Shuttle Atlantis due to launch, 2:01pm EDT, May 11th

[Rico]

The shuttle is due to go up today for a very important mission to work on the Hubble telescope.

Mission to Service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
Veteran astronaut Scott Altman will command the final space shuttle mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and retired Navy Capt. Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission specialists rounding out the crew are: veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur.

During the 11-day mission's five spacewalks, astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones and perform the component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning into at least 2014.

In addition to the originally scheduled work, Atlantis also will carry a replacement Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit for Hubble. Astronauts will install the unit on the telescope, removing the one that stopped working on Sept. 27, 2008, delaying the servicing mission until the replacement was ready.

more here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/

[Rico]

Great launch earlier today.  I hope the repairs to the Hubble go well.

Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off on a mission to NASA's Hubble Telescope from its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida May 11, 2009. Atlantis blasted off from its Florida launch pad on Monday on an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, an important tool for scientists probing the origins of the universe.

[Geekyfanboy]

You can follow astronaut Mike Massimino @Astro_Mike who is a mission specialist for STS-125 in orbit now." How cool is that.. he is Twittering from space.

[Rico]

Wow!  That's awesome.

http://twitter.com/Astro_Mike

[cosmonaut]

They have internet up there? :)
Do you think he can get our reply?

[Rico]

Hubble work pretty much done now....

  By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn, Ap Aerospace Writer   – 1 hr 46 mins ago

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – After five amazing days, spacewalking astronauts finished repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday and shut the doors to the treasured observatory, which will never be touched by human hands again.

"Wow, look at Hubble," one of the astronauts said.

NASA said the revived telescope will be better than ever thanks to the astronauts' efforts and should provide even more dazzling views of the universe for another five to 10 years.

During this last visit to Hubble, the shuttle Atlantis astronauts outfitted Hubble with two state-of-the-art science instruments, and all new batteries and gyroscopes. The $220 million worth of new instruments should allow the telescope to peer even deeper into the cosmos, as far back as 13 billion years.

It was the fifth and final spacewalk for the Atlantis crew, and the fifth and final visit by astronauts, ever, to Hubble.

"This is a real great day," Mission Control told the astronauts, "a great way to finish this out."

Keen on leaving the 19-year-old observatory in the best possible shape, chief mechanic John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel gave the telescope another fresh set of batteries Monday and a new sensor for fine pointing. That left enough time to install steel foil sheets to protect against radiation and the extreme temperature changes of space.

It was messy work. Pieces of the old insulation broke off and floated harmlessly away.

"I was hoping to retrieve those for memories," Grunsfeld said.

As he applied the new insulation with a roller, a voice from space sang "rollin', rollin', rollin'" to the theme song from the TV show Rawhide.

Only one of the other four spacewalks went as smoothly. Sunday's was particularly exasperating: a stuck bolt almost prevented another team of astronauts from fixing a burned-out science instrument. Brute force saved the day, but so much time was lost that no protective sheets could be installed.

Grunsfeld and Feustel completed Sunday's missed work.

The shuttle astronauts will set Hubble free Tuesday.

During the mission, the four spacewalkers, two per team, managed to fix two science instruments that had broken down years ago and were never meant to be tinkered with in orbit, and replaced a faltering science data-handling device. They also installed a docking device so a robotic craft can latch on and steer the telescope into the Pacific sometime in the early 2020s.

All told, this visit to Hubble cost more than $1 billion.

Hubble senior project scientist David Leckrone was hoping the spacewalkers would give the telescope a goodbye hug on behalf of the "thousands and thousands of Hubble huggers all over the world."

Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist who has spent more time working on the orbiting Hubble than anyone, was expected to do the honors. He's visited Hubble twice before, and plans to use the telescope once he's back on Earth to study the moon.

NASA hopes to crank Hubble back up by summer's end, following extensive testing of its new parts.

Already, though, scientists have gotten more than they could have hoped out of Hubble, which was launched in 1990 with a projected working lifetime of 15 years. Once its blurred vision was corrected in 1993 and NASA's reputation was restored, the telescope began churning out breathtaking images: among other things, stars in the throes of birth and death.

Back at the launch site, meanwhile, NASA maintained its vigil in case another shuttle needed to rush to the rescue. Atlantis escaped serious launch damage a week ago, but was susceptible to all the space junk in Hubble's 350-mile-high orbit. The astronauts will perform one last survey of their ship after releasing the telescope.

NASA took unprecedented steps to have Endeavour on the pad as a rescue ship, because the Atlantis astronauts have nowhere to seek shelter if they cannot return to Earth because of shuttle damage. The space station is in another, unreachable orbit.

The increased risk prompted NASA to cancel the mission five years ago in the wake of the Columbia accident. It was reinstated two years later.

With NASA's three remaining space shuttles set for retirement next year, there will no way for astronauts to return to Hubble. The new spacecraft under development will be much smaller and less of a workhorse than the shuttle, and lack a big robot arm for grabbing the telescope. Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be launched in 2014 by an unmanned rocket and placed in an orbit inaccessible to astronauts.

___

On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

[Rico]

Shuttle is still up there.  Weather has delayed their return until at least tomorrow.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Thunderstorms prevented space shuttle Atlantis and its crew from landing Friday, leaving them to circle the Earth hoping the weather would improve by the following day.

The news came as no surprise to the seven astronauts, who are wrapping up a successful mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. For days, the weather outlook had been grim. By dawn, all the forecasts proved to be true and there was no hope of improvement, forcing NASA to pass up both of Friday morning's landing opportunities.

"Appreciate your patience," Mission Control said. "We don't see any value in waiting two or three hours, so we're going to wave off for the day."

"We know you looked at it hard," replied commander Scott Altman. "We appreciate you making the call early and understand."

NASA is now aiming to bring Atlantis back on Saturday morning after 12 days of flight, if not at Kennedy Space Center then possibly at the backup landing site in Southern California. Forecasters held out only slight hope of improvement in Florida, over the next few days, because of the stalled low-pressure system stretching from the Gulf of Mexico into the Caribbean. The weather over at Edwards Air Force Base, on the other hand, looked good.

The shuttle has enough supplies to stay up until Monday.

NASA prefers a Florida touchdown because of the time and money — about $1.8 million — it takes to haul a shuttle across the country atop a modified jumbo jet.

The astronauts settled in and relaxed after getting the news of the delay. "We're enjoying the view," Altman said.

Atlantis blasted off May 11 on NASA's last trip to Hubble. The astronauts carried out five back-to-back spacewalks to fix and upgrade the 19-year-old observatory, now considered better than ever.

The repairs added five to 10 years to Hubble's working lifetime. Scientists hope to begin beaming back the results by early September.

One of the Hubble cameras that was replaced is returning to Earth aboard Atlantis so it can be put on display at the Smithsonian Institution. A more powerful and sophisticated wide-field camera took its place.

The six men and one woman aboard Atlantis were the last humans to set eyes on Hubble up close. NASA plans no more satellite-servicing missions of this type, with the space telescope or anything else. That's because the shuttle is being retired next year. The replacement craft will essentially be a capsule to ferry astronauts back and forth to the international space station and, ultimately, the moon.

NASA considered this fifth and final Hubble repair mission so dangerous that, in 2004, a year after the Columbia tragedy, it was canceled. The space agency reinstated it two years later after putting a potential rescue mission in place and developing repair methods for astronauts in orbit.