Astronauts Pull Off Tricky Hubble Repair
Spacewalking astronauts gave the Hubble Space Telescope a more commanding view of the cosmos by installing a new high-tech instrument Saturday, then pulled off their toughest job yet: fixing a broken camera.
It was the third spacewalk in as many days for the shuttle Atlantis crew, and it was the most intricate ever performed because of the unprecedented camera repairs. Astronauts had never before tried to take apart a science instrument at the 19-year-old observatory.
Hubble's chief mechanic, John Grunsfeld, deftly opened up the burned-out camera and plucked out all four electronic cards that needed to be replaced.
To everyone's surprise, the new cards and power supply pack went in just as smoothly, seeming to take almost no time at all. In fact, the astronauts found themselves running ahead of schedule for a change, and their spacewalk lasted the allotted 6? hours. The first two spacewalks ended up running long because of unexpected difficulties encountered with Hubble, last visited seven years ago.
The astronauts cheered when Mission Control radioed up the news that the freshly repaired camera had passed the first round of testing.
"That's unbelievable," Grunsfeld said.
A second round of testing was expected to last well into the night.
The high-stakes job unfolded 350 miles (563 kilometers) above Earth. Orbiting so high put Atlantis and its astronauts at an increased risk of being hit by space junk. NASA had another shuttle on launch standby in case a rescue was needed.
Earlier, Grunsfeld and his spacewalking partner, Andrew Feustel, accomplished their first task, hooking up the $88 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
They made room for the new supersensitive spectrograph - designed to detect faint light from faraway quasars - by removing the corrective lenses that restored Hubble's vision in 1993.
"This is really pretty historic," Grunsfeld said as he and Feustel hoisted out the phone booth-size box containing Hubble's old contacts.
Hubble was launched in 1990 with a flawed mirror that left it nearsighted. But the newer science instruments have corrective lenses built in, making the 1993 contacts unnecessary. The latest addition, the cosmic spectrograph, is expected to provide greater insight into how planets, stars and galaxies formed.
The switch - taking out the 7-foot (2.13-meter)-long box containing the corrective lenses and putting in the spectrograph - proved to be straightforward. It's exactly the kind of replacement work astronauts performed on four previous repair missions.
Fixing the 7-year-old camera was far more complicated. The instrument - called the Advanced Camera for Surveys - suffered an electrical short and stopped working two years ago. Ground controllers had been able to eke out a minimal amount of science but hoped to get it back into full operation.
Before it broke, the surveys camera provided astronomers with the deepest view of the universe in visible light, going back in time 13 billion years.
NASA considered this repair job - and one set for Sunday on another failed science instrument - to be the most delicate and difficult ever attempted in orbit. Neither instrument was designed to be handled by astronauts wearing thick, stiff gloves.
Grunsfeld unscrewed 32 fasteners to get to the camera's electronic guts, all the while working around a corner that prevented him from seeing everything he was doing. He used long tools designed just for the job.
"This activity is dedicated to studying the behavior of tiny screws in space," he joked.
NASA hopes to keep Hubble working for another five to 10 years with all the improvements. No one will be back to Hubble, so everyone at NASA, the seven astronauts included, wants to squeeze in as much repair work as possible. Already, they have given Hubble two top-of-the-line science instruments, fresh batteries and gyroscopes, and a new science data unit to replace one that broke last fall.
If all goes well, the fifth and final spacewalk is set for Monday and the telescope will be released from Atlantis on Tuesday.
This last mission to Hubble cost more than $1 billion.
By AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. It was the third spacewalk in as many days for the shuttle Atlantis crew, and it was the most intricate ever performed because of the unprecedented camera repairs. Astronauts had never before tried to take apart a science instrument at the 19-year-old observatory.
Hubble's chief mechanic, John Grunsfeld, deftly opened up the burned-out camera and plucked out all four electronic cards that needed to be replaced.
To everyone's surprise, the new cards and power supply pack went in just as smoothly, seeming to take almost no time at all. In fact, the astronauts found themselves running ahead of schedule for a change, and their spacewalk lasted the allotted 6? hours. The first two spacewalks ended up running long because of unexpected difficulties encountered with Hubble, last visited seven years ago.
The astronauts cheered when Mission Control radioed up the news that the freshly repaired camera had passed the first round of testing.
"That's unbelievable," Grunsfeld said.
A second round of testing was expected to last well into the night.
The high-stakes job unfolded 350 miles (563 kilometers) above Earth. Orbiting so high put Atlantis and its astronauts at an increased risk of being hit by space junk. NASA had another shuttle on launch standby in case a rescue was needed.
