It missed the first landing attempt in Florida

May 24, 2009 18:14 GMT  ·  By
Atlantis landed safely today at the Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California, completing its STS-125 mission to repair the famous Hubble Space Telescope
   Atlantis landed safely today at the Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California, completing its STS-125 mission to repair the famous Hubble Space Telescope

The crew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis had only two landing windows today, one on the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at 10:11 am EDT (1411 GMT), and the other at the Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California, at 11:40 am EDT (1540 GMT). After bad weather made the KSC landing impossible, NASA mission controllers decided not to take any chances with the seven-astronaut crew, and advised a landing at the EAFB. The perfect landing, under optimum conditions, was the last step in the highly successful mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and officially concludes the fifth and final mission to the observatory.

 

“This mission highlights what the challenges of spaceflight can bring out in human beings. This mission required the absolute best from the shuttle team, the Hubble science and repair teams, and the crew. The results are a tribute to the entire team and the years of preparation,” the associate administrator for Space Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC, Bill Gerstenmaier, said of the accomplishment in a NASA press release.

 

“This is not the end of the story but the beginning of another chapter of discovery by Hubble. Hubble will be more powerful than ever, continue to surprise, enlighten, and inspire us all and pave the way for the next generation of observatories,” added in the same statement Ed Weiler, who is also an associate administrator for science at the agency's headquarters.

 

The shuttle's 13-day mission, originally scheduled to last only 11, and to return to Earth on Friday, took the astronauts on a 5.3 million mile-long journey in orbit. During this time, they managed to successfully complete all of the tasks appointed to them by Mission Control, and even to make a few additional improvements. According to the live feeds that were made available on NASA TV, the Hubble Space Telescope is now better than ever, and everyone has high expectations of it.

 

Additionally, engineers believe that the refurbished observatory, which now features a long row of new sensors, cameras, spectrographs, gyroscopes and batteries, will last on orbit until at least 2014. After it ends its service, the landmark observatory will be de-orbited by an unmanned vehicle, which will dock to the telescope via a newly installed structure.

 

“There are already some bittersweet feelings. We're extremely pleased with the success of the mission and happy. But on the other hand, we're sad that this will be the last time we see it,” Preston Burch, who is the NASA Hubble program manager, told reports on Monday at the Johnson Space Center. “We have a saying in the science mission directorate, 'Science Never Sleeps,' and our work is just beginning. We can't wait to get out there and use Hubble for its intended purposes,” Space quotes the chief of NASA's astrophysics division, Jon Morse, as saying.