Space Shuttle Columbia wind down after STS-118. It was to service the Hubble Space Telescope two more times between 2004 and 2005, but no more missions were planned for it again except for a mission designated STS-144 where it would retrieve the Hubble Space Telescope from orbit and bring it back to Earth. Following the "Columbia" accident, NASA flew the STS-125 mission using "Atlantis", combining the planned fourth and fifth servicing missions into one final mission to Hubble. Because of the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, the batteries and gyroscopes that keep the telescope pointed will eventually fail also because of the
Spitzer Space Telescope environment was poorly suited to an onboard infrared telescope due to contamination from the relatively "dirty" vacuum associated with the orbiters. By September 1983 NASA was considering the "possibility of a long duration [free-flyer] SIRTF mission". "Spitzer" is the only one of the Great Observatories not launched by the Space Shuttle, as was originally intended. However, after the 1986 Challenger disaster, the Centaur LH2–LOX upper stage, which would have been required to place it in its final orbit, was banned from Shuttle use. The mission underwent a series of redesigns during the 1990s, primarily due to budget considerations. This resulted