At 4:05 p.m. EST, the three locks holding Hubble to Discovery were undone and Clervoy lifted the telescope up and slightly over Discovery's right side.
"What a Christmas for Hubble -- six gyros, new ones, not normally found under the tree."
Ground controllers opened the telescope's aperture door about 5:15 p.m. EST to ensure it operated properly while astronauts could still get to it.
Michael Foale and Claude Nicollier stood by to make a spacewalk in case there were any problems in deployment.
About 6:03 p.m., Discovery's arm released the telescope and commander Curt Brown and pilot Scott Kelly inched the shuttle away from the telescope with a burst of the orbiter's thrusters. About 20 minutes later, Discovery fired its maneuvering jets to move further away.
"Congratulations for an excellent deployment," said astronaut Stephen Robinson from mission control in Houston. "Thanks for the great Christmas present -- just what we wanted."
A round of applause went up in mission control at 6:20 p.m. EST when telescope controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, announced Hubble was operating well and pointing toward the sun to charge its batteries.
The $3 billion dollar telescope had been out of commission since Nov. 15 when one of its three operating gyros failed. That changed the mission from routine repair to a rescue mission, but numerous delays pushed the October launch date into late December.
Parting with the Hubble was sweet sorrow for astronomer and spacewalker John Grunsfeld, but he seemed satisfied with his work.
"It was a little bit of a sorry departure. We felt like we could have stayed a little bit longer, learned a little bit more and that's the way it goes," Grunsfeld said Saturday night. We're just happy everything went so well and that Hubble is on its way to start observing again.
Following last minute technical delays, NASA launched Discovery on Dec. 19, the last possible day to launch before mid-January. The space agency wanted the shuttle on the ground well before the year's end to avoid any computer glitches.
During three spacewalks, astronauts replaced all six gyros, a guidance sensor and a radio transmitter. They also installed an improved computer, voltage regulators and data recorder. The scientific community seems to be excited about its large and improved Christmas present.
"It was hard to miss Christmas, I think there's no doubt about that, people were phoning their families and missing their families and so on," said Dr. Anne Kinney, a NASA astronomer. "I don't anybody would have been anywhere else."
Dr. John Campbell, Hubble project manager, thought the telescope makes a dandy Christmas present.
"What a Christmas for Hubble -- six gyros, new ones, not normally found under the tree," he said with a grin. "A new computer, better batteries, everybody needs batteries during Christmas, more storage, new clothes, better fine guidance and everybody needs better guidance and a new radio transmitter."
Hubble's new clothes are insulation blankets installed by spacewalkers. The 2001 mission to the telescope will finish the task.
Earlier in the day, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin congratulated the crew and asked if they'd seen Santa while in orbit.
Brown replied Santa had visited the orbiter.
Goldin praised the crew and also took time to rebut space agency critics' charges that the mission was rushed and potentially unsafe.
"The other thing that gives me tremendous pride and pleasure is how conscientious the entire NASA team was about safety," Goldin said. "Never once did they worry about schedules and made sure that when the shuttle took off, it was in perfect condition."
Hubble could begin some observations in as little as two weeks if early tests go well. It should be back in full operation by sometime in March 2000.
The space agency plans two more servicing missions to the telescope in 2001 and 2003. Hubble will possibly be returned to Earth in 2010 at the end of its mission by a space shuttle.
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