
As
has been announced already 2 days ago, NASA decided on having a servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope. After the Columbia accident Hubble's future looked dark, as the much needed maintenance visit was stopped due the halted Shuttle programme and NASA even decided to give up on Hubble, leaving us with no optical space telescope. The main problem are the gyroscopes which are needed to do the 'steering'. The abandonment of the space telescope yielded an uproar in the scientific community, but with the Shuttles not flying and even if flying their restriction to deliver parts to the ISS put a service mission far off.
But now, luckily, there is new hope: As the Shuttle programme regained trust, NASA
Administrator Michael Griffin announced the fifth servicing mission, servicing mission 4 (SM4). Actually, SM4 was already planned for 2004, but got canceled. And for those who are confused about SM4 being the fifth servicing mission: SM3 was done in two parts,
SM3A and
SM3B.
SM4 is scheduled to fly in mid-2008, extending the operating life of Hubble to at least 2013. The operative goals are (see
here for more details and further information):
- Installing the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS)
- Installing the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)
- Replacing one of the three Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS)
- Delivering 6 new gyroscopes
- Replacement for the 6 batteries
- New thermal protection sheets
- Repairing of the Space Telescope Imagine Spectrograph (STIS)
- Attaching a Soft Capture Mechanism that will enable the safe de-orbit of the HST
Now we just have to hope that the HST will hold up until the service mission!