Credit: NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope has had its vision refreshed. On 18 May, astronauts completed the final overhaul of the ageing astronomical icon. The mission has included installing a new camera, a new spectrograph and making repairs to two other instruments (see Nature 459, 21; 2009).

The servicing — involving five days of spacewalks (pictured) from the Atlantis space shuttle — also included new batteries, gyroscopes and repairs to the telescope's thermal insulation. It was the fifth servicing mission, the first in seven years, and also the last, expected to keep Hubble working until at least 2014.

But another NASA observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, ran out of coolant on 15 May. The infrared telescope will only be able to perform limited tasks when its instruments are calibrated for warmer operation. It happened just one day after the European Space Agency successfully launched an infrared telescope, Herschel, that will build on Spitzer's discoveries. Planck, a second satellite launched with Herschel, will study the cosmic microwave background.