NASA’s fifth anf final shuttle launch to fix the Hubble Space Telescope took off this morning in the Atlantis from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 2:01 EDT.  It was rather uncertain that the Hubble would even get this final bout of repairs.  After Hubble’s latest problems, and NASA’s space shuttle difficulties, it was a near thing that this mission got scrubbed.  But NASA is confident in their upgrades to the shuttle and its launch systems, and so with the Atlantis launched and the Endeavor on standby in case of emergency, the Hubble repairs are underway.

The brave crew of Atlantis mission STS-125 – Commander Scott Altman, Pilot Gregory C. Johnson and Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Mike Massimino and Megan McArthur – will spend over 11 days on 5 space walks to fix and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope for another five years of operation in the discovery of our universe.

On the list of fixes are replacing the malfunctioning Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit (SIC&DH) to keep Hubble operational and replacing old gyroscopes, batteries and a fine guidance sensor for more of the same.  But that’s not all.  Hubble also gets some new mojo by installing the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to detect very faint light from far-away quasars and adding the new Wide Field Camera 3 to take color photos more stunning than ever before as it includes infrared and ultraviolet wavelength ranges unavailable to the current Hubble color cameras.

We wish them the best of luck.  Spacewalks are no picnic, and they’ve got a lot of them to perform to fix up good ol’ Hubble.  But it will all be worth it.  The Hubble satellite is not just one of the most advanced scientific platforms in orbit, but it’s also an old friend that tells us stories of the cosmos.