Space Shuttle STS-125 Atlantis Hubble Space Telescope Final Servicing Mission HST SM-04 2009 NASA
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“STS-125 Post Flight Presentation (Un-Narrated)
“Commander: Scott D. Altman
Pilot: Gregory C. Johnson
Mission Specialists: Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good, John M. Grunsfeld, Michael J. Massimino, K. Megan McArthur
Dates: May 11-24, 2009
Vehicle: Atlantis OV-104
Payloads: Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission SM-04”
NASA film JSC-2266
This film has live sound in parts, but has no narration.
Public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization.
STS-125, or HST-SM4 (Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4), was the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Launch occurred on 11 May 2009 at 2:01 pm EDT. Landing occurred on 24 May at 11:39 am EDT, with the mission lasting a total of just under 13 days.
Space Shuttle Atlantis carried two new instruments to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3. The mission also replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor, six gyroscopes, and two battery unit modules to allow the telescope to continue to function at least through 2014. The crew also installed new thermal blanket insulating panels to provide improved thermal protection, and a soft-capture mechanism that would aid in the safe de-orbiting of the telescope by an unmanned spacecraft at the end of its operational lifespan. The mission also carried an IMAX camera and the crew documented the progress of the mission for an upcoming IMAX movie.
The crew of STS-125 included three astronauts who had previous experience servicing Hubble. Scott Altman visited Hubble in 2002 as commander of STS-109, the fourth Hubble servicing mission. John Grunsfeld, an astronomer, has serviced Hubble twice, performing a total of five spacewalks on STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109. Michael Massimino served with both Altman and Grunsfeld on STS-109, and performed two spacewalks to service the telescope.
NASA managers and engineers declared the mission a complete success. The completion of all the major objectives, as well as some that were not considered vital, upgraded the Hubble telescope to its most technologically advanced state since its launch nineteen years before and made it more powerful than ever. The upgrades will help Hubble to see deeper into the universe and farther into the past, closer to the time of the Big Bang.
STS-125 was the first visit to the Hubble Space Telescope for Atlantis; the telescope had been previously serviced twice by Discovery and once each by Columbia and Endeavour. The mission was the thirtieth flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the first flight of Atlantis in over 14 years (since STS-66) not to visit a space station…
The mission added two new instruments to Hubble. The first instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, is now the most sensitive ultraviolet spectrograph installed on the telescope. Its far-UV channel is 30 times more sensitive than previous instruments and the near-UV is twice as sensitive. The second instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, is a panchromatic wide-field camera that can record a wide range of wavelengths, including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. Atlantis also carried the Soft-Capture Mechanism, which was installed onto the telescope.[ This will enable a spacecraft to be sent to the telescope to assist in its safe de-orbit at the end of its life. It is a circular mechanism containing structures and targets to aid docking…
Atlantis successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base on Runway 22 at 839 am PDT after 197 orbits in space and a distance of approximately 5.2 million miles…
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble’s four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble.
Hubble’s orbit outside the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere allows it to take extremely sharp images with almost no background light. Hubble’s Ultra-Deep Field image, for instance, is the most detailed visible-light image ever made of the universe’s most distant objects. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe…
The telescope is now expected to function until at least 2014. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is to be launched in 2018 or possibly later…
