Hubble Servicing Mission 4 comes to an end with successful landing

Washington, May 25 (ANI): The historic and successful Hubble Servicing Mission 4 - the fifth and final visit of the Space Shuttle to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope - came to an end with a perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Sunday.

During a series of unprecedented spacewalks, Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts replaced and repaired a total of four instruments.

The Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph were installed and the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph were successfully repaired.

Servicing Mission 4 was an intense, 13-day undertaking that revitalized Hubble, making the telescope more capable than ever.

All mission objectives were accomplished during five spacewalks that totalled 36 hours, 56 minutes.

"This is not the end of the story but the beginning of another chapter of discovery by Hubble," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Science at NASA Headquarters.

"Hubble will be more powerful than ever, continue to surprise, enlighten, and inspire us all and pave the way for the next generation of observatories," Weiler added. (ANI)