After a highly successful Hubble Telescope repair and upgrade mission the NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis is home and safe.
Just as the work on Hubble was fraught with its own set of unique problems, so too, the trip back to Earth for the Shuttle crew was put on delay twice due to problematic weather in Florida. However, after two days orbiting while waiting for fair-weather to develop, NASA had the crew of the Shuttle land at its back-up facility at Edwards Air Force Base located in California. Fortunately the 21 inch gap in the surface tiles caused by debris during lift-off posed no problem for Atlantis on re-entry.
The landing went according to the book and the astronauts debarked with much fanfare, thumbs-up and with the knowledge that being the final Shuttle crew to ever visit the Hubble, were successful in breathing new life back into the legendary telescope.
President Obama telephoned the crew giving them high praise for a job well done after its over 5 million mile journey, 13 day-197 orbit. The Hubble is expected to continue operation until sometime in early 2020’s when it will begin to have its orbit destabilize and eventually fireball somewhere in the Pacific Ocean under NASA guidance. With this final upgrade performed by the Atlantis astronauts the Hubble will now be able to peer into the Universe’s past to the point of only 300 million years after the supposed Big Bang. What will be learned is expected to rewrite most of the current scientific thought on how the Universe…and we, came to be.
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