Space Shuttle program upgrade equipment for Hubble were ready and waiting in NASA warehouses. Many dissenters, including astronauts , asked NASA management to reconsider allowing the mission, but initially the director stood firm. On October 31, 2006, NASA announced approval of the launch of "Atlantis" for the fifth and final shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for August 28, 2008. However SM4/STS-125 eventually launched in May 2009. One impact of "Columbia" was that future crewed launch vehicles, namely the Ares I, had a special emphasis on crew safety compared to other considerations. NASA maintains extensive, warehoused catalogs of recovered pieces
Hubble Space Telescope repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope, including all five of the main instruments. The fifth mission was initially canceled on safety grounds following the "Columbia" disaster (2003). However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission, completed in 2009. The telescope is operating , and could last until 2030–2040. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is scheduled for launch in March 2021. In 1923, Hermann Oberth—considered a father of modern rocketry, along with Robert H. Goddard and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky—published "" ("The Rocket into Planetary Space"), which mentioned how a telescope could