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The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

The Hubble servicing mission is go!

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NASA announced this morning that they are going ahead with plans for a fifth Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission to take place some time in 2008, extending the orbiting telescope's lifetime to 2013. My feelings are mixed about this -- I'm delighted with any possibility of keeping Hubble going longer; its pictures are spectacular, capable of capturing the public imagination as few other spacecraft can. But with the recent history of the Shuttle program it's hard to be confident that announcements of future events will go as planned. You have to worry about how further mechanical problems might impact the Shuttle's flight capability to the point where this mission might suddenly become impossible again. But the fact that NASA is planning for this mission, has named a crew and announced a mission scenario, is a big step, and I hope very much that it will all work!

I missed the press conference this morning but the Bad Astronomer is filing updates on it.

I've added this announcement to the Hubble historical timeline in the Explore section -- if you're curious about how Hubble's been kept alive this long, check it out.