Yesterday, the crew of Atlantis released Hubble back into the wild. It’s bittersweet, since this is the final scheduled repair of the Grand Dame of orbiting ’scopes (though I won’t discount the possibility of future missions from private companies…).
NASA just released this astonishing video of the event. It’s well worth the nearly 7 minutes of your time.
I have two favorite parts to this. One is just overall the feel of it: I’m used to hearing and seeing the astronauts through a fuzzy NASA TV feed, but here is video and audio that are crisp and clean. Note how the astronauts are dressed; shirtsleeves and baseball caps, giving them an informal feel, but then listen to them: snapping orders and responding with data, making sure that everything goes according to plan. They’re all business…
… almost. A few seconds after Megan McMcArthur releases Hubble from the robot arm, at about 3:30 in the video, the view of it through the viewport is incredible. I was just thinking, holy cow, look at that! when you can hear Megan say, "Oh baby, look at that!" I think I like her.
Watching this video brings to mind the astronauts’ claim that they’re just people who work in space. But you know what? They’re people who work in space.
Look what we do.
Tip o’ the aperture door to AstroPixie.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I wish we had the dinero to bring it back one day in the distant future and put it in a museum. Alas…
May 20th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Whoa. STS-125, nice shootin’! And damn, i would be so afraid to maneuver around our most famous telescope like that.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Wow!! That video is like you are onboard there.
What a great mission, by the way.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Got to love the shot of Dr Michael J. Massimino from my alma matter oversea in the space vectors (wud’nt know – I was course 6) … Of “Mind and Hand” MIT nerds rule (Ben Bernanke of Obama admin)!!
now back to court!
May 20th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Well think about it, ties and fromal gowns would just get in the way.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
A few seconds after Megan McMcArthur releases Hubble
McMcArthur! She’s Irish^2!
I’m surprised the first guy shown (with the mustache) was wearing that necklace/medal. It seems like it would be very annoying floating up into your face all the time like that.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
[...] video is completely awesome. Thanks to Bad Astronomy for the pointer! Posted by Kat on Wednesday, May 20, 2009, at 3:42 pm. Filed under astronomy, [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Other videos from the mission, including the interview with the STS-125 crew from this morning can be found here:
http://space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/
(A very useful site to have bookmarked).
May 20th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Couple of things:
1st) When the curve of the planet first appears, it looks like Mars!
2nd) Why is the flap open on the Hubble? They close it when there’s a meteor shower about to arrive, so wouldn’t it be closed when the mechanics have the thing up on the rack? Wouldn’t keeping it closed reduce the telescope’s footprint when working on it?
3rd) I wish I could one of the people who work in space.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
(though I won’t discount the possibility of future missions from private companies…)..
Now there’s a happy thought!
May 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
“They’re people who work in space.”
And some of them are from Iowa?
(Still haven’t had time to see the ST movie, arg!)
May 20th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
James A. Brown,
It was closed during the repairs, they may have opened it for testing some of the new equipment???
May 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Awesome how you can hear the thrusters firing. Unfortunately it looks like they are going to land in California. I had a seat on the bus to get out to the SLF (shuttle landing facility). I haven’t seen a landing that close yet. Oh well, as long as they get back safely.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Now they just have to return safely to the Earth
Did I hear correctly that there may have been problems caused by detaching foam on launch?
May 20th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I had to laugh when the guy was firing the thrusters 10X…”I THINK that’s 10…” Dude… you’ve got 2 $1 Billion + spacecraft in your hands… you better be SURE that was 10X! LOL
I thought the Canadian Space Agency was considering building a robotic craft to be able to carry out on-orbit servicing at one time? Just wondering what happened with that?
May 20th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
@ Sticks
They found a somewhat long gash in some of the tiles, fortunately it was in an area that will not receive a terrible amount of heat or pressure on re-entry. They are going to check out some other spots though, just to be sure. However, if there is a problem we have Endevour ready to go. If we need her she will launch on Friday. Everything is nominal out at KSC for STS-400. No worries. If we do not need her for a rescue mission, she is also being prepared for her mission to the ISS. The canister is going out to Pad A tonight. Weather permitting.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Amazing video. Thanks Phil!
