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On May 11, 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis launched on the fifth and final servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.
During mission STS-125, astronauts installed two new instruments on the telescope. One was the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which allowed Hubble to observe faint objects in the cosmos in ultraviolet light. This would help researchers study the formation of galaxies and other large-scale structures in the universe.
Photos: NASA’s Last Mission to the Hubble Space Telescope
Image 1 of 5
Under a dry, hot, cloud-washed Florida sky, space shuttle Atlantis roars off Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with its crew of seven for a rendezvous with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA/Fletcher Hildreth)Image 2 of 5
A view of the Hubble Space Telescope through the window of the shuttle Atlantis, which brought astronauts on a repair mission in 2009. (Image credit: NASA)Image 3 of 5
Astronauts Megan McArthur, Mike Massimino (center) and Andrew Feustel, all STS-125 mission specialists, prepare to eat a meal on the middeck of the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis on May 12, 2009 during while en route to the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA.)Image 4 of 5
Astronaut Andrew Feustel navigates near the Hubble Space Telescope on the end of the remote manipulator system arm, controlled from inside Atlantis. Astronaut John Grunsfeld signals to his crewmate from just a few feet away during the May 15, 2009 spacewalk on STS-125. (Image credit: NASA.)Image 5 of 5
An STS-125 crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis captured this still image of the Hubble Space Telescope as the two spacecraft continue their relative separation on May 19, 2009. (Image credit: NASA.)The second instrument was the Wide Field Camera 3, which replaced the old Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 that was installed during the first servicing mission in 1993. This new camera could observe the universe in visible, near-infrared and near-ultraviolet light with a higher resolution and larger field of view than any of Hubble’s older instruments.
The crew completed their tasks in five spacewalks over the course of the 13-day mission.
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Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
