Servicing Mission 4 is the last human contact expected for the lionized Hubble Telescope. NASA is scuttling their existing shuttle program, creating a five-year gap before manned spaceflight resumes with a shiny new Orion orbiter. The 19-year-old Hubble is a telescope dedicated to photographing and mining the Deep Space Field. As a débutante in April 1990, Hubble’s first disappointing view of deep space was blurry from lenses ground based on a flawed mathematical premise. Three years later, NASA’s first mission, STS-61, flew to the telescope to fit the myopic Hubble with a better prescription. With a new lease on starlight, Hubble performed in an unexpected spectacular fashion, filling the next decade and a half with iconic color photos revealing some of the universe’s cosmic mysteries from the Ultra Deep Field.

In 2013, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with infrared capabilities hopes to blast off into the upper atmosphere with high hopes to supersede ultraviolet Hubble’s accomplishments. From color to black and white photos does not make for the same award winning potential star cachet. Hubble’s ability to view a wide range on the color spectrum while delivering the finest of details in images, makes it unique among the man-made objects orbiting in space. 

Atlantis, STS-125 has a cargo bay of final precious parts and two new and improved instruments, Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, for astronauts to install in five daring spacewalks to extend Hubble’s star watching panoramic power. The finality of the mission is clear with the three remaining shuttles fighting launch delays each has a full schedule for NASA’s final manned missions.

Hubble will go the way of the stars it observes, only in a much shorter time span and minus the nuclear dynamics. The resulting black hole will be in the hearts of scientists and lay people alike with the finality of the loss of iconic images that spur imaginations. Getting Hubble time booked to conduct a search is now the equivalent of getting private acting lessons from Meryl Streep. Hubble’s Hollywood-style comeback success story has prompted the telescope’s resurrection before from a legion of earthly admirers. Astronomers have found new fields of study based on Hubble’s data and images.

Hubble’s space career began with blindness and public ridicule and shall end in a long plume of blazing galactic glory.