The Hubble Space Telescope will be fixed!

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 09:19 AM by Dave

At yesterday’s meeting at the American Astronomical Society’s winter meeting, I listened to Michael Griffin, the head of NASA, give a talk on the future plans of NASA’s work. He announced that NASA will send the space shuttle to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). HST has slowly been losing its gyroscopes which keeps the telescope properly aimed in the sky. There was also a power failure in January of 2007. This repair mission will be this coming August.

The extent of the repair will also include the replacement of circuit boards which have never been thought to be replaced. The astronauts will have to use their bulky gloves to remove small screws which holds the boards in place. Not an easy job if you have ever used bulky gloves to do detailed work.

This repair mission will extend the life of this famous telescope until 2013. The expected demise of this telescope will be in 2020 when NASA will strap on a rocket and fire it into an ocean.

HST has given us some of the most spectacular images of our universe. The famous Deep Field images show the formation of galaxies about 13 billion years ago, just after the Big Bang.

I am glad to see that NASA is giving a fresh breath into the life of this famous telescope to help the discovery of science in the universe. Go to NASA’s web site to see some of the things that NASA is doing and see some of the images that HST has gained for us. www.nasa.gov/home/

Posted in Astronomy News

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