Twitter tweets and Hubble hopes --

Image via Wikipedia

This will be the last service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. An experienced crew had their first planned launch date in October of 2008 scrubbed. One half of the telescope's redundant capacity went down. Now they are headed to the telescope with a spare and a plan. The crew will snag the Hubble to do a number of significant repair and upgrade operations (5 space walks), while they have the instrument in the payload bay of Atlantis.

This mission is a bit riskier than normal for a couple of reasons. The Atlantis orbit is much higher than the ISS orbit, and it holds a good deal more space debris than the lower altitudes. And Atlantis is on its own in space without the support of the International Space Station nearby. Therefore NASA has another shuttle at the ready to launch in the unlikely event that a rescue mission is needed.

Astro Mike tweets. He is actually Mission Specialist Mike Massimino of the Hubble STS-120 mission crew. I think the whole thing is very close to magic.

Some of my favorite tweets* about the space program --

"I will be able to twitter from space if I have time. I will email tweets to NASA who'll fwd them. No promises but I will try my best^," from AstroMike (5/1/09).

"STS-119 Meets with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office! See Photos at: http://tinyurl.com/dyu9rn^," from NASA (5/1/09).

"My launch minus 10 days physical exam with our doctors - making sure I am healthy for space, so far so good^," from Astro Mike Massimino (5/1/09).

"In honor of Earth Day, take a look at these amazing shots of Earth^," from Today Show, courtesy of NASA. (4/22/09).

"Hubble: evidence that galaxies are embedded in halos of dark matter: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope^," from Astronautics (3/12/09).


*Hat Tip to Twitter for all the great tweets, marked with [^].

Cross-posted at my brand new blog is called "Behind the Links."

Carol Gee - Online Universe is the all-in-one home page for my websites.

Technorati tags: NASA space news hubble

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hubble Upgrades Will Give Space Telescope Cosmic Super Vision [Space] (gizmodo.com)
• Nasa space shuttle Atlantis blasts off to service Hubble telescope (telegraph.co.uk)
• Across the universe (guardian.co.uk)
• U.S. space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from Florida to fix Hubble telescope (network.nationalpost.com)
• Space Shuttle Launches to Save Hubble Telescope (space.com)
• Astronauts ready for rescue mission (cnn.com)