Sky at Night curse hits HST servicing mission.
The picture shows space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour sitting on launch pads in Florida, waiting for Atlantis’ mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. We were going to be there for the Sky at Night, but as you’ll have heard, a major failure with Hubble’s control system means that the flight is to be delayed until next year. We filmed an excellent preview of the mission with Martin Barstow last weekend, so I’m chalking this one up to the Sky at Night curse.
Trying to be positive, it’s obvious that we would have been in serious trouble had the faliure happened after this, the final repair mission. Right now, though, I feel like a sulky child who has had his toys taken away from him.
Meanwhile, we’re scrambling to make the best use of our tickets to the US, and to fill the large hole in forthcoming programmes that this will leave. An unexpected bright comet, or a supernova, would go down very well round about now, please.
