Atlantis Shuttle Launched on Hubble Repair Mission....Today...

The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis has blasted off to the Hubble Space Telescope for a fifth and final repair mission. Officials with the U.S. space agency NASA hope the costly and complicated repairs will extend the life of the orbiting telescope for at least five more yearsThe Atlantis lifted off one minute past 2:00 p.m., U.S. Eastern Daylight time amid sunny skies and thousands of onlookers at the Kennedy Space Flight Center in Florida. The space shuttle will reach the Hubble on Wednesday.

This is the second recent attempt by NASA to repair the aging Hubble. An earlier repair mission planned for last fall was scuttled two weeks before lift-off because of an equipment failure with the space telescope, which has produced spectacular images of the cosmos during its nineteen years in orbit.Atlantis commander Scott Altman told mission controllers prior to today's launch that he was eager to get the mission underway. "Getting to this point has been challenging but your team, the whole team, everyone has pulled together. We're taking a little piece of all us into space. And all I have to say at this point is let's launch Atlantis," he said.