NASA Giving Hubble Telescope “Brain Surgery”

NASA is looking to get some more life out of the nineteen year old Hubble Space Telescope according to USA Today.

As we previously reported, the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch Monday on a mission to work on the telescope. The telescope is in need of some repair with three scientific instruments not functioning, half of it six gyroscopes, which keep the Hubble pointed in the right direction, not working and its battery slowly fading.

The proposed overhaul is so delicate and risky that NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld likens it to “brain surgery.”

It will be the fifth, final and most difficult mission to service the Hubble — a mission that was judged so risky to astronauts it was canceled in 2004 before safety precautions were added to ease the concerns.

If the work succeeds, it will mean a glorious rebirth of the Hubble. The telescope would be 90 times more powerful than when it was launched in 1990. If the mission fails, astronomy’s crown jewel could become a $6.9 billion “piece of space junk” with no chance to save it, astronaut and mission commander Scott Altman says.

No other flights to Hubble are planned. That’s because the shuttle — the only vehicle that can reach the telescope — is 17 months from retirement.

There had always been the possibility of “another shot” at Hubble, says Mike Weiss, the telescope’s deputy program manager.

That’s no longer the case.

“This is the last opportunity,” Weiss says. “There’s no margin for error.”

Even if Hubble were to blink off tomorrow, it would leave a legacy richer and more vast than that of any other astronomy tool. It has more discoveries to its credit than any other observatory, NASA’s Jon Morse says.

It “has already earned its place in history as a triumph of science in our modern era,” says Heidi Hammel, an astronomer at the Space Science Institute, a research institute. “Hubble brings the heavens down to us.”