The Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off on May 11 for an eleven day mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.
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The Hubble Space Telescope will be captured by space shuttle’s robotic arm. The Shuttle will then move the Hubble into a special cradle, called the Flight Support System, or FSS, in Atlantis’ payload bay. The telescope will be latched for the duration of the servicing work. An umbilical adjacent to the rotating FSS will be remotely connected to provide electrical power from Atlantis to the telescope. Then, the shuttle will be positioned to allow Hubble’s solar arrays to gather energy from the sun to fully charge the telescope’s batteries.
