A
long-awaited mission to repair and upgrade the venerable Hubble Space Telescope
will get serious next week when the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to roll
out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The
high-profile and risky mission will overhaul
the telescope for the fifth and final time.
The rollout
is slated to start Tuesday when the shuttle begins a 3.4-mile journey to the
launch pad aboard a crawler moving at less than 1 mph.
The fully
assembled space shuttle, consisting of the orbiter, external fuel tank and twin
solid rocket boosters, was mounted on a mobile launcher platform and will be
delivered to the pad atop a crawler-transporter. The process is expected to
take approximately six hours.
During
Atlantis' 11-day mission, the crew of seven astronauts will make the final
shuttle flight to Hubble, considered by many to be the greatest telescope ever. During five spacewalks, they will install two new
instruments, repair two inactive ones and replace components. The result will
be six working, complementary science instruments with capabilities beyond what
is now available, and an extended operational lifespan for the telescope
through at least 2014.
Scott
Altman will be the commander of Atlantis. Gregory C. Johnson will be the pilot.
Mission specialists will be John Grunsfeld, Mike Massimino, Megan McArthur,
Andrew Feustel and Michael Good.
The mission
is riskier than most because the astronauts will not have the safe haven of the
International Space Station (which STS-119 crew members undocked from today) to
turn to if their shuttle heat shield is damaged beyond repair as current
missions to the station do. NASA will have a second shuttle ready to launch as
a rescue ship instead.
The Hubble
repair mission also has an added risk because of the Feb. 10
collision between a U.S. Iridium 33 communications satellite and the
defunct Russian military communications satellite Cosmos 2251. The mission was
at a higher
space debris risk to begin with.
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