Crap! I left my keys in there!

Can we go back and get them?

When the earth came into view from above I almost pissed my pants it was so beautiful. Absolutely amazing footage, insta *doublepromote if this doesnt make #1, I'll weep.

Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 10:55pm PDT - doublepromote requested by BicycleRepairMan.

MEG: "In the pipe, five by five"

YaY! Hubble's back!

I love the sense of surrealism this image of people in 0 gravity hovering many miles above the Earth and seeing it from that perspective gives me. I'm so looking forward to the day when the average person can experience this for the price of a ocean cruise of something.

http://www.physorg.com/news161960925.html
This morning, at precisely 8:57 a.m. ET, a carefully orchestrated maneuver was carried out 350 miles above the Atlantic coastline of Africa, marking the successful end of the fifth and final shuttle servicing mission.

Ever so gently, the Atlantis crew released the grapple fixture on the shuttle’s robotic arm, allowing Hubble to resume orbiting Earth on its own, as it has done since its deployment in April 1990. After Hubble’s thousands of orbits, thousands of images, five tune-ups and countless discoveries, a space shuttle crew is leaving this great observatory for the last time.

That thing belongs in a museum!

I mean, really, it is so sad that one day we will let this puppy burn up and die. (This is the last service mission planned... though so was the last one from memory so who knows.)

It's a pity we could not have boosted it, and Mir, and a few other notable historic craft into some safe, high orbit museum like Nelsons Ship. In terms of understanding of the galaxy, Hubble has blown the frakin' lid right off for almost 20 years now. Such a cool machine!

I love the professionalism...

That thing is REAL?

The earth is big.

not as big as your mum! budumdum

I'll take the opportunity to say what everyone's thinking:

WOW!

This is so amazing.. watching them back away at 0.5m/s, in an environment so unbelievably huge! And then i thought of actually approaching it in the first place, crossing the huge distance to it, then having to get so delicately close. It's so fucking amazing that we can do this.. it's like something out of a sci-fi. Imagine the day when we're doing it on a large scale some day?

Oh god it blows my mind.

It's rather poignant, this moment. The last time we'll ever service the single best scientific instrument ever built.

Beyond the mind-blowing scope of everything shown in this video, I loved listening to the crew interactions -- it makes it all seem so much more personal and human; that's us working this amazing technological magic!

I'm so booking my trip on Virgin Galactic.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Huble space telescope, Space Shuttle, Atlantis, space' to 'Hubble space telescope, Space Shuttle, Atlantis, space' - edited by nibiyabi

Well, that is not like Armageddon at all.

>> ^brycewi19:
Crap! I left my keys in there!
Can we go back and get them?


I'm more thinking about the first few things they said, when they were talking about whether they were going to "reboost" it or not, and that they'd argued about it and decided not to.

I'm sure they more than did the math on that, but they won't have another opportunity to boost it ever again, I'd think they'd give it a little kick just to be sure it won't reenter anytime soon.

If we're smart, we'll pull that thing back out of orbit intact someday and put it in the Air and Space Museum.

I'm with you there man! I'm sure someone will put the 500 million aside out of the stimulus package to have that done. It's chump change.

Oh wait, those shuttles are considered barely flight worthy as is and will not fly after next year, and those new ships due in 2015, if they come in time, do not have the awesome payload to bring stuff back in from what I understand. I think the shuttle have returned a few nasty radioactive satellites in the past with that cool cargo bay.

Better that it does some more awesome science and go down in flames I suppose than be brought back to earth so my wife can molester it with her acidic fingers like with the stele of Hammurabi.

Technically... Atlantis drifts away from Hubble.




Every time I watch anything like this, I'm struck by the fact there's less than 200 miles of atmosphere on top of us. In this clip, they are all of 350 miles above sea level. Less than the distance across most states.

I love and fear outer space. I think I'm going to reinstall Freelancer.

Hubble,

seen one, you've seen them all

puts roadrage into perspective

Private und *dead

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by NicoleBee.

That's lame. I can't quite find a replacement.

rasch187 has fixed this video's dead embed code - no Power Points awarded because rasch187's points are already fully charged.

Mankind's greatest piece of technology, just this little hunk of electronics sitting out there in space.

We've got a long way to go... I say we work hard to stop screwing things up down here these next 100 years.