One of the jewels in NASA\u2019s crown \u2013 the Hubble Space Telescope \u2013 is continuing to expand our understanding of the universe, with new findings uncovering a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago. However, the discovery was made via an instrument delivered by Shuttle Atlantis during her STS-125 mission, as her legacy lives on long after her retirement.<\/p>\n
\nHubble And Shuttle:<\/p>\n
The association between the Space Shuttle fleet and Hubble began at the point of the telescope\u2019s departure from Earth, under the protection of Shuttle Discovery, as she lofted HST into orbit in her cargo bay on STS-31.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/STS-31launch.jpg\" "\\"STS-31launch\\"")
That early morning launch over 22 years ago always promised a new era of discovery, but it was the Shuttle fleet\u2019s unmatched versatility that would prove to be the key for ensuring Hubble would fulfil its role. After all, Hubble \u2013 much to the shock of its team \u2013 was launched with a major fault.<\/p>\n
The fault was only discovered after scientists first started to receive imagery from the telescope, revealing the main mirror had been ground incorrectly, effectively compromising Hubble\u2019s eyesight.<\/p>\n
Discovery\u2019s younger sister came to the rescue of Hubble in 1993, as Endeavour launched on only her fifth mission to carry out a critical service mission, with the main goal of correcting the telescope\u2019s impaired vision.<\/p>\n
With STS-61\u2019s five EVAs successfully installing a corrective optics package \u2013 along with new solar arrays \u2013 during the highly complex 11 day mission, Hubble was back to full health and started to provide the stunning images of the cosmos that have fascinated the entire human race ever since.<\/p>\n
Discovery would return to Hubble in 1997, as STS-82\u2019s mission upgraded the telescope\u2019s scientific instruments, and increased its research capabilities. Discovery would visit her favourite telescope once again on the third servicing mission in 1999, replacing all six of Hubble\u2019s gyroscopes \u2013 three of which had failed \u2013 along with replacing a Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) and the telescope\u2019s computer.<\/p>\n
NASA mission patches (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n In what was Columbia\u2019s penultimate mission prior to her tragic loss, STS-109 carried out the fourth servicing mission in 2002.<\/p>\n Due to Columbia\u2019s loss the following year, NASA managers were left with a dilemma. Hubble was next scheduled to be serviced in 2005, yet NASA\u2019s own Return To Flight (RTF) rules insisted on the \u201csafe haven\u201d requirement, allowing for an orbiter, damaged during launch, to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) for its crew to await another shuttle to bring them home safe.<\/p>\n With this \u201csafe haven\u201d requirement impossible for a mission to Hubble, the final Shuttle servicing mission was cancelled. However, with a robotic mission deemed not to be viable, pressure grew both at the public and political level to review the cancellation.<\/p>\n The best possible crew were assigned to Atlantis for the final rendezvous between the world-famous vehicles, led by commander Scott Altman, assisted by six crewmembers that included John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino.<\/p>\n That contingency wasn\u2019t required, as Atlantis and her crew conducted a flawless launch and rendezvous with Hubble in May, 2009 \u2013 no easy task even under nominal conditions, as the orbiters used up nearly half of their prop capability just to reach the \u201cheight\u201d of the telescope\u2019s orbit and can endure higher MMOD risks.<\/p>\n The 14 day mission involved five back-to-back EVAs, including its own challenges \u2013 highlighted by Massimino literally using brute force to pull off the STIS hand rail from the telescope (see L2 video) during EVA-4.<\/p>\n One such example of the legacy Atlantis and STS-125 provided was seen via a NASA release on Wednesday, relating observations made by WFC 3 \u2013 an instrument that is much more capable than the WFPC2 (Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2) which it replaced.<\/p>\n Thanks to its additional imaging sensor that works in the near infra-red \u2013 something the older camera was not capable of \u2013 astronomers announced they have seen further back in time than ever before and have uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than three percent of its present age.<\/p>\n These deepest images to date from Hubble yield the first statistically robust sample of galaxies that tells how abundant they were close to the era when galaxies first formed.<\/p>\n Without STS-125\u2019s delivery of the WFC 3 to Hubble, the latest results would have been extremely difficult to obtain.<\/p>\n The observations were made during six weeks in August and September, and the first scientific results now are appearing in a series of scientific papers.