Latest Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Stories

On June 22, at 12:21 PM EDT, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) aboard Hubble temporarily suspended operations when an optical mechanism movement failed to reach its intended destination. The HST team quickly identified the root cause which required a minor update to the COS flight software. COS was successfully brought out of suspend mode on June 23. None of this week's scheduled COS activities have been lost.On June 23, at 12:20 PM EDT, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard Hubble...

BOULDER, Colo., May 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Astronauts for NASA's STS-125 servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) installed two science instruments built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. during their 13-day mission and completed critical repairs to two previously installed Ball science instruments. Space Shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven landed at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Sunday, May 24. The Wide Field Camera 3 was installed during the first...

Mission Specialists John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel completed the third spacewalk of Atlantis' mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 6 hours and 36 minutes, stepping smoothly through the difficult tasks of repairing a delicate camera and installing its most sensitive spectrograph ever. Grunsfeld and Feustel began the spacewalk at 8:35 a.m., removing the telescope's16-year-old "contact lens," the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), and safely tucked it into the...

CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla., May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off Monday on a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope where astronauts are scheduled to install two instruments built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and restore two previously installed Ball instruments to peak performance. The successful launch of NASA's STS-125 mission occurred at 2:01:56 p.m. EDT, on May 11, 2009. (Photo:...

A spectrograph destined for the Hubble Telescope will look back several billion years and help reconstruct the early universe, scientists in Colorado said. The $70 million Cosmic Origin Spectrograph is to be carried to the Hubble aboard the shuttle Atlantis on its May 11 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said James Green, a scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The spectrograph -- the size of a telephone booth -- was built by the university and its industrial...

The famous Hubble telescope is about to get a visit from its terrestrial creators, as astronauts plan on Monday to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, taking with them new scientific equipment and replacement parts for the 19-year old orbiting observatory.After some seven months of delays, the mission will be NASA's most comprehensive and daring tweaking of the telescope yet.  Hitherto, astronauts have never attempted to repair the Hubble's instrumentation while in orbit...

BOULDER, Colo., May 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The historic mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope this month will include installation of two instruments built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Astronauts flying aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis expect to leave the Hubble at the apex of its scientific capabilities following their 11-day mission. The historic mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope this month will include installation of two instruments built by...

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- A team led by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is providing support to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the planning, training and implementation of Servicing Mission 4 (SM-4) to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), scheduled for launch on May 11. "We have found that working on the Hubble Space Telescope is more than just a job -- it is a passion. And we are enormously excited to be going back again to Hubble one final time and providing it a new...

NASA is giving everyone the opportunity to use the world's most celebrated telescope to explore the heavens and boldly look where the Hubble Space Telescope has never looked before.NASA is inviting the public to vote for one of six candidate astronomical objects for Hubble to observe in honor of the International Year of Astronomy. The options, which Hubble has not previously photographed, range from far-flung galaxies to dying stars. Votes can be cast until March 1. Hubble's camera will make...

Although the universe contains billions of galaxies, only a small amount of its matter is locked up in these behemoths. Most of the universe's matter that was created during and just after the Big Bang must be found elsewhere.Now, in an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces between the galaxies. This important component of the universe is known as the "intergalactic...