Hubble Repaired! Charles Bolden - The NEW NASA Administrator

      I found this little bit of news embedded in an article on Reuters.com.  While focusing on NASA's wave off again for a landing in Florida - the decision to stay up an additional day due to bad weather, the Obama White House announced the following news.

President Barack Obama would nominate Charles Bolden, 62-year-old retired Marine Major General, and four-time space shuttle astronaut; to serve as the new NASA Administrator.

Now, speaking on the shuttle Atlantis.  Hubble Space Telescope repair mission was a success.  The shuttle still has enough supplies to remain in orbit until Monday.  If Kennedy Space Center doesn't clear up in the meantime, NASA is staffing its Edwards Air Force Base recovery team in case the shuttle must land in California in the Mojave Desert.

Repairs to Hubble included outfitting it with a new panchromatic wide-field camera.  This will hopefully let Hubble image objects formed about 500 million years after the birth of the universe according to current thinking.  It also has a new light-splitting spectrograph to check out the chemical composition of gas and dust between the galaxies.  

UPDATE:  from Reuters, I found a photgraph of Charles Bolden on May 24, 2009.

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Ref. "NASA cancels Saturday shuttle landing, to try Sunday" by Irene Klotz.  May 23, 2009. (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54E35D20090523).

( http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE54M0ZQ20090524).

Shuttle Atlantis Visits Hubble Telescope

Up in its 350-mile orbit awaits the Hubble Space Telescope and Space Shuttle Atlantis will try to grab onto it over the Indian Ocean sometime today.

Of course, current news reports are concern over the space junk that hit the shuttle on lift-off.  So far, experts do not consider it to be serious. The nicks are shallow and are on the thick thermal tiles in a location that is not particulary vulnerable during reentry.

Starting on Thursday, the first of five space walks will take place to give Hubble its first tune-up in seven years.  The astronauts will have to replace the batteries, gyroscopes, cameras, and a old pointing mechanism.  Plus add new thermal covers on the telescope and add the new science data-control unit.

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Ref Breitbart.com May 13, 2009 by Marcia Dunn ( http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D985C4NG0&show_article=1).