CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The Hubble Space Telescope has spent a little more than 11 years in Earth orbit.
On paper, its life is more than half over.
But scientists say its best days are still ahead.
Astronomers at Tuesday's Space Congress were already gearing up for another mission to upgrade Hubble. The flight of shuttle Columbia, the orbiter's first mission since its own upgrade, is scheduled to lift off no earlier than Nov. 19.
This telescope-servicing mission, like the three that preceded it, will add capability to the telescope and extend humanity's reach into the universe.
"It's actually a lot cheaperthan to put up new telescopes," said Steve Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the research group that operates Hubble.
The astronauts will add a cooling system to a near-infrared camera that lost its eyesight when it ran out of coolant. The new device, which was tested during John Glenn's return space flight in 1998, seeks to restore that vision to look at the distant universe and areas of the universe hidden by dust.
They also will attach a new instrument, called the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which is projected to be 10 times more powerful than the current camera for scanning the heavens.
Hubble's next targeted areas will include how galaxies formed in the early universe and how they came to look the way they do.
While abstract concepts such as "dark matter" and "dark energy" intrigue scientists, it's matter as most humans know it that captures public interest.
"Because of the complexity of life that has arisen on Earth, this tiny amount of matter holds a great deal of interest," Beckwith said.
The telescope's successor, the Next Generation Space Telescope is expected to launch as early as 2007. One of its goals will be to look for planets outside our solar system using eclipses.
Already, Hubble is able to tell when 1.5 percent of a star's light is blocked out by a planet passing in front of it. So the future telescope should provide an even clearer image of distant planetary systems, Beckwith said.
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