More prosaically, Hubble will receive new protective blankets, gyroscopes and batteries, a unit that transmits data to Earth will be replaced, and two existing instruments will be repaired. The upgrade should keep it running until 2014 when its successor, the James Webb space telescope, is supposed to be launched. Meanwhile, on May 14th, the European Space Agency should have added its own contribution to the study of the infant universe. It was due, as The Economist went to press, to launch two satellites the more familiar way, aboard a disposable rocket.

(…)

The text remarks that the European Space Agency

Item 2 - will launch its own space shuttle;