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Final Repair Mission To Extend Hubble's Life
necro81 writes "The NYTimes has an in-depth piece describing an upcoming shuttle mission, scheduled for next August, to make a final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope. After the Columbia accident and the scheduled shuttle decommission in 2010, additional service trips to the telescope were off the table. The resulting hue and cry from scientists, legislators, and the public forced NASA to reconsider. Next August, if all goes well, Atlantis will grab Hubble, replace its aging gyros, attempt to revive the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and install a new camera and spectrograph. The telescope could then continue doing science well into the next decade."
That, and when they fixed the lens they also replaced all of the on-board electronics, because JPL and NASA had consumed too much of the component life before the satellite was even launched into space.
Hint: if you want to lifetime test a part to make sure it's reliable, don't use that part in your satellite after burning up its usable life. Buy two parts from the same batch, test one, and use the other one.
Both NASA and JPL tested the heck out of it, and as a result it failed almost immediately.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Not sure it was a cry from scientists, legislators, and the public as much as it was a cry from a small number of people with everyone else going along with what they read.