Is that the robot arm at 5:05 in the right corner of the screen? I can’t imagine something else zapping by so close.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
It is truly incredible what ‘we’, the human race, are capable of doing today. Having just watched that amazing video, I can’t help but think of this:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of Hubble.
I so look forward to the coming pictures from the new technology they’ve just introduced up there …
May 20th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
@Sticks
No, no problems found that would prohibit reentry. NASA mission management cleared the TPS today:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/05/sts-125-tps-cleared-landing-plan-endeavour-status/
May 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
When did they stop wearing the coveralls and start wearing polos and khakis? Have I just not been paying attention?
May 20th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
@dhtroy:
“Put out my hand, and touched the face of Hubble.”
I see what you did there. Cute.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Phil,
Does the force of the shuttle attaching to Hubble change it’s orbit ever so slightly?
Anybody else is free to answer.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Not bad, not bad at all.
Am I wrong to think it would be really, really, difficult for a robotic satellite to repair Hubble since it was not designed to be repaired? Maybe, just maybe, something remotely controlled by a human, but even then color me skeptical.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I don’t see how a private company could afford to build a robotic mission capable of anything close to what STS-125 managed to do, and NASA would not fund or allow any mission that would put a controlled deorbit at risk. Even replacing the gyroscopes (probably the most likely instruments to fail) would be really tough to do robotically, from what I saw in the live coverage.
I guess it’s possible that if the Hubble is still in good shape 10 years from now and returning valuable science, NASA may be willing to fund a private robotic mission to boost HST’s orbit to give it a few more years of life, but I don’t think that decision has to be made for at least a decade, and NASA would probably do the mission itself anyway.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
@Bill:
I was wondering if someone would catch it, or just stop reading after the first 2 sentences and assume they knew what it was going to say.
Good catch Bill!
May 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Tacitus, The James Webb Telescope is scheduled for launch in 2014, so I think the costs of continuing to operate Hubble, and the James Webb Telescope would be prohibitive from a budgetary standpoint.
I found the link to the Robotic Hubble Service Mission proposal. Looks like it didn’t go much beyond the planning stage according to this report.
http://www.edcheung.com/job/hrsdm/hrsdm.htm
If you read that article, there’s also a link to a space.com article from 2005, stating that, at that time, NASA was going to de-orbit Hubble as early as 2008. We know that didn’t happen, so, the lesson is, anything is possible! It’s too bad that they could not boost it into a higher orbit with a robotic booster rocket, and leave it parked until it becomes feasible to either retrieve it, or service it again. I’m thinking there could be a lot to learn from examining a spacecraft that will have been in orbit for over 25 years when it comes time to end its mission.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
At least they were better than Mike Nelson.
J/P=?
May 20th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
HaHa! Finally I got something posted first than you!
http://ungaman.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/hubble-maniobra-de-desacoplaje/
I posted withing minutes after NASA announced it!
UngaMan: 1
BA Dude: N-1
May 20th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Seretse Asks: “Does the force of the shuttle attaching to Hubble change it’s orbit ever so slightly? Anybody else is free to answer.”
No, not really. The orbits are matched perfectly by the time the shuttle is “station keeping” with Hubble. The robotic arm (which, technically, isn’t robotic, but a teleoperator) has a gripper at the end called the “end effector” (that’s not a NASA term, it comes from the robotics industry). You can hear Megan call it that near the beginning of the video as she confirms that it has been enabled for release.
Anyway, this end effector isn’t a “hand” or any other sort of finger gripper. It is a series of short cords arranged in a circle that twist like a camera iris closing in on the center of the cylinder. The grapple point on Hubble, and any other vehicle designed to be visited by the shuttle, is a post with a knob on the end. The crew calls it “the pin.” The operator places the cylindrical end effector over the grapple and closes the cords around the post. In microgravity that’s enough to hold it still for servicing, but sometimes they actually move the satellite onto a special pallet in the cargo bay. I don’t know if they did that in this case, but it would seem reasonable. Maybe someone else out there has the answer.
