last I'd heard, I thought they were going to let it die.