I love everything that has to do with space and astronomy. Are there any other space enthusiasts here?
This week was a busy and amazing week. On Monday, the Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched on mission STS-125, the fourth and final mission to service the amazing
Hubble Space Telescope. The launch was live on the web on
NASA TV, where you can still follow the work being done by the astronauts the coming days. Yesterday two astronauts did the first space walk to replace Hubble's main camera with a new one and replace a computer on the Hubble. There will be four more space walks the coming days. It's amazing that you can follow it all live on the web as it happens, with the video coming right from the helmet cameras of the astronauts! With the new instruments, the Hubble will be better than ever and we can expect to get more great science and amazing images from the universe in the coming five to eight years.
Yesterday the ESA (European Space Agency) launched two space telescopes,
Herschel and Planck, on one
rocket from French Guyana. The launch was also live on the web. Herschel and Planck are now on their way to
Lagrange point 2, a place "behind" the Earth, 1.5 million kilometers away. Herschel is an infrared telescope and Planck will measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is the afterglow of the Big Bang.
I find it all fascinating.