14 DAY TRIAL // The mission originally targeted the flight to the Hubble Space Telescope at the end of August, but delays related to the time required to build the external liquid fuel tanks of the shuttle have now pushed the date to October 8. The crew of seven participating in the mission will fly on board NASA's Atlantis space shuttle, while another space shuttle will be prepared and ready on the launch pad in case Atlantis suffers a critical malfunction and is unable to return safely to the surface of the Earth.
This will be the final servicing mission for the 18 year old optical space telescope and will consist of a series of repair and upgrade operations. The delay reported by NASA yesterday will also have an effect on the resupply mission which will be carried out by the Endeavor space shuttle to the International Space Station, after Atlantis' mission, which has been rescheduled from October 16 to November 10.
In case of an emergency, the Endeavor space shuttle will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center to assist the crew on Atlantis and return them to Earth. Otherwise, the Endeavor space shuttle will proceed with its original mission in November.
The space shuttle Discovery will fly to the ISS on May 31 in order to deliver the second section of JAXA's Kibo space laboratory.
These are the only three space shuttles still in service out of the fleet of six originally built by NASA. Enterprise was built only for test flights into Earth's atmosphere and never flew into space. Columbia and Challenger disintegrated into Earth's atmosphere in 2003 and 1986 respectively, killing the crews on board, while Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavor will continue to operate until 2010 when they will be decommissioned after more than two decades of service, in the case of the first two.