When it’s time to release, they raise the satellite up so the only contact point between it and the shuttle is the end effector. This is the point where the video starts. The arm operator (Megan) confirms that everything is ready, then she backs off the cords (opens the iris) when she says “Release.” Now the satellite is completely free of the shuttle even though the end effector can is still over the grapple, but there is no relative motion between them. The trick is to back off the arm with out touching anything on the satellite. You can hear several milestones that they pass on the way as she does that, the last one being “five feet from the antenna.”
Once the arm is clear, they do some distancing burns of the shuttle thrusters to move it slowly away from the satellite. The satellite itself stays in exactly the same orbit as it was when attached. It’s the shuttle that moves.
- Jack
May 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Seretse Said:
“Does the force of the shuttle attaching to Hubble change it’s orbit ever so slightly?”
Hubble’s orbit is undoubtedly altered, but only trivially. Ideally the rendezvous would have the shuttle approaching and continuously adjusting its orbit so that the two objects’ orbits touch and exactly match each other’s at that point. The two spacecraft would touch with zero relative velocity. However, in reality it’s slightly dirtier than that, and the two meet with very slightly differing orbits and a comfortably tiny collision. While mated the two follow an orbit which is a sum of the two independent orbits.
At separation, the shuttle then fires its thrusters to back away slowly. The exhaust gases of course aren’t aimed directly at Hubble, but no doubt some tiny amount of the expanding gas wafts over the telescope, shoving it ever so slightly, to no important degree.
This makes me think of the first servicing mission in late 1993, with Musgrave & Thornton on EVA. One thing they did was to swap out the solar panels. Once they had one of the panels detached, the shuttle backed off, and the panels fluttered like a flag in the wind.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
I find the most impressive thing about astronauts is that they are capable of carrying out their tasks even though they have the most distracting view out the window imaginable! I’d be stuck with my nose to the glass, blubbering like a baby the whole time!
May 20th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I hope that someday, we can pull Hubble down to Earth and place it in a museum.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I’m surprised the first guy shown (with the mustache) was wearing that necklace/medal. It seems like it would be very annoying floating up into your face all the time like that.
That’s Shuttle Commander Scott Altman.
And if you look at other astronauts during missions, most (if not all) of them have something hanging around their neck.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
NASA should hold a Hubble X-Prize where private companies can bid on a mission to bring Hubble back to earth safely rather than just plan on de-orbiting it.
Imagine what that kind of drive could do for the private space industry! If you were the winner of that contest and your mission succeeded, the credibility that would be brought to your company would be priceless.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Awesome to the tenth power. I’ve been following this mission closely… and incredibly, so have all the major news networks. STS-125 got so much coverage in comparison to the past few missions!! Whole-heartedly agree about the sentiment about working in space. Our astronauts are truly the last heroes of the celebrity world. These are not people who throw a ball or stand in front of a camera to play pretend for a living, then act like brats. These people risk their lives for human exploration. Hoping for their safe return
May 20th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Quite moving. Incredible that they can make it sound so ordinary and normal, but I think that inside their heads there are little kids jumping up and down.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
@Jack,
The Hubble was latched onto a servicing fixture (Hubble Support System) in the shuttle cargo bay for the duration of the repair. The arm is used to give one astronaut a stable platform to work from, sort of like a carpenter using a scissor-lift to access high up the side of a building. I believe the HSS fixture has been used on every Hubble servicing mission.
The HSS can rotate the Hubble at least to some extent, so all sides of the telescope can be serviced (the arm can’t reach around back).
May 20th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
[...] [Via: Bad Astronomy] [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Said the Bad Astronomer :
A few seconds after Megan McMcArthur releases Hubble from the robot arm, at about 3:30 in the video, the view of it through the viewport is incredible. I was just thinking, holy cow, look at that! when you can hear Megan say, “Oh baby, look at that!” I think I like her.
