A camera that will increase the sensitivity of the Hubble Space Telescope by a factor of 10 has been installed by NASA spacewalkers. The camera will help astronomers see further into the Universe鈥檚 past, and detect new objects around nearby stars.
Astronauts installed the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) at 1203 GMT, Thursday 7 February. The ACS replaces Hubble鈥檚 Faint Object Camera (FOC).
Initial tests indicate the ACS is functioning correctly. But scientists do not expect to receive useful pictures for another two months, because it must first be calibrated.
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The ACS in fact contains three separate cameras, and an array of filters for detecting different coloured light. Compared with the FOC, the light sensors are more sensitive, and can detect more of the light spectrum. Hubble鈥檚 enhanced ability to detect infrared light will enable astronomers to pick out more distant stars. 鈥淭hey are going to look at even younger stars further back in time,鈥� says Jim O鈥橠onnell, at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK.
Baby stars
The camera should also let astronomers distinguish smaller objects, such as planets, around nearby stars. And it will help in the search for discs of dust and gas around baby stars, which have never been directly observed. 鈥淭hat would be quite exciting,鈥� says O鈥橠onnell.
The spacewalkers arrived on the shuttle Columbia on Monday. Since then, the telescope has been docked to the shuttle鈥檚 cargo loading bay, 588 kilometres above the Earth.
Astronauts replaced the telescope鈥檚 two solar arrays during spacewalks on Monday and Tuesday and installed a new Power Control Unit on Wednesday. These renovations will keep the telescope running until 2010, when it is due to be decommissioned.
Another spacewalk is planned for Friday, when astronauts will fit a new cooling system to reactivate the broken Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).