This
story was updated at 4:18 p.m. EDT.
CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off into a Florida sky
Monday to kick off a long-awaited mission to save the Hubble Space Telescope.
Atlantis
thundered into space at 2:01 p.m. (1801 GMT) from a seaside launch pad here at
NASA's Kennedy Space Center and began its risky mission to overhaul the 19-year-old
Hubble for the last time.
It is the
first time in seven years that astronauts are returning to Hubble. The mission,
NASA's last flight to the iconic space telescope, has been delayed since a part
broke on the telescope last year and the servicing and upgrade plan had to be
revised.
"At last
our launch has come along, it's been a long time coming," Atlantis commander
Scott Altman said just before liftoff. "Everyone has pulled together. We're
taking a little piece of all of us into space."
"Enjoy the
ride, pal," NASA launch director Mike Leinbach radioed back.
Atlantis is
due to arrive at Hubble Wednesday. The shuttle experienced two minor glitches -
a circuit breaker problem and a flaky sensor that sounded spurious alarms during
liftoff - but neither had an impact on launch. If all goes well, Atlantis
astronauts will upgrade Hubble to be more powerful and capable than ever
before.
Headed to
Hubble with Altman are shuttle pilot Gregory C. Johnson and mission specialists
Megan McArthur, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino and Andrew
Feustel. Altman, Grunsfeld and Massimino have flown
to Hubble before. The rest are making their first spaceflight.
High
stakes at Hubble
Atlantis'
flight to Hubble is NASA's fifth and final
service call on the space telescope since its 1990 launch. NASA expected
30,000 people at its spaceport to watch today's high-profile blast off.
Thousands more were expected to watch elsewhere near the Cape.
No other
mission has been more planned or more complicated, Hubble managers said.
"There's
not much margin for error," said Preston Burch, NASA's Hubble program manager
at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We'll need flawless
execution from our astronaut team."
The mission
costs about $1.1 billion, and nearly $10 billion has been invested in Hubble
since its conception.
The
telescope was launched with a flawed mirror that gave Hubble blurry vision and
led many to consider it "a national joke," said Ed Weiler, NASA's chief of
science missions. Astronauts added corrective mirrors - essentially glasses -
to fix Hubble in 1993 in what Weiler calls the "miracle in space
mission." Atlantis' mission is expected to extend Hubble's life through
at least 2014, if not beyond, he added.
But there's
added risk for the spaceflight.
A second
space shuttle - the Endeavour orbiter - is on standby to fly
a rescue mission if Atlantis is damaged beyond repair and strands its crew
in orbit. Atlantis astronauts will not be able to reach the safe haven of the
International Space Station if their shuttle is critically damaged because
Hubble's position 350 miles (553 km) above Earth is higher and in a very
different orbit than the 220-mile (354-km) high station.
That risk
prompted NASA to cancel the Hubble flight in 2004 in the wake of the tragic
Columbia accident that killed seven astronauts a year earlier. The mission was
resurrected in 2006 after NASA resumed shuttle flights and successfully tested
orbiter inspection and repair techniques.
Atlantis
also has a slightly increased risk of damage from micrometeorites or space junk,
while attached to Hubble, primarily due to a crash between two satellites above
Earth earlier this year. The shuttle has a 1-in-229 chance of suffering a
mortal blow from space debris, the space agency figures, but officials say the
risk does not exceed NASA safety requirements.
The
ultimate upgrade
Hubble can
see galaxies and other objects that formed about 700 million years after the
birth of the universe, but this mission would push that boundary back to about
500 million years after the theoretical Big Bang. The universe is 13.7 billion
years old.
"I like to
think of everything we've done up to now as prologue," said David Leckrone, the
Hubble program's senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
The
astronauts will run a five-spacewalk
marathon to tune up Hubble. They'll replace the telescope's batteries and
gyroscopes, as well as install two new cameras. Spacewalkers will also attempt
to repair two others that are broken, but were never designed to be fixed in
space.
Hubble
scientists are hopeful, but there's no guarantee the fixes will work.
"I think
this is going to be a nail-biter all the way up until we actually do the repair,"
said Grunsfeld, the mission's lead spacewalker.
Grunsfeld,
an astrophysicist-turned-astronaut and self professed "Hubble hugger," is
making his fifth spaceflight and third trip to Hubble.
"I really
feel like Hubble is kind of a friend," Grunsfeld said before launch. "And I'm
going to visit an old friend that I haven't seen in a long time."
Atlantis is
also carrying an IMAX 3D camera to document the Hubble servicing mission for a
documentary slated for release in Spring 2010.
Monday's
launch marked the 30th flight for Atlantis and NASA's 126th shuttle mission. It
is NASA's last mission to Hubble and the final flight not bound for the
International Space Station. The space agency plans to launch at least seven
more shuttle missions to complete station construction before NASA retires its
three-orbiter fleet in 2010.
Atlantis
and its crew will spend about a week attached to Hubble and are due to land on
May 22.
SPACE.com
is providing continuous coverage of NASA's last mission to the Hubble Space
Telescope with senior editor Tariq Malik at Cape Canaveral and reporter Clara
Moskowitz in New York. Click
here for mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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