Space Shuttle Transit

May, 2009: Award winning astrophotographer Thierry Legault wanted to take an image of the Hubble Space Telescope and space shuttle Atlantis traveling together around Earth. But how?

There was no hope of the two spacecraft flying over his hometown in France during the ongoing servicing mission. To catch the rare meeting of spaceships, he did some traveling of his own all the way to Florida. On May 12th, 2009, from a location near the Kennedy Space Center, he pointed his solar-filtered telescope at the sun and voil?- there was Atlantis:

The space shuttle's silhouette was beautifully outlined by solar fire as Atlantis passed over central Florida.

trying again a day later, Hubble joined the show: "I took this picture of Atlantis and the space telescope transiting the sun together on May 13th. It was just before the shuttle reached out with its robotic arm to grapple Hubble, " says Legault. "The two spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds." He captured the split-second transit using a Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.

Hubble is now safely stowed inside the shuttle's cargo bay where astronauts are conducting a series of five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope. So far they have installed the new Wide Field 3 camera, replaced gyros, batteries and a failed computer. These upgrades and others are expected to extend Hubble's life until 2014.

More on the Hubble Servicing Mission:

Servicing Mission 4 Interactive - Take a step-by-step journey through the Hubble mission and learn about each task, check out some famous Hubble pictures, and meet the crew.