With the space shuttle Atlantis “all set” for its scheduled Monday afternoon take-off, the countdown for NASA’s final servicing trip to the Hubble Space Telescope – which has not had any ‘visitor’ in the past seven years – has begun at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center!

On Friday, the astronauts to go aboard the Atlantis - shuttle commander Scott Altman and his crew - arrived at the launching site from Houston. They will take along with them new cameras and replacement apparatus, worth millions of dollars, for undertaking the overwhelming repairs at the 19-year-old Hubble.

Altman’s Atlantis team comprises pilot Greg Johnson, flight engineer Megan McArthur, and spacewalkers John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino, Andrew Feustel, and Michael Good. During their eleven days in the orbit, the tasks that the astronauts will undertake include - repair two of Hubble’s science instruments; fix a new imager and a new light-splitting spectrograph; and change Hubble’s gyroscopes, batteries and a computer.

Shortly after the crew’s arrival at the spaceport, Altman said to reporters: “Hello Florida, it's great to be here - at last! It's been a long road to get here. We're all thrilled!” The crew was earlier scheduled to go for the Hubble trip during fall last year, but the mission got delayed by seven months owing to a breakage in a key part of the telescope.