A story in USA Today states that it appears likely that NASA will go ahead with a repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope with an announcement on Tuesday. A repair mission previously scheduled but cancelled after the Columbia disaster is needed to extend the telescope’s life past the next few years due to failing gyroscopes needed to orientate it.
An entry by Keith Cowing at NASAwatch.com states that after September’s successful launch of the space shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station NASA officials are confident enough of the shuttle’s reliability to have a mission to other than the space station.
The article describes the repair mission as:
If it goes forward, a Hubble servicing mission would have to be squeezed into the space station construction schedule sometime in early 2008. NASA would have another shuttle on the launch pad, ready to make an emergency rescue trip if there were a catastrophic problem with the space shuttle. A rehab mission would keep Hubble working until about 2013. It would add two new camera instruments, upgrade aging batteries and stabilizing equipment, add new guidance sensors and repair a light-separating spectrograph, which stopped working in August 2004, said NASA spokesman Ed Campion
Update: October 31, 2006
It’s a treat and not a trick for Hubble fans as NASA officially announced a new servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The mission is tentatively targeted for spring to fall 2008. It has the goal of adding two new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), replacing a guidance sensor and an attempt at the repair of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which failed in 2004. Batteries, and gyroscopes will also be replaced, extending the lifespan of the telescope to 2013 or beyond.
Unlike the other remaining shuttle missions, which are aimed at the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) and thus allow the use of the ISS as a refuge if the shuttle is damaged on launch, this mission will not allow that option. As a result a second shuttle will be held ready to launch on short notice if the repair mission encounters difficulties.