How NASA Prepares To Rescue Hubble, In Photos 37
Jamie pointed out a fantastic set of photos up at The Boston Globe, illustrating the painstaking preparations underway for the Shuttle mission to rescue the Hubble telescope. "This will be the final servicing mission to Hubble, the 30th flight of the 23-year old Atlantis, and one of the final 10 flights of the Space Shuttle program, which will be retired in 2010." Refreshingly, they've decided to include a many of the behind-the-scenes techies and the equipment they steward, rather than just the launch vehicles and crew.
Fixing what wasn't designed to be fixed. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the big challenges of this repair mission is they're trying to actually perform a repair that the Hubble was never designed to be done. Normally components are swapped out on a module by module basis, and each module was designed to be swapped out in orbit. But this particular service mission they're going to attempt to repair a module without replacing it (because I believe there is no replacement part available). If you look at picture 12, you'll see a plexiglass apparatus designed to keep in 111 screws. That's what needs to be removed and put back in to repair this module (I think they're replacing a power supply inside the module). It all needs to be done in a vacuum, in a cramped unlit space, while wearing a space suit. Not exactly an easy mission.
Re:Rescue? (Score:3, Informative)
The original plan was to bring it back on a future shuttle mission for inclusion in the Smithsonian (hence the lack of a de-orbit thruster on the Hubble). While return of a satellite has been completed successfully, I think it was only done once or twice, and was ruled out for the Hubble years ago.
Photograph selection. (Score:4, Informative)
"Refreshingly, they've decided to include a many of the behind-the-scenes techies and the equipment they steward, rather than just the launch vehicles and crew."
If you rely on Big Media for your news and information, you deserve what you get. The photographs in the Globe article all come straight from the NASA and are available on the web to anyone who makes the effort to see them. (NASA has been doing this for years now, and has quite a bit of historical photographs available as well.)
Try these websites:
Repair video available (Score:4, Informative)
For the interested, here is an online video of a presentation given by ken sembach, the HST project scientist, at a symposium earlier this year. In it, he describe the servicing mission (SM4) in detail, with a particular emphasis on the new instruments being installed (WFC3, COS) and those being repaired (STIS, ACS).
There some cool shots of the astronauts in the massive water tank that simulates zero-g, practicing removing all those screws with the specially designed screw-plate.
http://www.stsci.edu/ts/webcasting/ram/HubbleFellows2008/KenSembach031108Hi.ram [stsci.edu]
Runtime is 38:51