“Hey. This is a little of topic but I wrote an email about Hubble to some family and I thought I'd share here:The space shuttle Atlantis is in orbit right now working on Hubble. Thought I'd share some interesting Hubble related info. Atlantis captured Hubble with a 55 foot robotic arm and pulled it into the cargo hold. Hubble is the size of a school bus by the way. While approaching Hubble to dock Atlantis was having issues communicating with the satellite to tell it how to orient itself because Hubble couldn't handle the data bandwidth they were sending. They resolved the issue by communicating with another NASA satellite which then communicated with Hubble. There was a slight delay in the ship-to-ship conversations after that. On the first space walk they successfully replaced an old computer and the camera after wrestling for an hour with a stuck bolt (imagine if they had broken it). The new camera is 30 times more powerful than the last and both are the size of a grand piano. The first camera installed on Hubble was only ~1 megapixel (so I read). The second one was less megapizels than digital cameras you can buy on amazon. Hubble achieves its incredible resolution by stitching together dozens of photos. In addition to installing some new electronics the astronauts installed a docking ring to the body of the satellite that a boster vehicle will someday use to deorbit Hubble into the Pacific (kind of a sad idea). This entire process is being filmed with HD cameras and it is supposed to be turned into an IMAX movie. This mission is the 6th to last shuttle mission (I think that's right). The final mission will be completed at the end of 2009 although Obama has indicated he will approve more funding to keep the program alive into 2010 if neccesary to complete the next 5 missions. After that NASA will pay $51 million dollars for each seat on a Soyuz rocket. The shuttle replacement with be Orion on top of an Ares 1 rocket (anyone want to guess whose engines are on Ares? and the Space Shuttle for that matter). Orion is a capsule like Apollo or Gemini and will not have the capabilties like the Space Shuttle to perform tasks like servicing satellites. The first manned test flight of Orion is scheduled for Sept, 2014. You can bet everything you've got it will be far behind schedule.Here is a site with a picture of the Shuttle next to Hubble silhouetted in front of the sun:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090516.html”