Earlier, Grunsfeld and his spacewalking partner, Andrew Feustel, accomplished their first task, hooking up the $88 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
They made room for the new supersensitive spectrograph - designed to detect faint light from faraway quasars - by removing the corrective lenses that restored Hubble's vision in 1993.
"This is really pretty historic," Grunsfeld said as he and Feustel hoisted out the phone booth-size box containing Hubble's old contacts.
Hubble was launched in 1990 with a flawed mirror that left it nearsighted. But the newer science instruments have corrective lenses built in, making the 1993 contacts unnecessary. The latest addition, the cosmic spectrograph, is expected to provide greater insight into how planets, stars and galaxies formed.
The switch - taking out the 7-foot (2.13-meter)-long box containing the corrective lenses and putting in the spectrograph - proved to be straightforward. It's exactly the kind of replacement work astronauts performed on four previous repair missions.
Fixing the 7-year-old camera was far more complicated. The instrument - called the Advanced Camera for Surveys - suffered an electrical short and stopped working two years ago. Ground controllers had been able to eke out a minimal amount of science but hoped to get it back into full operation.
Before it broke, the surveys camera provided astronomers with the deepest view of the universe in visible light, going back in time 13 billion years.
NASA considered this repair job - and one set for Sunday on another failed science instrument - to be the most delicate and difficult ever attempted in orbit. Neither instrument was designed to be handled by astronauts wearing thick, stiff gloves.
Grunsfeld unscrewed 32 fasteners to get to the camera's electronic guts, all the while working around a corner that prevented him from seeing everything he was doing. He used long tools designed just for the job.
"This activity is dedicated to studying the behavior of tiny screws in space," he joked.
NASA hopes to keep Hubble working for another five to 10 years with all the improvements. No one will be back to Hubble, so everyone at NASA, the seven astronauts included, wants to squeeze in as much repair work as possible. Already, they have given Hubble two top-of-the-line science instruments, fresh batteries and gyroscopes, and a new science data unit to replace one that broke last fall.
If all goes well, the fifth and final spacewalk is set for Monday and the telescope will be released from Atlantis on Tuesday.
This last mission to Hubble cost more than $1 billion.
By AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn
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Posted by weedapoopl at 7:27 PM : May 16, 2009
Well, any work they are doing outside their wee spaceship, that's being done with the CANADIAN made ARM. : ) And it seems to me they are also using a camera that is Canadian made too. : p
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NASA deserves much credit for a difficult mission, and one well worth the $1 billion pricetag.
Hubble is probably the most productive scientific instrument ever launched.
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You have it backwards-- the GOP, not Obama, has been pushing fiscal austerity since the recession began. Conservative columnist David Brooks says the GOP demand is "insane".
And all this GOP whining, despite the fact each of them has pet pork in the stimulus budget.
Mitch McConnell brought home $75 million of good federal bacon. And the chief "porker" in congress is a Republican.
However, you miss the point about economic stimulus. In this case, federal dollars must be spent, to sustain demand in the face of a recession. This is classic Keynesian economics, which worked for this country in WW2 to recover from the depression-- which, by the way, was also a product of GOP mismanagement of the economy.
In any case, you would do well to remember this recession has the letters "GOP" stamped across it-- caused by failure of federal market regulatory oversight during the Bush watch. This mismanagement of regulatory responsibility was legislated by two measures sponsored exclusively by GOP congressmen in 1999 and 2000.
airmanC141 said, "Nancy pelosi this morning: "NASA did not brfief me on any spacewalk"
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No, she actually told the truth-- the CIA did not admit torture was on the menu.
All Americans can be glad Pelosi has the integrity to demand accounting for Bush misdeeds, including torture.
.
Would that US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had the same integrity..
George Bush, in contrast, has the opposite problem-- he cannot tell the truth. With him, the issue is not so much what was omitted, but what he declared.
The NSA, at Bush direction, spied on their private conversations-- and Bush denied it to the whole country.
In fact, Bush had said, "?we do not eavesdrop without warrants; we do not eavesdrop on Americans.? Both statements were false.
And now-- as with Pelosi-- all Americans can state truthfully they were not fully informed by their government intelligence agencies.
After exposure of the Bush deceit about spying-- an act in clear violation of federal law-- Bush never again claimed he did not spy on the American people.
Posted by erasmus111 at 7:04 PM : May 16, 2009
Well I've been under a lot of stress worrying that the Canadian space program might outdo us and we'll fall behind a puny weakling country. The Candian shuttle looks so much cooler than ours, and their astronaut suits look really stylish, especially with the high-fashion colors they chose.
No, wait. Canada doesn't have a space program. Any Canadian in space is riding in our hardware.
Whew! What a relief.
I was worrying about nothing.
Sounds like you've had a tough week. : )