Shuttle, Hubble Go Separate Ways

(CBS)  Their mission accomplished, space shuttle Columbia's astronauts released a more energetic and scientifically potent Hubble Space Telescope into orbit Saturday after five days of repairs.

"Good luck, Mr. Hubble," astronaut John Grunsfeld called out.

On Earth, astronomers were lining up for the chance to use the refurbished eye in space, according to CBS News space consultant William Harwood.

Shuttle crane operator Nancy Currie set Hubble free as the two spacecraft zoomed 360 miles above the Atlantic. She had used Columbia's robot arm last weekend to capture the 43-foot, 24,500-pound telescope and anchor it in the cargo bay.

Columbia slowly backed away from Hubble, giving the world its last close-up look at the telescope until astronauts return for another overhaul in two years.

Television from the shuttle showed the telescope framed against the blackness of space as Currie, again operating the robot arm, relaxed the crane's grappling snares. A few moments later, commander Scott Altman pulsed the ship's steering jets to begin pulling away, leaving Hubble on its own after five back-to-back spacewalks to overhaul its electrical system and upgrade its instruments, reports Harwood.

"A beautiful view of Mr. Hubble, the telescope, over the Earth's horizon, ready to go and make new discoveries," said Grunsfeld, the chief telescope repairman. "We bid Hubble well on its new journey with its new tools to explore the universe."

Replied Mission Control: "And we wish it well from down here as well."

Over the past week, two teams of spacewalking astronauts outfitted Hubble with smaller but more powerful solar wings, a more robust central power controller, a pointing mechanism, an advanced camera for peering deeper than ever into the universe, and a super-cold refrigerator for revitalizing a disabled infrared camera.

All the new components passed initial testing. It will be at least a month, however, before NASA knows whether the experimental cooling system was able to get the infrared camera working. The first enhanced pictures are expected by early May.

"I tell you, I just can't wait for the next couple weeks when we start seeing images out of that beauty because I think it's going to roll everybody's socks down," shuttle pilot Duane Carey said.

Columbia's crew of seven, meanwhile, is due back on Earth on Tuesday.

More nerve-racking than any single repair was the complete shutdown of the $2 billion-plus telescope for the replacement of the central power controller. It was the first time in Hubble's 12 years in orbit that all its systems were turned off. The shutdown lasted 4½ hours; to everyone's relief, everything came back on when power was restored.

NASA considered this service call - the fourth - the most complicated yet. Wednesday's operation, to replace the power controller, was likened to heart transplant surgery.

"Many people on this mission, privately, didn't think that we would be able to accomplish everything that we had set out in our plan," Hubble program manager Preston Burch said after the fifth and final spacewalk ended Friday.

Columbia's astronauts set a spacewalking record for a single shuttle mission: 35 hours and 55 minutes. It surpassed, by 29 minutes, the 1993 record held by the first Hubble repair team.

One last servicing mission is planned in 2004. Then Hubble will keep surveying the heavens until 2010, when a shuttle is slated to retrieve it and bring it back to Earth. NASA hopes to display the telescope in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Hubble's successor, the Next Generation Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2009.

But the current version is proving wildly popular among scientists, Harwood reports.

In recent months, the Space Telescope Science Institute has been flooded with eight times as many observing proposals from scientists as the
telescope can accommodate.

"Every year we look at a metric, a way of quantifying how the space science programs of NASA hold up in the whole world of science, all areas of science," said Hubble project scientist David Leckrone.

AAnd by this metric, Hubble is the most productive space mission, science mission, and has had the highest impact of all NASA science missions in the history of this agency.

"Without the servicing that we've done and the refurbishment and the upgrades of the technology on Hubble that we've done, this would not continue to be the case," Leckrone said. "But it does continue to be the case, year after year. The current demand for the use of Hubble by astronomers all around the world exceeds our ability to satisfy that demand by a factor of eight.

"This factor of eight is a record, it's the highest it's ever been for Hubble and I attribute that to the eager anticipation the community has for using the Advanced Camera for Surveys. We can just hardly wait to get our hands on it."

Leckrone said Hubble's data output today, with its upgraded instruments and improved data management techniques, is 20 times higher than it was when the telescope was launched in 1990.