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Planetary News: Human Spaceflight (2009)From the Blog...NASA’s Final Servicing Mission to the Hubble Space TelescopeBy Ken KremerMay 7, 2009 The final Space Shuttle flight to NASA’s orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is set for blast off on May 11 at 2:01PM EDT from Launch Pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This will be NASA’s 5th and final shuttle mission to service and upgrade Hubble. The stakes could not be higher for this action packed, dauntingly complex and long delayed mission. It’s certain to be “High drama at the High Frontier” for this flight designated as SM-4 (Servicing Mission 4). Hubble has suffered “significant deterioration” in its science capabilities since the last servicing mission (SM-3B) conducted in March 2002, according to Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC. The seven year gap between servicing missions is “twice what it should be”, says David Leckrone, Hubble project scientist at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, MD. “We need surgery to get back to 100%”. Read more.
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