May 24 2009
From The Space Library
Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely at 8:39 a.m. (PDT) at Edwards Air Force Base in California, ending a successful 13-day mission to HST. Weather conditions had prevented Atlantis from landing at KSC . Astronauts had performed five spacewalks to repair, replace, and upgrade the instruments and computers on HST. These repairs and upgrades had not only restored the telescope, but had also expanded its capabilities. NASA considered the unprecedented mission historic, because of the complexity of the repairs and because the mission had been the last time human beings would go to space to repair an orbiting scientific instrument. NASA had placed HST in low Earth orbit at 600 kilometers (373 miles) to facilitate repair missions, but the location was suboptimal for space telescopes. NASA had planned to place HST’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ), 1.5 million kilometers (0.93 million miles) away from Earth, at L2, and, therefore, had designed JWST to function without repairs or upgrades. In addition to making HST repairs, astronauts had performed a commercial drug experiment aimed at finding a vaccine against methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other microbes.
NASA, “NASA’s Space Shuttle Returns to Earth After Hubble Mission,” news release 09-120, 24 May 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/may/HQ_09-120_STS-125_Landing_Edwards.html (accessed 20 June 2011); Houston Chronicle, “This Is Why We Fly: Hubble Repair Mission Showcases the Value of the Manned Space Program,” 26 May 2009; Daniel Holz, “The Last Fix,” Discover Magazine, 26 May 2009, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/05/25/the-last-fix/ (accessed 21 July 2011); Frank Morring Jr., “Drug Experiment Performed on Atlantis,” Aviation Week, 20 May 2009.
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