CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Columbia's crafty crane operator deftly snatched NASA's massive Hubble Space Telescope out of open space Sunday, setting the stage for five daunting days of spacewalking observatory overhaul work.

What's Next: Tonight in Space

Two orbital mechanics will set out Monday on the first of five spacewalks aimed at giving the Hubble Space Telescope a mid-life makeover. Look for astronauts John Grunsfeld and Rick Linnehan to emerge from shuttle Columbia's internal airlock about 1:30 a.m. EST (0630 GMT). The job at hand: Removing one of the telescope's 10-year-old solar wings and then replacing it with the first of two third-generation arrays that will produce 25 percent more power than their predecessors. The additional electrical output will enable astronomers for the first time to operate all four of Hubble's science instruments simultaneous, speeding the rate at which the telescope can crank out new discoveries. Click here for mission updates and live NASA TV coverage beginning at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) Monday.

With Columbia and Hubble flying in formation at 25 times the speed of sound, astronaut Nancy Currie grappled the 13-ton telescope with the shuttle's robot arm at 4:31 a.m. EST (0931 GMT) as both craft soared high over the Pacific Ocean southwest of Mexico.

"Houston, we have Hubble on our arm," Columbia commander Scott "Scooter" Altman told colleagues in NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston while anxious project managers and scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., listened in.

"Copy, Scooter. Outstanding work, and there's a big sigh of relief we've heard from Goddard all the way here," fellow astronaut Mario Runco replied.

"I think it echoed up here as well," Altman added.

Coming one day, 22 hours and 17 minutes after Columbia's launch early Friday, the highly anticipated rendezvous with Hubble nearly was called off after problems cropped up with a critical shuttle cooling system.

A round-the-clock effort to analyze a clogged shuttle coolant line started shortly after Columbia reached orbit, prompting senior NASA managers to consider abandoning the mission and ordering the shuttle crew to make an early return to Earth.

In fact, a final decision to press ahead with the $172 million servicing call didn't come until Saturday afternoon, while the astronauts were sleeping.

So the six-man, one-woman crew didn't get the official word until ground controllers woke them at 8:52 p.m. EST Saturday (0152 GMT Sunday) with the theme song from the 1960s television show "Mission Impossible."

"Columbia, Houston. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to rendezvous and grapple the Hubble Space Telescope and then spend five days massively re-outfitting and upgrading the telescope," astronaut Dan Burbank called up from Mission Control.

"Hubble is 1,400 miles (2,240 kilometers) ahead of you, and you're closing at 600 miles (960 kilometers) an hour," he added. "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds."

"All right!" Altman replied. "Good morning, Houston."

The high-flying rendezvous began in earnest five hours later as Altman fired one of Columbia's twin orbital maneuvering engines for 11 seconds, putting the shuttle on course for a Hubble hook-up some 361 miles (588 kilometers) above the planet.

The shuttle was 9.2 miles (14.7 kilometers) away from the telescope at the time, and then Altman spent the next two hours easing Columbia up to a point just 30 feet (9 meters) below the storied observatory.

Shuttle TV cameras beamed back stunning images of the gleaming, four-story telescope hovering just above Columbia's tail fin, a cloud-covered Atlantic Ocean serving as a picturesque backdrop.

"It's great to see an old friend," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, an accomplished astronomer who took part in a late 1999 Hubble repair mission.

Next page: Rolling up the solar array blankets. Plus pictures.