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Happy birthday Hubble

Both these images - the Eagle Nebula, left, and the spiral galaxy M51, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, right - have been released by Nasa as the Hubble space telescope marks its 15th anniversary. Hubble has taken more than 700,000 images of the universe, but Nasa says these images are among the sharpest it has produced.

Icy disagreement

The climate change debate is hedged by uncertainties, the novelist Ian McEwan wrote in Grist magazine last month (correction - I should have said that this piece originated on Open Democracy and also appeared in the Guardian newspaper).

Can we avoid what is coming at us, or is there nothing much coming at all? Are we at the beginning of an unprecedented era of international cooperation, or are we living in an Edwardian summer of reckless denial? Is this the beginning, or the end? We need to talk.
Any regular readers of George Monbiot's Guardian columns will probably be aware of his disagreements with his fellow environmentalist David Bellamy over climate change.

More than hot air required

An excellent, 30,000 word New Yorker investigation into climate change earlier this year concluded that it was curious that a technologically advanced civilisation should decide to destroy itself.

Tomorrow the Guardian is publishing a 36-page supplement explaining and examining the issue described by the prime minister, Tony Blair, as the world's most important long-term problem.

Climate change will be one of the main items on the agenda at next week's G8 meeting of world leaders in Gleneagles in Scotland and many will be watching what moves the Bush administration makes on the issue. The US has been attacked over its apparent scepticism that climate change is a grave threat and its refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty on reducing emissions of carbon dioxode.

In an interview in today's Financial Times, the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, claims that Britain's chairmanship of the G8 has already been a success because of increased awareness of climate change in the business world.

She is today making a presentation at an insurance industry conference in which she will suggest that businesses that take action now to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide will be in a prime position to profit from the regulation of greenhouse gases.

But rather less upbeat today was former Labour cabinet minister Stephen Byers, and US Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who are co-chairs of the International Climate Change Taskforce.

Countdown to lift-off

The Guardian's science editor Tim Radford explains the scale of the challenge facing the crew of the Discovery, which blasts into space tonight.

Right now — it's 12.30 BST — engineers in Florida are carefully pumping 256,000 gallons of superchilled hydrogen and oxygen into the external fuel tank of the space shuttle Discovery. Space.com describes it as a three-hour job.

It isn't one to hurry, because a lot rides on this mission.

End of the shuttle era

A 50ft boom extension attached to Discovery's robot arm is seen against the backdrop of the Earth as the Discovery crew prepares to search for any damage to the nose and wing. Photograph: Nasa TV/AP

Nasa's flight operations manager, John Shannon, says the bodywork of its fleet of space shuttles has suffered thousands of instances of damage over the years. But when video footage appears to show debris falling off the fuel tank and landing gear doors, Discovery begins to look far removed from the reusable space plane it was once claimed as. In fact, it looks old. This follows a two-week delay to liftoff because of a faulty fuel sensor.

There is a degree of perceptions here. Debris is a matter of concern because it ripped the hole in Columbia's wing in 2003 and caused it to disintegrate upon its re-entry to Earth. We see it because we are looking for it – likewise after Columbia and the earlier Challenger explosion, media and other observers are much more aware of safety issues. But while it is true the shuttles are space age technology, it is 1970s space age technology. Nasa plans to retire the fleet when the International Space Station is completed in 2010 and their cargo bays are of no further use. A shuttle liftoff is still awesome to watch, but some of the shininess has gone.

A piece in the Christian Science Monitor on the launch describes it as a launch into the shuttle's final era:

Few expect these last five years to be a victory lap for the shuttle era, which has extended through seven presidential administrations and 114 launches

With the president's wish to return to the moon and then strike out for Mars, the greatest goal of the shuttles now is to finish the long-delayed task of completing the space station as safely and quickly as possible, and then to disappear.

Discovery DIY

In a shot from his helmet cam, astronaut Steve Robinson holds a piece of protruding gap filler he has removed from between the thermal tiles on the underside of Discovery, revealing the red adhesive that was used to hold it in position. Photograph: Nasa TV/Reuters

2.30pm update: In the end, he didn't need the homemade hacksaw. With just his fingers, astronaut-turned-repairman Steve Robinson has just performed an audacious in-flight fix to the space shuttle Discovery, allowing Nasa and the nation the chance to catch breath for the first time today, writes Richard Luscombe in Florida.

Stunning pictures from Robinson's "helmet-cam" broadcast live on the web and on Nasa's own TV station showed him pulling out the two protruding fragments of ceramic-cloth 'gap fillers' from Discovery's belly. "It looks like the patient is cured," he declared after the second rectangular strip came away easily with just a gentle tug.

Mission Control in Houston declared it "a great job" as Robinson, still dangling from the space station's robotic arm, headed back to the shuttle after an unprecedented spacewalk lasting more than four hours, but not before fellow space-walker Soichi Noguchi managed to snap a few pictures for the Robinson family album of a new national hero.

"You'll spend the next four years signing autographs," teased astronaut Andy Thomas, who choreographed Nasa's first in-orbit repair to a spacecraft. Despite the light mood, the relief aboard Discovery, and among the space agency's beleaguered engineers, is enormous as a potential danger to the shuttle's safe return to Earth is eliminated.