Oct 31 2006
From The Space Library
NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin announced that NASA would conduct a fifth and final crewed servicing mission to the HST, an expedition that would help extend and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013. Griffin’s announcement reversed previous NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe’s decision to cancel the servicing mission. The mission’s main objective was to install two new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The COS would survey the universe’s large-scale structure, known as the cosmic web. The gravity of dark matter and the spatial distribution of galaxies and intergalactic gas determine the structure known as the cosmic web. The WFC3 would observe objects in the solar system and in distant galaxies, providing scientists with information that would help them determine how those objects had formed. NASA announced that the mission’s crew members would be Commander Scott D. Altman, Pilot Gregory C. Johnson, and Mission Specialists Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good, John M. Grunsfeld, Michael J. Massimino, and K. Megan McArthur. NASA had tentatively scheduled the mission for 2008. The mission was controversial because it posed risks to astronauts. However, O’Keefe’s cancellation had also engendered controversy, because failing to service the HST would have meant the end of the HST’s mission by 2008.
NASA, “NASA Approves Mission and Names Crew for Return to Hubble,” news release 06-343, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/HQ_06343_HST_announcement.html (accessed 5 April 2010); Mark Carreau, “NASA to Repair Hubble Despite Potential Risks,” Houston Chronicle, 1 November 2006.
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