US Astronauts Begin Marathon Spacewalk to Repair Hubble Telescope
By VOA News
14 May 2009
Two astronauts aboard the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis have started a marathon spacewalk to begin making complicated and unprecedented upgrades and repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope.
John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel are on a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk to replace Hubble's interplanetary camera with a new one that will allow it to look deeper into the universe. They will also replace a science data computer that failed last September and install a device to capture the telescope for de-orbit at the end of its life.
This is the first of five scheduled spacewalks to service Hubble and keep it operating for at least five more years. The telescope has been in orbit since 1990 and this is the fifth and final flight to make upgrades and repairs to it.
The mission is more dangerous than others because the telescope is sharing an orbit with lots of debris left behind by satellite collisions and rocket launches.
Missions to the telescope can also be riskier because astronauts only have the supplies they carry with them. But with missions to the International Space Station, the station can support a stranded crew for up to three months.
NASA says the space shuttle Endeavour will sit on standby on a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Station in Florida in case the Atlantis crew has to be rescued.
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