Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Installed on HST

The $88-million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph [video] — designed to detect faint light from faraway quasars — was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope earlier today in spacewalk three by Atlantis astronauts. [NASA-TV].

In unexpected ahead of schedule time, astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel removed the corrective lenses that restored Hubble's vision in 1993 [vid]. Hubble was launched in 1990 [vid] with a flawed mirror that left it nearsighted. But the newer COS science instruments have corrective lenses built in, making the 1993 contacts unnecessary.

The 7-year old Advanced Camera for Surveys [video] suffered an electrical short and stopped working two years ago after providing the science community with the deepest image view of the universe [vid] in visible light, going back in time 13 billion years [video]. Today the ACS proved to be somewhat more challenging more challenging to fix by the astronauts.

The fifth and final spacewalk is set for Monday [NASA-TV] and the telescope will be released from the Atlantis payload bay on Tuesday marking the beginning of what may be the most historic and amazing period of time in astronomy with the Hubble Space Telescope [vid]. More from National Public Radio's Science Out-of-the-Box.