To keep this powerful scientific tool running, in five back-to-back spacewalks, the astronauts replaced all six of the and all six of its batteries, along with a had failed last fall and was running on a backup system.

Those fixes alone should keep the Hubble running for another five years, if not seven or eight years, according to Niedner.

On the scientific instrument side, astronauts restored one broken down wide-field camera imaging camera, while also installing a brand new, more powerful one. It was the same case with Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph - an existing one was repaired and a whole new one was added. The major black hole hunter.

"This is only the second service mission where we put two brand new instruments on the telescope," Niedner noted. "This is going to open up very important possibilities for Hubble that we just didn't have before. The new ones themselves take Hubble to places its never been. The restored instruments are still very potent instruments. Because they have characteristics the new ones don't, with these four we have a marvelously diverse collection of instruments and capabilities.

"We'll be able to make discoveries that weren't possible before," he added.