CAPE CANAVERAL: After months of delay, the space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts embarked on a risky mission Monday to breathe new life into the Hubble Space Telescope. The stakes are high. Hubble is 19 years old with two broken cameras and a host of other systems in need of replacement or upgrades. Atlantis is on the fifth and final mission to overhaul the iconic space telescope. "Particularly on this mission, the final mission, we're going for broke," said David Leckrone, senior project scientist for Hubble. "We've set the bar extraordinarily high for ourselves." The mission carries a price tag of $1.1 billion. NASA and the European Space Agency have spent $10 billion on Hubble since the orbiting observatory's conception and launch in 1990. "We're ready to go give Hubble a hug," said veteran Hubble repairman John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist-turned-astronaut making his third trip to the space telescope. "I hope Hubble's ready for us." If all goes well, the astronauts will leave Hubble's vision and science capability more powerful than ever before by the end of the 11-day mission. Atlantis is also carrying a set of IMAX 3-D cameras to document Hubble's last service call for a film slated to be released in spring 2010.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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