Hubble Repair Mission in October

On Oct 10, the space shuttle will launch for the final repair mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. "Over 11 days and five spacewalks, the shuttle Atlantis’ crew will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, leaving it better than ever and ready for another five years – or more – of research." They are going to install two new instruments (the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, and the Wide Field Camera 3) as well as repair several failed ones.

“It’s more like brain surgery than construction,” Lead Flight Director Tony Ceccacci said. “On station spacewalks, you’re installing large pieces of equipment – trusses, modules, etc. – and putting it together like an erector set. You can’t do that with Hubble. Hubble spacewalks are comparable to standing at an operating table, doing very dexterous work.”

"The new camera and spectrograph are designed to complement the scientific instruments already on the telescope – specifically the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. But pieces of those instruments have failed in past years – not the entire instrument, but specific pieces inside of them. The crew will replace only the pieces that have failed. But those instruments were never designed to be repaired in space. In fact, they were specifically designed not to come apart. "

NASA created an HD video Last Mission to Hubble, explaining what's going to happen in the mission. The music is a bit over done such that Gizmodo broke it up into smaller pieces and titled the article Hubble Repair Mission More Risky than You Would Ever Imagine ""