THE US: The Hubble Space Telescope was alive and well yesterday after a pair of spacewalking astronauts finished a risky repair job that NASA compared to a heart transplant.
"Hubble has a heartbeat," said a NASA spokesman, Mr Rob Navias, moments after the first streams of data arrived at ground stations.
Mission controllers were powering up and testing Hubble's systems one by one. All the systems so far had returned in good shape, and NASA managers said they expected the rest would operational.
NASA managers had feared the operation to replace a faulty power control unit might have ended with Hubble no more than a costly piece of space junk if they could not restore power to the orbiting observatory.
It was not without drama, which included a leaking spacesuit, but NASA in the end had what it wanted - an orbiting observatory that may someday see to the very edge of the universe. Astronauts Mr John Grunsfeld and Mr Rick Linnehan from the space shuttle Columbia had the difficult task of replacing the ageing observatory's power control unit.
NASA had to turn off Hubble's power for the first time since 1990, when it was launched. - (Reuters)