Bon voyage, Hubble | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Description

Bon voyage, Hubble

Yesterday, the crew of Atlantis released Hubble back into the wild. It’s bittersweet, since this is the final scheduled repair of the Grand Dame of orbiting ’scopes (though I won’t discount the possibility of future missions from private companies…).

I have two favorite parts to this. One is just overall the feel of it: I’m used to hearing and seeing the astronauts through a fuzzy NASA TV feed, but here is video and audio that are crisp and clean. Note how the astronauts are dressed; shirtsleeves and baseball caps, giving them an informal feel, but then listen to them: snapping orders and responding with data, making sure that everything goes according to plan. They’re all business…

… almost. A few seconds after Megan McMcArthur releases Hubble from the robot arm, at about 3:30 in the video, the view of it through the viewport is incredible. I was just thinking, holy cow, look at that! when you can hear Megan say, "Oh baby, look at that!" I think I like her.

Watching this video brings to mind the astronauts’ claim that they’re just people who work in space. But you know what? They’re people who work in space .

Look what we do.

I wish we had the dinero to bring it back one day in the distant future and put it in a museum. Alas…

Whoa. STS-125, nice shootin’! And damn, i would be so afraid to maneuver around our most famous telescope like that.

Wow!! That video is like you are onboard there.

What a great mission, by the way.

Got to love the shot of Dr Michael J. Massimino from my alma matter oversea in the space vectors (wud’nt know - I was course 6) … Of “Mind and Hand” MIT nerds rule (Ben ...

Original URL

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/20/bon-voyage-hubble/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/20/bon-voyage-hubble/