14 DAY TRIAL // The 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, the most well-known and productive observatory in the world, is now affixed to the space shuttle Atlantis' cargo bay. The crew managed to successfully pull in the satellite yesterday, at around 1:14 pm EDT (1714 GMT), using their spacecraft's robotic arm. The maneuver was made particularly hazardous by the fact that the two were just 33 feet (ten meters) apart at the time, and the risk of collision was significant. However, the observatory was guided flawlessly into the cargo bay and onto a specially designed support.
After almost two days of chasing the telescope in orbit, Atlantis finally managed to catch up with it, and to capture it at about 350 miles (563 km) over Australia. Over the next seven days, its astronauts will have to conduct a number of five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the observatory, which means that there will be very little place for errors or falling behind schedule. The pressure is intensified by the fact that this is the first visit to Hubble in seven years, and also by the fact that it's the last ever carried out in a shuttle.
“I am just looking out the window here, and it's an unbelievably beautiful sight. Amazingly, the exterior of Hubble, an old man of 19 years in space, still looks in fantastic shape,” Mission Control third-time Hubble visitor, shuttle Astrophysicist-Astronaut and crew member John Grunsfeld told, Space reports. Surprisingly enough, the instrument is in terrific shape, despite the seven years that went by without a proper maintenance mission. Originally scheduled to take off in 2004, Atlantis' mission was canceled on account of the 2003 Colombia disaster.
Having completed the first heat shield scan of the shuttle, the astronauts are now inspecting the telescope with their sensor-laden pole, and are preparing to perform a spacewalk today. Scheduled for 8:16 am EDT, the trip to space will see the replacement of the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 with the WFPC3, as well as the change of a data-handling unit, which caused the delay of the mission several times. The small dock that will ensure Hubble is decommissioned safely will also be installed today.
The upgrades and modifications that Hubble will get are meant to keep it functional until at least 2014, but maybe even beyond. By that time, its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, should already be in orbit and operational. Its commissioning is scheduled for 2013, at the earliest.