Bloomberg April 18, 2002
Shuttle Columbia Departs for Hubble Repair Mission
Cape Canaveral, Florida, March 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S.
space shuttle Columbia lifted off from its coastal Florida base at
dawn, headed for the Hubble telescope, where astronauts will
confront one of the most arduous repair jobs ever tried in orbit.
Columbia soared through a shallow cloud bank lit up by the
flames from its engines and the rising sun as the craft climbed
out over the Atlantic Ocean.
The temperature at launch was 22 degrees higher than the
forecast yesterday morning of 38 degrees Fahrenheit, which had
prompted NASA to delay the departure by one day. NASA set strict
limits for cold-weather launches after the shuttle Challenger
accident in 1986 was blamed in part on a lift-off in 36-degree
weather.
Sean O'Keefe, the new chief of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, praised launch controllers about 20 minutes
after Columbia departed. Alongside him was President George W.
Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, and Rear Admiral John
Stufflebeem, the Pentagon's war spokesman.
``For me, for my first launch, this was a truly special
moment,'' said O'Keefe, who wants companies to run more shuttle
operations.
Once in orbit, Columbia will grapple itself to the orbiting
Hubble Space Telescope 350 miles above Earth and begin a series of
five space walks to install new solar panels, an advanced camera
and a replacement central power unit. Ball Corp. and Lockheed
Martin Corp. are among the companies that built gear for the
mission.
``If everything goes as planned, the Hubble space walks will
seem almost routine,'' said astronaut James Newman, who will
participate in the second and fourth space walk. ``But Hubble has
a habit of surprising people.''
`Violates' Space Norm
The servicing mission confronts the difficulty of replacing a
power unit located in a cramped compartment. For the first time in
11 years, Hubble must be shut down for the task.
Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science,
told reporters earlier this month the maneuver ``scares'' him.
``It kind of violates a long-standing policy in the space
business in that if something is working well, you don't just turn
it off and hope it comes back on,'' he said.
Hubble has helped astronomers strengthen theories regarding
black holes and the expansion of the universe, since a flaw in its
main mirror was corrected in a 1993 shuttle trip.
30 Hours in Space
Space walkers Newman, John Grunsfeld, Richard Linnehan and
Michael Massimino will spend more than 30 hours outside the
shuttle during the 11-day mission.
Newman and Massimino will install solar arrays and the
Advanced Camera for Surveys, an 800-pound, phone-booth-size device
made by Broomfield, Colorado-based Ball Corp.
The new camera will have 10 times the light-gathering ability
and produce photos in one-fifth the time of Hubble's current Wide
Field Planetary Camera. Both cameras use digital technology
similar to what is found in off-the-shelf digital cameras.
Each photograph snapped by the new camera will have eight
times the picture elements, or pixels, as images from the existing
camera, according to Hubble chief scientist Dave Leckrone at the
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Grunsfeld and Linnehan will make three space walks, each
separated by one day. On the fourth day of the mission, they will
install Lockheed-made rigid solar arrays that are one-third
smaller than the existing pairs while producing 30 percent more
electricity.
Power Box Challenge
On the sixth day of the mission, Grunsfeld and Linnehan will
attempt to carry out one of the most difficult Hubble maintenance
tasks so far, the removal of the fuse box that handles electricity
flowing from solar panels to charge batteries that power the
scientific instrument.
To replace the power box, 36 connectors must be removed. The
work is both intensive and tedious, and the astronauts may spend
up to nine hours outside the shuttle to complete the task.
Each of the four space walkers trained on a full-scale model
of the Hubble in a water tank during the past two years.
``They have been training for it so much that by the time
they actually do it, it will be anti-climactic,'' said John Pike,
director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based space analysis
group. ``Barring some unforeseeable development, I think it will
go pretty smoothly.''
Hubble is credited with answering some of astrophysics'
hardest questions while creating a slew of new puzzles, including
the nature of ``dark energy,'' a mysterious force that may
overcome gravity, pushing galaxies away from each other at an ever-
increasing speed.
Astronomers credit Hubble with pinpointing the age of the
universe to be around 13.6 billion years and revising theories of
star formation by making the most distant observations of the
cosmos.
--Bill Murray in Washington (202) 624-1963 or
wmurray1@bloomberg.net. Editor: DeMarco
Copyright 2002 Bloomberg