Hey, I know that *I* like her!
THX – great video clip.
PS. Wow! We can edit these posts now. Great!
May 20th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I wonder … can the shuttle, after it’s retired, be used as a robotic spacecraft (i.e. ground-controlled) to try to bring Hubble back to earth after it’s no longer in use? At that point, it doesn’t matter so much if the telescope gets banged around a bit while trying to get it stowed; if the reentry trajectory is planned right I bet it can even be safe enough to not worry about things like tile damage (if it breaks up, oh well). Assuming the shuttles are mothballed anyway at that point, one might consider it a relatively low-risk mission… and if it does work out then I’d happily chip in a few bucks towards a new wing at Udvar-Hazy!
May 20th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Ken Says: “The Hubble was latched onto a servicing fixture (Hubble Support System) in the shuttle cargo bay for the duration of the repair.”
Thanks, Ken. That’s what I love about this group. No question too arcane that someone doesn’t have the answer!
(I think that sentence parses right)
- Jack
May 20th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I like what you said, Phil.
Yes. Just look.
And also do.
Thanks, pardner.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Is there an impact crater (or maybe volcanic caldera) visible in this excellent video?
I noticed a round crater-like structure on the Earth visible from 4 minutes 17 seconds into the video through to around 4 minutes 50 seconds. It could be seen at its clearest around the 4 minute 30-40 second mark.
Please can anyone tell us what that feature was?
Where were they flying over at the time? Looked like desert – Africa? Australia? Arabia?
———————–
PS. Thankyou very much BA / Discover for finally enabling us to edit these comments. I’m delighted we can do this at last!
Question : Can people see these comments while we’re editing or do they only become visible to everyone after the 14 minutes and thirty secs is up? Incidentally, why not an even fifteen minutes? Plus what if we click to edit with 1 second to go – or half a second even!? Just wondering, NOT complaining – it is just so great to finally have the ability to do this!
May 20th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Thanks, Phil.
This is the kind of stuff that really gets me excited. I remember reading all those Heinlein and Clarke stories about what it’s like to work in space, and seeing this kind of guy-with-a-camcorder footage of real people just doing their job in space reminds me why I loved the very technical descriptions in those books.
Despite all the quackery we’re still fighting down here at least a part of my teenage hope for the future is true. We really do have folks in space doing science and who are used to waking up with a view of the Earth outside their window.
This just makes me wish more people had this sort of opportunity available to them. Give NASA and private space businesses more money, please! I want to see a documentary of a day in the life of a moonbase technician in my lifetime.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I thought I heard mention on NASA TV that a camera from the HST (and other instruments, possibly) were being placed into the Smithsonian. Has this happened before with parts seasoned in space?
May 20th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
The Hubble changed my life. To try to describe the change would reduce the feelings to mere letters and diacritical marks, but change my life it did. All of you who made that beautiful instrument, all of you who launched it and especially the crews who risked their lives to service it changed my life. It was the deep field images that did it, blew my mind with such grandeur and extravagance of scale that any remnants of my waning desire for a mere “creator” vanished in the swirling riot of galaxies. I am so lucky to be alive at this point in human history, to see what you all have shown us. From the fiery holocaust of Eta Carinae to the icy grace of the Saturn system (I’m talkin’ to you too, Cassini team) these images, instead of making me feel insignificant, inspired deep gratitude and a profound sense of belonging. The beauty that science (especially astronomy) has added to my life informs my work, my passions and my ethics and is, for me, beyond price.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Ken Said:
“I wonder … can the shuttle, after it’s retired, be used as a robotic spacecraft (i.e. ground-controlled) to try to bring Hubble back to earth after it’s no longer in use?”
