NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

During the next servicing mission, Servicing Mission 4 (SM4), astronauts will make the final trip to the Hubble Telescope. Over the course of five spacewalks, they will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones, and perform the component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning at least into 2014. The effort-intensive, rigorously researched, exhaustively tested mission also involves diverse groups of people on the ground throughout the country.

+ Here's how NASA plans to do it.

Hubble Status Report

WASHINGTON, DC -- (December 30, 2008) -- On December 15, Hubble engineers restarted the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) Cooling System (NCS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. However, it went back into safe mode prior to the NCS cooling down to its required temperature.

Other than that brief period in mid-December, engineers have not been able to successfully restart the NCS since deliberately placing it in safe mode in September when they loaded the new flight software into the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1, or NSSC-1.

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Servicing Mission 4 Fact Sheets
> SM4 Summary
> Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) Mission Summary
> Wide Field Camera 3
> Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
> Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Repair
> Advanced Camera for Surveys Repair
> Space Telescope Operations Control Center
> Gyroscopes
> Fine Guidance Sensor
> Batteries
> New Outer Blanket Layer
> Soft Capture and Rendezvous System
> Super Lightweight Interchangeable Carrier

Detailed Instrument Information:
> Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)
> Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS)
> Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Repair
> Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) Repair