NASA’s decision to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope drew a round of applause from interested lawmakers, companies with a financial stake in the mission and astronomy and space federations.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin announced Oct. 31 that the space shuttle will make a final servicing call to Hubble as part of a mission to extend and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013.

This fifth space shuttle visit to the orbiting telescope, tentatively scheduled for fall 2008, has been ruled out as too dangerous in the wake of the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia in February 2003.

"We have conducted a detailed analysis of the performance and procedures necessary to carry out a successful Hubble repair mission over the course of the last three shuttle missions," Griffin said in a statement. "What we have learned has convinced us that we are able to conduct a safe and effective servicing mission to Hubble. While there is an inherent risk in all spaceflight activities, the desire to preserve a truly international asset like the Hubble Space Telescope makes doing this mission the right course of action."

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), one of Hubble’s greatest defenders, was among many lawmakers who praised the decision. As the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations subcommittee, Mikulski has fought to provide funding for a Hubble servicing mission – adding $350 million over the past two years to spending bills at a time when the administration did not include funding for a servicing mission.

"While experts were working on a second opinion, I was fighting for Hubble’s budget," Mikulski said in a statement. "I knew that if the NASA administrator said a shuttle mission was safe – because the safety of our astronauts must be our number one priority – NASA would need money in the federal checkbook for a Hubble servicing mission. I promised to move heaven and earth to make sure the resources would be there. Hubble is too important to the world and to our country."

New Instruments

A crew of seven astronauts will replace worn batteries and install new instruments aboard Hubble.

Hubble was designed so that astronauts could install new instruments on the telescope during its service life, and the final mission will place the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3, both built by Ball Aerospace, aboard Hubble. The COS is the most sensitive ultraviolet spectrograph ever flown on Hubble, NASA said, and will study the large-scale structure of the universe by looking at dark matter and the spatial distribution of galaxies and intergalactic gas. The Wide Field Camera will look at planets in our solar system as well as early and distant galaxies beyond Hubble’s current capabilities

Other planned work includes installing a refurbished Fine Guidance Sensor. Hubble carries three of the units that control the telescopes pointing system. An attempt will also be made to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which was installed in 1997 and stopped working in 2004. The instrument is used for high-resolution studies of star systems and distant galaxies.

A Lockheed Martin Corp.-led team has been retained to provide support to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which manages the telescope program in the planning, training and implementation of the space shuttle mission.

The Lockheed Martin team includes individuals from Lockheed Martin Space Systems; Lockheed Martin Technical Operations; Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions; Jackson and Tull; Orbital Sciences Corp.; Raytheon Optical Systems Inc.; Allied-Signal; Honeywell; Raytheon STX; and Computer Sciences Corp.