Editing Advanced Camera for Surveys (section)

{{short description|Installed on HST March 2002}}
[[Image:Advanced Camera for Surveys 2.jpg|thumb|The Advanced Camera for Surveys in the clean room at the [[Goddard Space Flight Center]] in [[Maryland]], prior to its installation on the [[Hubble Space Telescope]]]]
[[Image:ACS FOC swap.jpg|thumb|Astronauts remove the [[Faint Object Camera|FOC]] to make room for the ACS in 2002]]
[[File:STS-125 RSS Retract LA1.jpg|thumb|The [[STS-125]], shown here on the launchpad, went on to repair the Advanced Camera for Surveys and returned the crew safely back to Earth]]
The '''Advanced Camera for Surveys''' (ACS) is a third-generation axial instrument aboard the [[Hubble Space Telescope]] (HST). The initial design and scientific capabilities of ACS were defined by a team based at [[Johns Hopkins University]]. ACS was assembled and tested extensively at [[Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.]] and the [[Goddard Space Flight Center]] and underwent a final flight-ready verification at the [[Kennedy Space Center]] before integration in the cargo bay of the Columbia orbiter. It was launched on March 1, 2002, as part of Servicing Mission 3B ([[STS-109]]) and installed in HST on March 7, replacing the [[Faint Object Camera]] (FOC), the last original instrument. ACS cost US$86 million at that time.<ref name="newscientist.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9457-nasa-attempts-to-revive-hubbles-main-camera/|title=NASA attempts to revive Hubble's main camera|first=Maggie|last=McKee|website=New Scientist}}</ref>

ACS is a highly versatile instrument that became the primary imaging instrument aboard HST. It offered several important advantages over other HST instruments: three independent, high-resolution channels covering the [[ultraviolet]] to the [[near-infrared]] regions of the [[spectrum]], a large detector area and [[quantum efficiency]], resulting in an increase in HST's discovery efficiency by a factor of ten, a rich complement of [[filter (optics)|filter]]s, and [[coronagraphy|coronagraphic]], [[polarimetry|polarimetric]], and [[grism]] capabilities. The observations undertaken with ACS provided astronomers with a view of the Universe with uniquely high sensitivity, as exemplified by the [[Hubble Ultra-Deep Field]], and encompass a wide range of astronomical phenomena, from comets and planets in the [[Solar System]] to the most distant [[quasars]] known.