BOULDER, Colo.—Astronauts preparing for a risky repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope figure they’ve practiced their jobs hundreds of times by now—including the task of removing and capturing dozens of tiny screws so they don’t fly off into space.
And with their October mission delayed at least until May, they said Friday they’ll have three more intensive sessions practicing their work in a pool—spending 12 hours in the water for every one hour of work they plan to do on their Hubble spacewalks.
“The challenge for us will be mainly to use our time wisely,” Scott Altman said during a visit to Ball Aerospace with four other astronauts.
Their mission on space shuttle Atlantis was to make various repairs and upgrade the telescope. But the Hubble broke down and stopped sending pictures, forcing NASA to figure out what went wrong and to delay its mission until next year.
Hubble is again beaming its photographs. It captured some of the first photos of planets outside our solar system that were released this week. But a spare part needed to permanently resolve the problem won’t be available until May.
Ball Aerospace built two instruments that will be installed on Hubble. It also helped come up with solutions and tools to fix problems on the 18-year-old telescope.
The crew spoke as space shuttle Endeavor prepared to launch Friday on a delivery mission to the international space station.
Greg Johnson, who will pilot Atlantis and shoot footage for a possible IMAX film, said it’s worth the risk to increase knowledge about other planets and how the universe is expanding.
Astronaut John Grunsfeld noted that at the time of his first Hubble mission in 1999, only the nine planets in our solar system were known. That figure has been downgraded to eight—Pluto lost its planet status—but Grunsfeld said scientists now believe there are 350 planets beyond the solar system.
The new equipment will keep Hubble both taking photographs and analyzing the composition of matter in space through 2013. This is the last scheduled repair mission, but Altman said it’s difficult for him to believe there won’t be more.
“It seems to me that the telescope continues to have a lot of capability,” he said.
