Sun, May 17, 2009
"Batting 1000" To This Point
STS-125 mission specialists John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel
finished the mission’s third spacewalk Saturday at 4:11 p.m.
EDT. The spacewalk lasted 6 hours, 36 minutes. During the endeavor
outside the shuttle, Feustel and Grunsfeld removed the Corrective
Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement and installed in its place
the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. They also completed the
Advanced Camera for Surveys electronic card replacement work. The
spacewalkers were ahead of schedule and were able to complete part
2 of the ACS repair, installing a new electronics box and
cable.
Space shuttle Atlantis’ 11-day mission is the final
shuttle flight to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The
seven-member crew will enhance the observatory and ensure
cutting-edge science. The mission puts in place advanced technology
that improves the telescope’s discovery power by 10 to 70
times. The five scheduled spacewalks will install new instruments
and thermal blankets, repair two existing instruments, refurbish
subsystems and replace gyroscopes, batteries and a unit that stores
and transmits science data to Earth. The result will be six
working, complementary science instruments with new capabilities,
and an extended operational lifespan through at least 2014.
Saturday, the spacewalkers focused on the installation of the
telescope’s new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and completed the
Advanced Camera for Surveys repair work. Engineers from the Space
Telescope Operations Control Center at Goddard Spaceflight Center
in Maryland powered up both components and reported good aliveness
tests. More tests will be conducted during the astronauts sleep
period.
On Sunday, starting at 9:16 a.m., astronauts Mike Good and Mike
Massimino will repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and
install the New Outer Blanket Layer during the fourth STS-125
spacewalk.
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