Shuttle astronauts prepare for telescope repair trip
Nasa’s astronauts are preparing for a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope – with a standby shuttle being readied for what could be a hazardous trip.
Launch is scheduled for Monday at Cape Canaveral as the shuttle crew takes up new scientific instruments, replacement parts for broken cameras and fresh batteries that should keep Hubble running for five to 10 years.
The cosmic-scale grand finale – delayed seven months by a telescope breakdown - will be Nasa’s most daring overhaul yet of the 19-year-old orbiting observatory, a captivating, twinkling jewel in the sky representing $10bn (€7.5bn) of investment.
Never before have spacewalking astronauts attempted to fix dead science instruments on the Hubble, equipment that was never meant to be handled in orbit.
In all, five spacewalks will be performed in as many days by two repair teams. Two of the repairmen have visited Hubble before and, because of that, were chosen for this extraordinarily difficult job, on a par with operating-room surgery.
“Hubble needs a hug,” said the chief repairman, John Grunsfeld, who will be making his third trip to the telescope.
Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven will face increased danger from space junk because of Hubble’s extremely high and littered orbit 350 miles up.
They will need someone to come and get them – fast – if their ship sustains serious Columbia-type damage during launch or later in flight.
They will not have the luxury of camping out at the international space station while awaiting rescue. The space station will be in another orbit and impossible to reach.
The mission, once cancelled because it was considered too perilous, has an unprecedented safety net: another space shuttle on the launch pad.
There is no guarantee, though, that Nasa could pull off a rescue in time to save the Hubble crew. It would take three to seven days, at least, to launch a second shuttle.
All seven astronauts agree Hubble is worth risking their lives for.
“I’m only going to do that if I think it’s for something really important, and I think Hubble is really important,” said Mr Grunsfeld, an astronaut-astrophysicist. Hubble is “worth bringing up to date and extending its vision even farther”.
“It’s showing us the way,” to distant galaxies and, indeed, the actual edge of the universe, said the mission’s commander, Scott Altman. “The next step is for us to try and go there.”
Mr Altman and his crew were just two weeks away from liftoff last autumn when Hubble broke down and stopped sending pictures.
Nasa got the telescope working again with a backup channel on the failed command and data-handing unit, but the shuttle flight took a seven-month hit as engineers scrambled to get an old spare unit ready for launch.
