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Shuttle Astronauts to Install Ball Aerospace Instruments Aboard Hubble Space Telescope
Boulder CO (SPX) Nov 02, 2006 Ball Aerospace's historic role as a key contributor to the Hubble Space Telescope was underscored today with the announcement of an additional servicing mission. Ball Aerospace has built a total of seven instruments for the Hubble. Following next year's servicing, all five of the instruments aboard the telescope will be Ball Aerospace-built instruments. Ball Aerospace built the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), both of which will be installed by shuttle astronauts during the 2008 servicing mission. The mission will extend the operating life of the telescope until at least 2013, and greatly enhance its scientific capability. "Ball Aerospace has made significant contributions to the Hubble program for 28 years," said David L. Taylor, president and chief executive officer of Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. "We became still more invested in Hubble's success in 1993 after engineers at Ball designed the optics that corrected the spherical aberration of Hubble's primary mirror. We take great pride in knowing that we have contributed a total of seven instruments to 'the people's telescope.'" Both COS and WFC3 contain advanced technology sensors, which far surpass what has been available on Hubble to-date, and improvement factors of 10X-70X are expected in certain key performance areas. COS will be more than 30 times more sensitive in the far-ultraviolet than earlier Hubble ultraviolet spectrographs, and will be able to observe distant quasars too faint for detection by previous spectrographs. WFC3 will be sensitive to wavelengths from the near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared spectrum. This broad range expands our ability to make new discoveries and to understand existing data about the universe and galaxies. Using a 4,000 x 4,000 pixel charged couple device detector with a large field of view, WFC3 provides images with less "background noise" than previous instruments. The seven Hubble instruments built by Ball aerospace include: the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph, one of the original science instruments launched aboard HST; the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, the supplemental optics installed into HST in 1993 that successfully corrected the spherical aberration of Hubble's primary mirror; the Near-infrared Camera and Multi-object Spectrometer, one of two axial replacements installed in 1997; and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, the second of two axial replacements installed in 1997. The Advanced Camera for Surveys was installed during the March 2002 servicing mission. In addition to its significant Hubble contributions, Ball Aerospace is the principal subcontractor for the Hubble follow-on mission -- the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Ball's contribution of advanced optical technology and lightweight mirror system lies at the heart of JWST. Related Links Ball Aerospace Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It
Mikulski Applauds Hubble Announcement, Says Decision Is Right For America
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 02, 2006Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) joined the staff at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. in celebrating NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's announcement that there will be a critical space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. |
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