• PROJECTS
• THE PLANETARY REPORT
• PLANETARY RADIO
• BLOG
  • Archive
  • Future Space Events of Note
  • Special Coverage
  • Video Archives
• SOCIETY UPDATES

browse projects: Apophis Mission Design Competition Asteroid Impact Mapping System Catalog of Exoplanets Drive a Mars Rover Extrasolar Planets Transit Search International Lunar Decade International Year of Astronomy 2009 LIFE Experiment: Phobos Mars Climate Sounder Team Website Messages from Earth Observing Earth Pioneer Anomaly Planetary Microphones S.O.S: Save Our Science! SETI Optical Telescope SETI Radio Searches SETI@home Shoemaker NEO Grants Solar Sailing Space Advocacy Space Information Stardust@home Target Earth Visions of Mars

browse space topics: 2001 Mars Odyssey Asteroids and Comets Cassini-Huygens Chandra X-Ray Observatory Chandrayaan-1 Chang'e 1 Compare the Planets Dawn Deep Impact Earth Extrasolar Planets Genesis Hayabusa (MUSES-C) Hubble Space Telescope Jupiter Kaguya (SELENE) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Mars Mars Exploration Rovers Mars Express Mars Global Surveyor Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Science Laboratory Mercury MESSENGER Moon Near Earth Objects Neptune New Horizons New Horizons Digital Time Capsule Past Missions Phoenix Planetary Analogs Planetary Exploration Timelines Planetfest 2008 Pluto and Charon Pluto Top Ten Postcards from Venus Private Missions Rosetta Saturn Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence SMART-1 SOHO Space Imaging Spitzer Space Telescope Stardust Trans-Neptunian Objects Ulysses Uranus Venus Venus Express Voyager Weekly Planetary Radio Trivia Contest

The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Hubble servicing mission now scheduled for May 12, 2009

We need your help.
Please donate to support our blog, website, and podcast.

Weblog Archive

NASA just announced (in their third press release today) that the Hubble Servicing Mission is now rescheduled for May 12, 2009. (See this post for the history of the delay of this mission.) The release states that "The final servicing mission to Hubble was delayed in September when a data handling unit on the telescope failed. Since then, engineers have been working to prepare a spare for flight. They expect to be able to ship the spare, known as the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System, to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in spring 2009."

I checked the rest of the launch manifest and it's mostly unchanged except that they had to swap shuttles on a couple missions later in 2009 to account for the flight of Atlantis in May. It appears that it'll be Endeavour standing beside Atlantis on the second Shuttle launch pad when Atlantis launches, available to serve as a rescue flight should something go badly wrong on the Hubble Servicing Mission, since Atlantis' position at Hubble would preclude its astronauts from taking refuge in the International Space Station, which has a much different orbit.