14 DAY TRIAL // After having constantly delayed the scheduled date of the servicing mission that's supposed to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA officials have finally come up with a target date. If all goes well – although we have heard this before – the shuttle carrying the repairing crew will launch next year, on May 12th, 2009. Atlantis' flight during the STS-125 servicing mission has been postponed twice so far.
The seven astronauts who make up the team that will heal Hubble were first announced that they would visit the telescope on October 14th. The technical problems experienced by the device in September prevented NASA from proceeding with the mission as planned, and the repairing attempts going on at the time determined them to reschedule the servicing mission for February next year. Dealing with the hardware failure that kept the telescope from sending images and data to Earth proved to be more challenging than expected.
By October, a new date was announced for no sooner than May next year, and it seems that this time the people at NASA are doing their best to comply with this schedule, as the officials confirmed the target date to be on the 12th of the month. A statement issued yesterday indicated that the agency hoped to be able to send the spare Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System to NASA's Florida-based Kennedy Space Center during early next spring.
The servicing mission is intended to last for 11 days and to consist of around five spacewalks. During these, a crew of seven astronauts will replace, repair and upgrade problematic parts and science instruments in order to extend the life of the nearly 20-year-old telescope by another decade. The crew of the STS-125 mission will be comprised of commander Scott Altman, pilot Gregory C. Johnson, mission specialists John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, both veteran spacewalkers, as well as spacewalking newcomers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur.