"We have beautiful views of Mr. Hubble, the telescope, over the Earth's horizon, ready to go and make new discoveries," Columbia mission specialist John Grunsfeld told astronauts and engineers gathered in NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston."We bid Hubble well on its new journey with new tools to explore the universe. Good luck Mr. Hubble."
Decked out in a black-tie tuxedo and speaking for Mission Control, fellow astronaut Mario Runco added: "We wish it well from down here as well, John."
Stunning live images beamed back to Earth via satellite showed the four-story telescope flying 362 miles (579 kilometers) above sunlit South Africa, its aperture door swung open, once again exposing the observatory's primary mirror to starlight.
Jutting out from its sides: Two new blue solar wings that will enable astronomers to operate as many as four Hubble instruments simultaneously.
Smaller, sturdier and significantly more powerful than the telescope's old gold wings, the $19 million set of solar panels endowed the telescope with a new outward appearance and enough electricity to run the observatory through its retirement in 2010.
Also evident: A lengthy external radiator that was hooked up to a new $21 million cryogenic cooler in hopes of reviving the telescope's dormant infrared camera-spectrometer.
Hidden from view was a new power switching station that now serves as the electrical heart of Hubble, and a $76 million planetary camera that will allow the observatory to peer further into the universe than ever before.
Armed with an array of still and video cameras, the astronauts went into a photo-frenzy, capturing awesome images of the telescope as it passed onto the dark side of Earth over Australia, its glossy metal body gleaming against pitch-black space.
"You're right. It's an 'ooh-ah' picture," Runco told the crew.
All the gear was installed and activated during a five-day sprint that set a spacewalking record for a single shuttle mission. Added up, two alternating two-man teams spent 35 hours and 55 minutes working on Hubble, which had been mounted to a work stand in Columbia's cargo bay.
The new benchmark surpassed by 29 minutes one set by NASA's first Hubble repair crew in 1993, a flight primarily focused on fixing a debilitating flaw in the observatory's 94.5-inch (2.4-meter) primary mirror.
Both missions featured five spacewalks, and the work carried out by Columbia's crew was considered every bit as daunting as the earlier restoration of Hubble's view on the universe.
"This mission was crammed full of tough, challenging work," said NASA Hubble Project Manager Preston Burch. "And many people on this mission privately didn't think that we'd be able to accomplish everything."
But they did, and astronomers now are in the midst of a 45-day push to calibrate the observatory's new planetary camera, chill down its infrared instrument and tweak its overhauled electrical system.
The first new images from the telescope should be made public in early May, and Grunsfeld said people around the Earth "will be able to enjoy the beauty and inspiration that these new pictures from Hubble will bring."
Columbia and its six-man, one-woman crew performed a final separation burn after a half-hour fly-around of Hubble, propelling the shuttle on a three-day trip back to Earth.
The winged spaceship and its astronauts are scheduled to land here at Kennedy Space Center at 4:30 a.m. EST (0930 GMT) Tuesday.
advertisement
