NASA: Upgrade mission will give Hubble superpowers

When the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis finishes its latest asignment, the Hubble Space Telescope, which is already considered one of NASA's most important tools, will be far more powerful than ever.

And that will put Hubble in the position to make more, and more important, discoveries in the next five years than it has in the past two decades, said Ed Ruitberg, deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope.

"I would say Hubble is one of NASA's most important missions," Ruitberg told Computerworld. "With the number of discoveries it's already made, as we go into the next decade, Hubble's discoveries should increase. In fact, with the new capabilities that we're installing. Hubble will be better prepared to make more important discoveries."

During the 19 years it's been aloft, Hubble's discoveries have been so important that they've forced academics to revise astronomy text books, said Ruitberg. It took deep photographs of the universe and captured images of the birth and death of stars.

It also played a key role in discovering that the universe, driven by a force called dark energy, is expanding at an accelerating rate. And Hubble also showed that most galaxies in the universe contain massive black holes that are at times the mass of our own sun.

The space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off Monday at 2:01 p.m. EDT. The seven-astronaut crew is headed aloft on the final shuttle service mission to the orbiting telescope. In the four previous missions to service Hubble, astronauts have made a total of 18 spacewalks. On next week's mission, there will be five spacewalks to install new batteries, a new backup computer system, and new gyroscopes, circuit boards and critical camera systems.

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