Amazing Mission Is Incredibly Complex

Using the shuttle's robotic arm STS-125 Mission Specialist Megan McArthur grappled the Hubble Space Telescope at 12:14 p.m. CDT Wednesday. McArthur then maneuvered the telescope onto a Flight Support System maintenance platform in Atlantis’ payload bay. The stage is set for five spacewalks in as many days to repair and update instruments, extending Hubble's lifespan through 2014.

Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel conducted a final review of plans for the first spacewalk with the help of fellow spacewalkers Mike Good and Mike Massimino, and the rest of the crew. They also checked out all of the tools necessary for the mission’s spacewalks.

Mission managers declared Atlantis’ thermal protection tiles safe for reentry, but continue to examine the imagery from Tuesday’s inspection of the reinforced carbon carbon on the shuttle’s nose cap and wing leading edges.

As we write this, STS-125 astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel are set to make the first of five Hubble servicing spacewalks Thursday. Scheduled to begin work at 8:16 a.m. EDT, the astronauts were to remove Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and replace it with the new Wide Field Camera 3. They were also to replace a failed science data processing computer that delayed the launch from last October and install a mechanism for a spacecraft to capture Hubble for de-orbit at the end of its life.

Meanwhile, the crew was informed that a focused inspection will not be required for any area of the shuttle. The official decision will be made during Thursday's Mission Management Team meeting.

The crew also was notified that the imagery from scans of the underbelly and scans of the crew cabin did not sufficiently overlap, leaving a row of 16 heat shield tiles in an area of the port side of the shuttle's nose where there isn't sufficient imagery. The crew will be asked to use the arm's end effector camera to go over that area. The flight director has asked the flight activities officer to potentially insert the brief inspection into the crew's timeline on flight day 5. The survey would take 45 minutes, at most.

There was no further communication with the crew about a possible conjunction due to debris from the Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite. The 10 cm object was to make its closest approach to Atlantis at 7:28 p.m. EDT. It passed without incident.

FMI: www.nasa.gov