<\/p>\n \u201cOur study has taken the subject forward in two ways,\u201d Ellis explained. \u201cFirst, we have used Hubble to make longer exposures. The added depth is essential to reliably probe the early period of cosmic history. Second, we have used Hubble\u2019s available color filters very effectively to more precisely measure galaxy distances.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe added one filter, and undertook much deeper exposures in some filters than in earlier work, in order to convincingly reject the possibility that some of our galaxies might be foreground objects,\u201d said team member James Dunlop of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.<\/p>\n Astronomers have long debated whether hot stars in such early galaxies could have provided enough radiation to warm the cold hydrogen that formed soon after the big bang. This process, called \u201creionization,\u201d is thought to have occurred 200 million to 1 billion years after the birth of the universe. This process made the universe transparent to light, allowing astronomers to look far back into time. The galaxies in the new study are seen in this early epoch.<\/p>\n \u201cOur data confirm reionization was a gradual process, occurring over several hundred million years, with galaxies slowly building up their stars and chemical elements,\u201d said Brant Robertson of the University of Arizona in Tucson. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a single dramatic moment when galaxies formed. It was a gradual process.\u201d<\/p>\n So while Atlantis is now long retired since completing her STS-135 mission, and is preparing to go on display to the public in her new facility at KSC\u2019s Visitor Center, she \u2013 and her crew \u2013 can be proud of the legacy one of her many missions is continuing to provide to the public they served.<\/p>\n (Article images via L2, L2 Historical, NASA and Ed Cheung)<\/p>\n Click here to Join L2 http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2 ).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the jewels in NASA\u2019s crown \u2013 the Hubble Space Telescope \u2013 is continuing to expand our understanding of the universe, with new findings uncovering a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago. However, the discovery was made via an instrument delivered by Shuttle Atlantis during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3660,4259,8290],"class_list":["post-39953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-atlantis","tag-hubble","tag-sts-125"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"View](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/STS109.jpg\" "\\"View")
The five EVA mission installed the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), new rigid Solar Arrays (SA3), a new Power Control Unit (PCU) and a new Cryocooler for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). Columbia also provided Hubble with a farewell push, as the orbiter reboosted the telescope to a higher orbit.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/STS125payload.jpg\" "\\"STS125payload\\"")
In 2005, incoming NASA administrator Mike Griffin eventually approved SM-4 for Atlantis and STS-125, after the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) started to prove its new safety measures were working \u2013 such as the increasing mitigation of External Tank foam loss and advances in Thermal Protection System (TPS) inspection and repair techniques \u2013 during the opening salvo of post-RTF missions.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/STS125400.jpg\" "\\"STS125400\\"")
Endeavour would also receive a co-star role by standing by as the STS-400 rescue mission, seeing her sat on Pad 39B ready to launch at short notice in the event Atlantis\u2019 launch \u2013 from Pad 39A \u2013 suffered a major issue during the ride uphill on what proved to be a delayed launch date, as Hubble itself worked through problems on orbit.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WFC3Install.jpg\" "\\"WFC3Install\\"")
However, the mission achieved all of its primary goals, including the installation of two new instruments, namely the the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3), leaving Hubble in a great condition to continue its role for many years to come.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WFC3.jpg\" "\\"WFC3\\"")
The results are from an ambitious Hubble survey of an intensively studied patch of sky known as the Ultra Deep Field (UDF). In the 2012 campaign, called UDF12, a team of astronomers led by Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena used Hubble\u2019s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3) to peer deeper into space in near-infrared light than any previous Hubble observation.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/HubbleView.jpg\" "\\"HubbleView\\"")
The team estimated the galaxy distances by studying their colors through a carefully chosen set of four filters at specific near-infrared wavelengths.<\/p>\n