Shuttle Nears Rendezvous With Hubble Telescope for Repairs

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. —  Space shuttle Discovery and its mechanic-astronauts chased the Hubble Space Telescope on Tuesday for a service call that took on new urgency with the failure of one of its components.

A science instrument aboard Hubble conked out Friday. The seven astronauts are bringing its replacement, a top-of-the-line spectrograph that they will install on Friday.

“This is an example, you could say, of just in time,” NASA payload manager Kenneth Ledbetter said after Discovery’s spectacular liftoff early Tuesday.

Once Discovery was on its way, ground controllers pivoted Hubble into a safe position for Thursday’s rendezvous and began shutting down the telescope, one component after another.

Within six hours, Discovery had narrowed the gap from 7,500 miles at the start of the chase to 5,200.

This will be the second Hubble visit by spacewalking astronauts in three years.

The priority during the first of four spacewalks on consecutive days will be to install the new $125-million imaging spectrograph and a $105-million near-infrared camera.

Scientists hope to peer back even farther in time and space with these instruments, which will bring Hubble up to date.

“With a little luck, in a couple weeks the best telescope in the universe will be even better than it is now,” shuttle commander Kenneth Bowersox said.

The $2-billion telescope, considered the world’s premier optical observatory, was launched from the same shuttle in 1990.