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.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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