That almost certainly won’t happen. This upgrade is expected to keep Hubble working for about five more years, which is significantly beyond the the shuttle program’s retirement schedule. NASA would need large amounts of extra money allocated by Congress just to keep the infrastructure intact during that interval specifically for a Hubble retrieval mission. That, and an entire engineering project to create a cradle for the telescope in the cargo bay.
Also, I’m pretty sure that the space shuttle isn’t able to carry something that heavy back from orbit.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
fred edison,
At least one other piece of hardware has been on display at the Smithsonian after being in the space environment for a lengthy spell. When Apollo 12 landed on the Moon, one of its objectives was to return parts from a Surveyor craft which had been on the Moon for a couple of years or so. One piece in particular, the Surveyor camera, has been at the National Air & Space Museum ever since the 1970s.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:06 am
Ken,
The US Shuttles cannot be flown unmanned. The Russian Buran Shuttle was launched once, and that DID fly unmanned, unfortunately, the two or three that were built all met an untimely end. The hanger where one was being stored collapsed and destroyed that one, and, strangely enough, a second one ended up in a park in Moscow, where the elements got to it, and she rusted out and basically fell apart. Dark Roasted Blend did a feature on the Russian Shuttles awhile back.
SteveoR:
I noticed that too. It appears to be a Volcano with a lava flow. It appears Atlantis was flying over a desert area, and if thaat was the case, it could be the Great Rift Valley in Africa, which has many volcanic features.
But I could be wrong, and, it could, in fact be Mars, in which case NASA has some ’splainin’ to do!
May 21st, 2009 at 12:12 am
fred edison, as it so happens, there’s already a piece of Hubble back on Earth. The Faint Object Spectrograph is in the National Air and Space Museum. The BA has a picture of it in his Top Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble post. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/13/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-hubble/
May 21st, 2009 at 12:57 am
The Hubble can only be brought back with something the size of the shuttle payload bay. So no shuttle (which there won’t be), no bringing it back.
However, something more possible would be, near end of life, boosting it up towards some other permanent place – say, a space museum at the L1 libration point or something. There is now an attachment fitting on the HST for a robotic stage module to be attached. Instead of sending it to destruction, though, it could just as readily be saved by the module including for example an electric thruster package to let it (very gradually) possibly spiral as far out as it needs to go. My personal preference is to establish a space museum or possibly a materials resources graveyard collection area in an orbit about L1, accessible to anyone – including governments, private companies, etc. – going operating in the cislunar system, or on their way out to NEOs or something. Throwing away a historic item like that; or at least not using it for a source of scarce, expensive, high-grade aerospace materials, is a waste, and very short term thinking.
I think it would be a great long-term project for the Planetary Society and Space Studies Institute (among others) to join together, now, in a long-term project to prevent the destruction of HST, and instead work to develop an EP-based propulsion and control module for use in about ten years’ time.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:14 am
Are there people in the United States who think this has also been shot in a studio somewhere in New Mexico?
May 21st, 2009 at 1:32 am
They had an iMax camera on this mission and the film (3D iMax of course) is due out early next year. I can’t wait.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:35 am
@Eddie Janssen, you mean it wasn’t
May 21st, 2009 at 1:51 am
Of course it was faked – where are the stars in the sky?
May 21st, 2009 at 2:14 am
If, after Hubble fails or is decommissioned, and it’s left up (as some are suggesting), then won’t it, in time, fall to bits? Or at least shred some parts, such as pieces from the solar panels, flecks of paint, and so on? And given how big the thing is, I’d imagine that would go on for quite a number of years (decades)?
Anyways, the point is having an additional source of debris orbiting the Earth seems silly. There’s quite a lot of junk and debris up there already. I suspect it’d be better to deorbit Hubble, when it finally does come to the end of its mission, rather then leave it up for purely sentimental reasons.
Having said that, if it could be parked in a suitable orbit where it’s (presumed) cloud of debris wouldn’t be too risky, it’d would be cool: And a potential target for (quite some time later! (e.g., decades from now)) a mission to study the effects of extremely long exposure to space.
