Hubble Space Telescope Fix Works, As Camera Captures Aftermath Of Two Galaxies Colliding

Space Shuttle Atlantis will be delayed 6.5 months, at least, before it can launch on its mission to repair and refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning that the launch that was planned for last month, and then bumped to February, now will be later still, NASA officials said.

All that, in turn, may delay just when the first test of the next-generation Ares 1-X rocket can be performed.

Meanwhile, however, the recently ailing Hubble is back, big time, and proved it with a vivid photo of a cosmic collision.

In the picture, the Hubble showed the aftermath of one galaxy smashing through another galaxy, with one tough galaxy seen on edge, and the not-so-tough galaxy left with a giant hole in the middle.

While all this may be hard on the galaxies, the Hubble performance is great news for scientists on Earth who feared that a glitch in Hubble systems might mean the loss of stunning data and images for months from the space telescope, until a rescue mission could reach the orbiting observatory next May, or later.

Jon Morse, director of the NASA astrophysics division, and Preston Burch, the Hubble program manager at Goddard Space Flight Center, detailed the heartening recovery of Hubble, during a teleconference with space journalists.

"The Science Mission Directorate [disclosed] it will not be able to support a February" launch date for Atlantis, because a critical replacement part for the Hubble won’t be ready then, Morse said.

That means Atlantis will have to wait to perform the Hubble rescue, making a May time frame more likely. Meanwhile, as Atlantis is towed off Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, its place is being taken by Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is set for a mission to the International Space Station. Endeavour had been slated to act as a life raft in case Atlantis encountered serious difficulty while servicing Hubble. (Please see full story in this issue, and revised NASA Launch Schedule.)

The delay of more than six months from the planned October launch date for Atlantis will be compelled by a three-month delay for environmental tests and other work on the replacement part, and another two to two-and-a-half months to ensure that the component works, Preston said.

Also, training for crew members who will swap out the components is a must, to familiarize them with the tasks they must perform in an hour-and-a-half spacewalk working on the Hubble.

Also, three tools will have to be developed and fabricated to permit Atlantis crew members to remove the faulty component on the Hubble, and install the new component. That spacewalk may occur early in the Hubble repair mission, because it will be high on the priority list of tasks that Atlantis crew members must complete.

The problem arose in September, when the Hubble began experiencing systems problems, just as Atlantis was set for an October liftoff. A data transmitter unit malfunctioned, and NASA experts had a tough time in switching from the failed Side A to the long-unused Side B. So the Atlantis launch was postponed.

Attempts to fix the problem dragged on for weeks, but finally Side B was brought up, and the Hubble went back to work.

It took a snapshot of the galaxy pair Arp 147. The science operations were resumed Oct. 25, four weeks after that problem with the science data formatter took the spacecraft into safe mode.

Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.

The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a perfect 10 both for performance and beauty, according to NASA.

And literally 10 for appearance too, due to the chance alignment of the two galaxies. The left-most galaxy, or the "1" in the image, is relatively undisturbed, apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly edge-on to one’s line of sight. The right-most galaxy, the ‘0’ of the pair, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.

The blue ring was formed after the galaxy on the left smashed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates an outwardly moving circular wave, or ripples, an outwardly propagating ring of higher density was generated at the point of impact of the two galaxies. As this excess density collided with outer material that was moving inwards due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies, shocks and dense gas were produced, stimulating star formation.

The dusty reddish knot at the lower left of the blue ring probably marks the location of the original nucleus of the galaxy that was hit.

This is a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency.