Hubble Hubbub

Space shuttle Atlantis landed May 24 at Edwards Air Force Base after a crew of astronauts spent about two weeks in space making repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The crew had a long list of tasks to finish, but its top priority was repairing Hubble’s six gyroscopes, which keep the telescope pointed in the right direction. Hubble can stay focused on celestial targets with the precision of a laser beam hitting a dime 200 miles away. It uses only three of the gyroscopes; the other three are kept as spares.

NASA began running calibrations and electronics tests on Hubble, named for the trailblazing astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, shortly after the crew returned. A new and improved telescope should be ready to make more scientific observations in late August.

This was the fifth and final repair mission to keep Hubble in operating order. Hubble was launched in April 1990 and is expected to continue working until 2014 with its most recent repairs and upgrades. However, NASA plans to have a replacement ready by 2014—meaning Hubble will no longer have a purpose.

NASA describes Hubble as a “large, space-based observatory which has revolutionized astronomy by providing unprecedented deep and clear views of the Universe, ranging from our own solar system to extremely remote fledgling galaxies.”

About the size of a large tractor-trailer truck, this amazing gizmo can be seen with the naked eye when it passes closely enough to Earth on a dark, clear night.

NASA says some of the telescope’s greatest contributions to astronomy include: determining the age of the universe (13.7 billion years); discovering that nearly all galaxies have black holes at their center; and providing evidence that the speed at which the universe is expanding is accelerating.