Two US astronauts struggled to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope’s pointing and power systems on Friday on a marathon spacewalk to equip the 19-year-old observatory with new gyroscopes.
In a spacewalk which stretched to seven hours and 56 minutes, Mike Massimino and Mike Good successfully installed new gyroscopes and new batteries on the revolutionary stargazer.
Their persistence with the installation of a half-dozen new gyroscopes, the highest priority of an 11-day mission to extend operations of the telescope by five years, paid off.
Much of their space work was spent in the cramped instrument bay at the base of the telescope, which juts 13.2m out of the ship’s cargo bay.
“At times, I felt like I was wrestling a bear,” Massimino complained as he and Good improvised to achieve the most difficult task, the gyro installation.
Mission managers rewarded the shuttle astronauts for their perseverance with an extra hour of sleep before they tackle the third of the five daily spacewalks yesterday.
During the first of the mission’s five daily spacewalks on Thursday, two other astronauts also equipped Hubble with a powerful new camera and science computer, the mission’s second and third highest priorities.
The seven Atlantis astronauts rendezvoused with Hubble on Wednesday and hoisted it aboard the shuttle for a final overhaul.
When the work is finished, the iconic telescope should achieve a new summit of discovery, able to scan the distant universe in search of the oldest star systems, contribute to an understanding of dark matter and dark energy as well as observe planet forming processes around other stars.
Astronaut mechanics last worked on the telescope in March 2002. As Atlantis launched, only three of the six gyroscopes responsible for Hubble’s precision pointing were functioning.
An equal number of batteries aboard the solar-powered telescope were losing their ability to recharge and provide electricity when it was in darkness.
Massimino, a 46-year-old mechanical engineer who was making his second trip to the space telescope, paired comfortably with Good, a 46-year-old US Air Force flight test engineer.
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