Home
Politics
Calling it a "great day to go to fly," flight director Mike Leinbach wished the crew "a great mission, good luck and Godspeed, and see you back in 11 days."
"From all the crew, I can really thank you," replied commander Scott Altman. "It has been a long time coming. I know it took the work of the entire team across our entire agency to bring us to this point."
The mission is the fifth and last maintenance operation to the Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired. If successful, NASA has said the fix-up would extend the stargazer's already lengthy life by another five years or longer.
Atlantis entered orbit eight minutes AND 30 seconds after lift-off, when the two booster rockets used to launch it above the Earth's atmosphere broke away as planned and fell into the Atlantic, where they were to be recovered.
Atlantis will now continue its flight for a rendezvous with the Hubble 563 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, and is due to arrive on Wednesday afternoon.
"The teams here ... gave us a great vehicle, and ascent was good," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations. "It was a great start to a very challenging mission."
Launched in 1990, Hubble is considered the greatest tool in the history of astronomy. Using powerful instruments to peer into deep space, it has provided profound insights into the origins, evolution and mysteries of the universe through hundreds of thousands of photographs.
But first it had to shed its reputation as a cosmic joke in its first years, when mirror problems gave the Hubble an embarrassing case of blurry vision.
The flaw was corrected in 1993, and Hubble began beaming back spectacularly sharp images which enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.
Hubble's servicing will entail five space walks, each lasting up to seven hours, and there will be no room for error. Crew members plan to replace the telescope's six gyroscopes and batteries and upgrade its optical instruments.
A journey to the Hubble, which is about the size of a school bus, carries more risk of being hit by space debris or micrometeorites than a flight to the International Space Station, as the telescope orbits at almost twice the altitude of the ISS.
Officials hope the mission will allow Hubble, which whizzes around the Earth at five miles (eight kilometers) per second, to keep functioning until 2014, when it is due to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope, a highly sophisticated device with an eagle-eye camera.
"If successful we will be entering our second quarter century. That's not bad for a mission that we hoped will last for 10 to 15 years," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's science missions directorate.
The crew will carry out a variety of tasks including replacing electronic circuit boards and installing a new imaging camera and a Cosmic Origins Spectrograph -- an especially sensitive instrument designed to split light it captures into individual wavelengths.
NASA says the spectrograph will not only be able to study stars, planets and galaxies but also basic elements found throughout the cosmos, such as carbon and iron.
And the new instruments will allow Hubble to peer even further back into time, perhaps as far back as some 600 to 500 million years after the Big Bang birth of the universe.
The maintenance is overdue after the years-long delay for US space flights since the 2003 Columbia disaster that saw the shuttle disintegrate as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"From all the crew, I can really thank you," replied commander Scott Altman. "It has been a long time coming. I know it took the work of the entire team across our entire agency to bring us to this point."
The mission is the fifth and last maintenance operation to the Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired. If successful, NASA has said the fix-up would extend the stargazer's already lengthy life by another five years or longer.
Atlantis entered orbit eight minutes AND 30 seconds after lift-off, when the two booster rockets used to launch it above the Earth's atmosphere broke away as planned and fell into the Atlantic, where they were to be recovered.
Atlantis will now continue its flight for a rendezvous with the Hubble 563 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, and is due to arrive on Wednesday afternoon.
"The teams here ... gave us a great vehicle, and ascent was good," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations. "It was a great start to a very challenging mission."
Launched in 1990, Hubble is considered the greatest tool in the history of astronomy. Using powerful instruments to peer into deep space, it has provided profound insights into the origins, evolution and mysteries of the universe through hundreds of thousands of photographs.
But first it had to shed its reputation as a cosmic joke in its first years, when mirror problems gave the Hubble an embarrassing case of blurry vision.
The flaw was corrected in 1993, and Hubble began beaming back spectacularly sharp images which enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.
Hubble's servicing will entail five space walks, each lasting up to seven hours, and there will be no room for error. Crew members plan to replace the telescope's six gyroscopes and batteries and upgrade its optical instruments.
A journey to the Hubble, which is about the size of a school bus, carries more risk of being hit by space debris or micrometeorites than a flight to the International Space Station, as the telescope orbits at almost twice the altitude of the ISS.
Officials hope the mission will allow Hubble, which whizzes around the Earth at five miles (eight kilometers) per second, to keep functioning until 2014, when it is due to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope, a highly sophisticated device with an eagle-eye camera.
"If successful we will be entering our second quarter century. That's not bad for a mission that we hoped will last for 10 to 15 years," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's science missions directorate.
The crew will carry out a variety of tasks including replacing electronic circuit boards and installing a new imaging camera and a Cosmic Origins Spectrograph -- an especially sensitive instrument designed to split light it captures into individual wavelengths.
NASA says the spectrograph will not only be able to study stars, planets and galaxies but also basic elements found throughout the cosmos, such as carbon and iron.
And the new instruments will allow Hubble to peer even further back into time, perhaps as far back as some 600 to 500 million years after the Big Bang birth of the universe.
The maintenance is overdue after the years-long delay for US space flights since the 2003 Columbia disaster that saw the shuttle disintegrate as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
