The space shuttle Atlantis is racing to catch up with the Hubble Space Telescope after a nearly flawless launch Monday into clear skies.
If all goes well, four astronauts will begin a series of spacewalks Thursday to repair and upgrade the 19-year-old observatory for the last time before the shuttle program ends next year.
"It was fantastic," said Mario Livio, a senior scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore who was at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch.
"There were tears in my eyes when I saw the shuttle go off," he said. "This is probably the last mission to Hubble, so it's more than just one more servicing mission. ... Everybody was extremely happy here."
The formidable to-do list for the crew on this $900 million mission calls for the repair of two broken Hubble instruments valued at $250 million; the installation of two new instruments; and replacement of a list of vital Hubble parts. The jobs of about 400 of the 500 employees at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore are totally or partly dependent on Hubble's success, according to institute spokeswoman Cheryl Gundy. And officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt said another 500 people there work for NASA and its contractors on Hubble-related activities.
Almost 9,000 astronomers have used the observatory over the years. They've published 7,700 scientific papers. It's been called the most productive telescope in history.
