NASA's recent decision to approve an additional servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope involves Goodrich Corporation. Goodrich will provide an additional highly accurate, sophisticated optical system — the fine guidance sensor — to the Hubble program.
According to Chris Holmes, Vice President and General Manager for Goodrich's Electro-Optical Systems team, "At Goodrich we were very pleased to learn of NASA's decision to extend the Hubble mission. An additional servicing mission will significantly enhance the telescope's science capabilities and should extend its service life to 2013 or beyond. Our team is currently in the process of upgrading a fine guidance sensor for this servicing mission. This fine guidance sensor will be the third upgrade and it will replace one of the units currently on the telescope. The other two units were installed on previous servicing missions."
The Hubble's original fine guidance sensors and optical telescope assembly were also produced by the company's Electro-Optical Systems team, based in Danbury, CT. The fine guidance sensors are a critical part of the telescope's pointing system and are responsible for keeping the telescope accurately pointed for the long periods of time needed to produce images of distant stars and galaxies.
