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May 12, 2009
Godspeed Crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis to Save the Hubble!
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After a smooth countdown and picture-perfect liftoff, space shuttle Atlantis and a crew of seven astronauts are in space, beginning their 11-day mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Atlantis lifted off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida today at 2:01 p.m. EDT.
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NASA launch to Hubble (STS-125)
After months of delay, NASA cleared space shuttle Atlantis for a Monday launch to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The 19-year-old Hubble needs new batteries, gyroscopes, cameras and other equipment that NASA hopes will keep the telescope operating — at a higher than ever scientific level — for another five to 10 years.
Hubble has been left unattended for seven years. It's the longest gap ever between servicing missions, created in large part by the 2003 Columbia disaster. A telescope breakdown last fall led to the most recent seven-month delay.
"We have seven years of accumulated maintenance work to do," Hubble program manager Preston Burch said. "So you can imagine if you had a car and you were driving it every day for seven years and never took it into the shop. You would have quite a list of things to do on it."
The 11-day mission is packed and includes unprecedented camera repairs. In all, five spacewalks are planned.
Because this is the final visit to Hubble, "we're going for broke," Leckrone told reporters.
This last repair mission was considered so dangerous in the wake of the Columbia accident that it was canceled in 2004.
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Wild Thing's comment.......
This is cool, The NASA.gov website coverage trails the NASA TV coverage by about 30 seconds.
LINK is NASA TV.
Posted by Wild Thing at May 12, 2009 06:45 AM
Comments
Yes! Blessings upon the brave crew of the Atlantis for a safe return home. It's not easy being up there with all the space garbage, so I pray God will be there, protecting our bravest repair crew in history.
Posted by: Lynn at May 12, 2009 08:15 AM
Lynn, thank you. This never gets old, it
always amazes me how they can do this.
Like yestersday where it said it was
going 6 thousand plus feet a second. wow
Posted by: Wild Thing at May 12, 2009 11:17 PM
