Hubble improvements 'spectacular' after astronaut fix

— -- The daring repairs that fixed the Hubble Space Telescope have delivered "spectacular" results, NASA said Wednesday.

Hubble is now effectively "a new state-of-the-art telescope," says NASA's Ed Weiler, with all the spacewalker repairs proving out in testing. Hubble will keep searching the cosmos until 2014, "and I'll bet much more after that," Weiler says.

In a briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., space agency chief Charles Bolden and prominent Hubble advocate Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., released eight images from cameras installed during May's space shuttle Atlantis STS-125 mission.

"Spectacular, just mind-blowing, to astronomers and many more people besides," says Astronomy for Dummies author Stephen Maran. With the repairs, "it's like we received two brand-new Hubbles."

Wednesday's images include improved looks at astronomical objects such as the Carina Nebula, a wispy glowing cloud of gas surrounding star clusters some 7,500 light-years away (one light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles), and Stephen's Quintet, five close-packed galaxies.

The newly released images were taken as scientists finished calibrating the six instruments aboard Hubble. Scientists had only interrupted the four-month checkout of the new hardware to snap images of the aftermath of a space rock collision with Jupiter on July 19.

In five days of spacewalks, shuttle astronauts Andrew Feustel, Mike Massimino, Michael Good and John Grunsfeld added two cameras, repaired two more, and replaced electronics and insulation. The astronauts overcame a stuck bolt and balky railing to perform repairs — called "brain surgery" in space by Grunsfeld — never contemplated for the Hubble.

"It was an amazing, professional and skilled repair and upgrade by the astronauts, and they deserve much applause," says Louis Lanzerotti of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Lanzerotti chaired a National Research Council panel calling for Hubble's repair in 2005.