Shuttle Atlantis Grapples Hubble
Jefferson Morris
The crew of STS-125 successfully grappled the Hubble Space Telescope at 1:14 p.m. EDT using Atlantis' robotic arm while the shuttle and telescope orbited 340 miles above the Earth.
Controlling the arm was Mission Specialist Megan McArthur, who is now using it to lower Hubble onto the Flight Support System (FSS) fixture in Atlantis' open payload bay. The FSS is a lazy Susan-type device that will hold the observatory in place while allowing it to rotate for easier access.
The crew is slated to undertake five ambitious spacewalks that, if successful, will completely rejuvenate Hubble, leaving it with five operational instruments and extending its life at least through 2014. The astronauts will install a new primary camera and spectrograph, replace a crucial data handling mechanism that suffered a failure in orbit last September, undertake tricky repairs of two inoperative instruments, and replace the telescope's stabilizing gyroscopes and batteries.
Late Tuesday, NASA decided that the minor ceramic tile damage discovered along a portion of Shuttle Atlantis' starboard wing poses no threat to the crew or orbiter, so the astronauts won't have to perform detailed inspections of the area later in the mission.
Veteran astronaut Scott Altman commands STS-125, with retired Navy Capt. Gregory Johnson serving as pilot. Aboard as mission specialists are veteran astronauts John Grunsfeld - making his third trip to Hubble -- and Mike Massimino, along with first-time astronauts Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and McArthur
Photo credit: NASA TV
