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
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