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
Space Surveillance Telescope Space Surveillance Telescope The Space Surveillance Telescope is a telescope for detecting and tracking orbital debris. It has a 3.5 meter (138″) aperture mirror and came online in 2011. Two noted design features include Mersenne-Schmidt type optics and a curved CCD. In 2010s the telescope, which was in New Mexico, United States, was transferred to United States Air Force Space Command and moved to Australia. The discovery and tracking of space debris is noted as a growing problem in the 21st century. One problem is that among the 20-30 thousand large objects in orbit that are tracked, and an estimated