The Hubble Legacy
Part Five: The Future Awaits
Daring Hubble repair plan awaits ‘go’
NASA to say today whether mission to fix telescope is on
Traci Watson, USA TODAY
October 31, 2006
5A
For 2 1/2 years, top NASA officials have fretted over whether
to send astronauts to revive the critically ill Hubble Space Tele-
scope.
The answer comes today, when NASA Administrator Michael
Griffin announces whether the space shuttle will pay a service
call to Hubble. If Griffin says yes, a flight to install two new sci-
entific instruments, fix a third and upgrade telescope systems
could launch as early as next winter.
Despite the uncertainty, NASA engineers and astronauts have
been quietly toiling on a plan to rescue the telescope.
Space agency personnel have created new Hubble repair tools.
They have outlined a rough mission schedule. And they have
developed new repair techniques in hopes of fixing one of
America’s most cherished scientific instruments.
The 2002 shuttle flight to Hubble, the most recent of four,
was tough enough, says astronaut John Grunsfeld, who made
spacewalks to fix the telescope in 1999 and 2002. “If that was
heart surgery, this time we’re planning to do brain surgery --
that next level of delicacy,” he says.
Some of the tasks on the flight, such as opening a door fastened
with more than 100 tiny screws, “would seem to be impos-
sible,” says astronaut Michael Massimino, who also did a space-
walk in 2002 to repair the telescope. “This one, I think, is about
as challenging as you can get,” Massimino says.
A bit of Velcro falling into the telescope’s guts could spoil its
vision. One misplaced nudge of a spacewalking astronaut’s foot
could derail a telescope that, while wounded, is still snapping
pictures of the cosmos.
“You want to be very, very careful,” says Massimino, yet “you
want to get as much done as you possibly can, because you’re
up there for a finite time.” He notes that the astronauts who
live on the space station can polish off chores that weren’t fin-
ished during spacewalks. Hubble has no such backup.
In collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Punishing work schedule
NASA has added new safety precautions to every shuttle flight
since shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003. Now every shut-
tle crew must spend an entire day in orbit inspecting the ship’s
thermal shield, a procedure that demands precious time and
fuel.
“The biggest challenge ... (is) how do we pack everything we
need to do to assure a safe vehicle into a typical Hubble mis-
sion?” says astronaut Joseph Tanner, whose four shuttle flights
included one to Hubble in 1997. “It’s not business like it used
to be.”
It was safety that led then-NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe
in 2004 to cancel the fifth shuttle mission to Hubble. Since the
Columbia accident, NASA has made sure that in an emergency,
every shuttle crew could hole up on the International Space
Station and wait for rescue by another shuttle. But a shuttle
visiting Hubble couldn’t reach the station, which follows a path
around the Earth more than 100 miles away from the Hubble’s
orbit.
O’Keefe’s decision meant curtains for Hubble, since no other
space vehicle in the world can stay in space long enough to
upgrade the telescope.
When Griffin took over the space agency in early 2005, he
changed course. NASA, he said, would send a shuttle to save
Hubble if the first flights after the Columbia accident went well.
The three flights since the accident -- one in 2005, another in
July, and one in September -- all returned safely to Earth.
The long to-do list for the next Hubble mission means that the
crew would probably make five spacewalks in five days. Mis-
sions to the station usually include only three spacewalks, with
a day of rest between them.
The punishing work schedule on a Hub-
ble mission, combined with the extra
task of inspecting the shuttle, adds up
to a “crew workload (that) is going to
be outrageous,” Grunsfeld says. “There’s
going to be no sleeping on this mission.”
That can lead to risky fatigue.
 The Hubble Legacy
Part Five: The Future Awaits
Reviving dead spectrograph
By far the most difficult task on a fifth Hubble flight would
be fixing the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which
analyzes the light from distant objects in the cosmos. The
spectrograph, dead since 2004 because of a faulty elec-
tronics board, gives information on temperature and den-
sity. It was not designed to be fixed in orbit, posing these
challenges:
*The door to the compartment containing the faulty part
is held down by 111 tiny screws, which an astronaut in
a spacesuit would find nearly impossible to remove. Once
freed, the screws could easily float away and vanish into
the workings of the telescope.
Engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center devised a
special miniature screwdriver and a device that will im-
prove the astronauts’ aim as they work on the screws and
clamp onto them once they’re loose.
*The edges of the electronics board are sharp -- a peril to
the astronauts, whose spacesuits are inflated with air. That
means the spacewalkers can’t touch the board for fear of
puncturing their suits.
The board is held in place by locks akin to “Chinese fin-
ger handcuffs,” says Hubble program manager Preston
Burch. “As you pull on them, they get tighter and tighter.”
In collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
On Earth, it may take an hour to coax one out. A “card-
puller” has been devised for the astronauts to use to yank
the board free.
*The spectrograph lies so deep inside Hubble that the as-
tronauts can’t work as usual. On a normal Hubble task, two
astronauts stand on the shuttle’s robotic arm, one doing
the work, and the second handing tools to the first.
The Hubble team now thinks the repair astronaut can
stand on a portable scaffold attached to the telescope. The
shuttle’s robot arm might hover nearby and act as a tool
caddy.
Because of the time pressure the astronauts face, the plan-
ning team has also worked on how to make the routine
Hubble chores easier.
Engineers have cooked up an alignment device that will
help the spacewalkers load Hubble with new scientific in-
struments, which have to be slid into their slots just so.
They’re building exact replicas of parts of the telescope so
the astronauts can practice their moves. They’re rethink-
ing how to load items on the shuttle, to cut the time spent
hunting for supplies.
“We don’t leave anything to chance,” Burch says. “We work
real hard to make sure that we can’t get fooled.”
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 The Hubble Legacy
Part Five: The Future Awaits

Source: NASA, Graphic: Bob Laird, USA TODAY

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In collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. All rights reserved.