"A firm handshake with Mr. Hubble the telescope." Those were the historic
words from the crew on the first servicing mission of the Hubble Space
Telescope almost 10 years ago. Hubble is now firmly held in the berthing
ring in the payload bay of Columbia, and the telescope is still a beautiful
sight, after nearly 12 years on orbit.
Early in the day, as we slowly advanced on HST the Orbiter crew continued
the task of preparing Columbia for our rendezvous and grapple. Of course
slowly is a relative term, as both the Hubble and Columbia are orbiting the
earth at about 17,500 miles per hour. As we approached the telescope, Scott
Altman fired reaction control jets to slow our rate of closure. Each time
one of the jets in the nose of the Orbiter fires, it sounds like a cannon
blast, and everything in the cabin shakes and vibrates. With a 100-plus-ton
spaceship it takes a lot of punch to move it around, even in free fall.
While the flight crew was flying Columbia, the space walking team was
preparing the spacesuits and tools for tomorrow's first EVA. With four
spacesuits, hundreds of tools, and four space walkers on the middeck of
Columbia, space seemed awfully small. The middeck, or bottom floor of the
Space Shuttle, is only about 10 feet by 5 feet in size. All of our space
suits checked out fine, and as we performed all of the procedures my
excitement of going outside of the Shuttle dramatically increased. We now
have Rick Linnehan's (my space walking partner) and my spacesuits ready to
go out for a "walk."
When the Hubble was a few miles away I was able to see it clearly with a set
of binoculars. I truly felt like I was close to visiting an old friend
again. Scott slowly brought the Shuttle in close, with Duane Carey backing
him up. Jim Newman was on the laptop computer providing situational
awareness calls from a program that displays our trajectory on the computer
screen. Rick manned the handheld laser, as used by police to catch speeders,
to monitor the distance to Hubble. Nancy Currie and Mike Massimino prepared
the robotic arm to reach out and grab HST. My job was to work the Hubble
communication procedures, which also allowed me to take pictures of HST on
approach.
Once Scott had flown the HST into range of the Shuttle robotic arm, Nancy,
an Army helicopter pilot, flew the end of the arm on to a special grapple
fixture on HST and captured the Hubble. There was much rejoicing on
Columbia. Scott really did a fantastic job of flying the Shuttle up close
and personal to Hubble, it was a thing of beauty to watch.
The rest of the day went quite well, berthing the Hubble into the payload
bay of Columbia and driving the latches to hold it firmly in the bay. After
charging up HST's batteries in the orbital day, we began the process of
rolling up the second-generation solar arrays. There was some trepidation as
the arrays began rolling up, as one of the first-generation solar arrays on
the first servicing mission failed to roll up and had to be jettisoned
during space walking activities. Fortunately both arrays rolled up smoothly
and without problems, and we all gave a collective sigh of relief (I think
we even heard the engineers on the ground at Houston and in Baltimore, the
home of the telescope control center, sigh with us). I'm sure there was much
jubilation on the ground.
The hard work has just begun however, as we have 5 days of challenging space
walks ahead of us, starting with replacement of one of the solar arrays
tomorrow. I look forward to giving my old friend the Hubble a hug, and
getting on with the hard work of making the telescope better than it's ever
been before.
