Next Space Mission Underway For The 12th Of May

Preparations continue this week for the STS-125 mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, targeted for liftoff on May 12. Monday at Johnson Space Center in Houston, the astronauts practiced inside the nearby Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory for the first two spacewalks of the mission. Last week, the astronauts were at Kennedy Space Center in Florida where they had a chance to check out the mission hardware. At Kennedy on Monday, technicians at Launch Pad 39A conducted a validation test on the Range Safety System as they prepare Atlantis for launch.

Atlantis Crew At Launch Pad

Image above: Inside the White Room on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, STS-125 crew members get ready to affix the mission logo to the entrance into space shuttle Atlantis. Clockwise from left front are Pilot Gregory C. Johnson, Mission Specialists Michael Good and Megan McArthur, Commander Scott Altman, and Mission Specialists Mike Massimino and John Grunsfeld. Image credit: NASA/Cory Huston

STS-125:

Mission to Service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Veteran astronaut Scott Altman will command the final space shuttle mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and retired Navy Capt. Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission specialists rounding out the crew are: veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur. During the 11-day mission's five spacewalks, astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones and perform the component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning into at least 2014. In addition to the originally scheduled work, Atlantis also will carry a replacement Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit for Hubble. Astronauts will install the unit on the telescope, removing the one that stopped working on Sept. 27, 2008, delaying the servicing mission until the replacement was ready.

STS-119 Concludes

The seven astronauts from space shuttle Discovery's STS-119 mission are back home in Houston after flying in from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 29. Discovery and its crew of seven safely touched down on runway 15 at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility at 3:14 p.m. EDT on March 28. The weather cooperated enough to allow the spacecraft to land on the second opportunity.Mission Specialist Sandra Magnus also returned to Earth with the STS-119 crew. Magnus spent 129 days aboard the International Space Station as flight engineer for Expedition 18. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata took her place on the orbiting laboratory and will return to Earth with the STS-127 crew.The 13-day mission included three spacewalks, about 6-hours a piece, to install the S6 truss and enormous starboard-side solar arrays. They also unfurled the arrays and performed other get-ahead tasks.Mission STS-119's crew of seven completed a successful mission aboard the International Space Station -- increasing the orbiting laboratory's power capacity and giving it the ability to accommodate additional crew members in the future.

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