After years of delays, seven astronauts blasted off to repair and improve the Hubble Space Telescope aboard NASA's Atlantis today.  It arguably marks the most technically ambitious in-space servicing project ever.  The 11-day NASA mission includes five planned spacewalks to install new instruments and perform difficult repairs on Hubble, which was launched nearly twenty years ago.  It is the first servicing trip to Hubble since 2002 and for the first time ever a second shuttle, Endeavor, awaits on standby in the event Atlantis suffers irreparable damage due to the current risks involved.

Launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the current mission is the fifth--and final--servicing trip to Hubble and should make the telescope a hundred times more powerful.  New batteries should keep the enhanced Hubble active for at least another five years and possibly as many as ten.

Originally scheduled for 2004, the mission has been delayed numerous times, most recently last October, when a failure of Hubble's ability to send data to Earth prompted scientists to add the repair to the mission's already lengthy to-do list.  Among the repairs and installation of instruments, a new camera will allow Hubble to probe more deeply into the darkest areas of space capturing more images like the breathtaking ones seen below.