and Go ! Yes, I am referring to NASA's STS-125 (Atlantis) that was launched at Kennedy Space Center in Florida yesterday. As I watched the near perfect shuttle launch at NASA TV late evening yesterday, I kept saying "Wow !" to myself and marveled the way science has progressed over the past few decades. While the scientists and researches keep raising the bar year after year, I wonder whether we (as individuals) can position ourselves right a growth curve with a positive slope (the more slope the better :)) on a regular basis as well?
Anyways, here are some quick facts about the mission:
- STS-125 is on an eleven day mission to Hubble Telescope.
- Its seven member crew will conduct five spacewalks install new instruments, replace thermal blankets replace gyroscope on Hubble thus making the telescope better and ready for the years to come.
- Meanwhile space shuttle "Endeavour" at Kennedy Space Center is ready for launch as well (To rescue Atlantis crew in case of an emergency).
- A Wide Field Camera 3 will be attached to Hubble and the camera will relay even more vivid and detailed pictures of the deep space to us on a continual basis.
- Another new instrument that Hubble will be given is "The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph". This instrument is meant to observe the light put out by extremely faint quasars and see how that light changes as it passes through the intervening gas between distant galaxies.
Well if this feels like an overdose of scientific facts, here's a cool fact - Michael J Massimino (one of astronauts at Atlantis) is on Twitter (His Twitter ID: Astro_MIke) and intends to relay messages from the outer space ! I am incredibly curious (and excited) and will keep checking Twitter-sphere every now and then; After all you wish to be the amongst the first residents on earth to read his 140 characters of wisdom :D
Imagination is more important than knowledge. ~ Albert Einstein
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