May 21st, 2009 at 3:55 am
It’s all faked I tell you
May 21st, 2009 at 5:13 am
@ blf :
Unless its hit by something either accidentally or deliberately (& who’d want to hit the HST deliberately?) I’d think the Hubble Space Telescope would last eons. There’s not much to erode, corrode or otherwise disintegrate it in space – just a slow micrometeorite barrage, space junk, a few cosmic rays and eventually perhaps the decay of protons. I’ve read somewhere that the ‘Voyager’ and ‘Pioneer’ spacecraft may well be the last human artefacts around .. preserved longer in deep space than anything on our volatile, active planet.
I’d love them to keep Hubble around, working or not, for as long as possible – having it just burn up seems a tragic waste. Is there really any good reason why they can’t just boost the Hubble into a higher, longer lasting orbit where it can reside safely for a few hundred years or more? Or until we have the ability to pick up the HST and place it in a museum on Earth – or the Moon or Mars?
@ Pareidolius : Loved your post of May 20th, 2009 at 10:14 pm & I second it. Well said!
@ Michael L :
StevoR : I noticed that too. It appears to be a Volcano with a lava flow. It appears Atlantis was flying over a desert area, and if thaat was the case, it could be the Great Rift Valley in Africa, which has many volcanic features. But I could be wrong, and, it could, in fact be Mars, in which case NASA has some ’splainin’ to do!
Especially Mars with an ocean and rich cloudy atmosphere at that! Out of curiousity, why do you say volacano rather than crater? Not disagreeing just wondering. Does anyone know what part of our globe they were flying over?
I’ve been waiting all day to hear whether the ‘Atlantis’ has landed safely yet, after yesterday hearing they’d undocked from Hubble and then seeing this earlier this morning. I’m surprised they haven’t landed back on Earth already -what are they doing and waiting for? Just the right orbital position for the return trajectory or having to finish checklists or ..what?
May 21st, 2009 at 5:25 am
I was shocked that the astronauts still use imperial measurements!
Was it a Mars mission on which this imperial stubbornness resulted in a dramatic stuff-up?
Or was it also the mensuration of the Hubble telescope mirror?
Or was it both?
When are you dudes going metric?
May 21st, 2009 at 5:56 am
Umm, StevoR… Volcanoes have craters… the reason I said Volcano is because it appears to have a flow around it. (The dark material) Although, it may not even be a Volcano, it’s really hard to tell on this video, since I was more interested in what was happening outside the window with Hubble!
May 21st, 2009 at 6:07 am
This whole mission was just so awe-inspiring! Hopefully everything on Hubble will work according to plan. The next deep-field would be really impressive – looking even further back in time….
I watched that video twice, yesterday. First at Universe Today and later NASA TV showed it as well. It is so cool and really shows how life goes on on a spaceship!
Indeed. Oxidizing is quite hard out there
May 21st, 2009 at 6:31 am
@Dr. Flimmer:
However, certain fungi appear to thrive in space, as the residents of Mir found out! According the the Astronauts who lived there, all kinds of nasty stuff was growing behind panels, and inside the walls! At one point, there was concern that this mold/fungus/whatever would threaten vital equipment aboard Mir.
There was a fungus Among Us…
May 21st, 2009 at 6:32 am
Now let’s wait and pray for the safe return of those 7 space heroes. I’ve been following Mike Massimino on Twitter and his comments are humble and full with awe and inspiration.
Fair weather for them!
May 21st, 2009 at 7:18 am
You mean they do stuff without being told?
I’m so used to hearing only one astronaut at a time talking to Ground Control, it’s startling to hear the astronauts working together and not talking to the ground. It feels quite intimate compared to the sterile group interviews for the press. I love these videos!
May 21st, 2009 at 7:28 am
Feet and not metres? 2009?
May 21st, 2009 at 7:57 am
It looks like a ring on a chain, so it’s probably his wedding ring. Many astronauts wear their wedding rings on chains around their neck. I think this is because of fluid redistribution in microgravity — since gravity isn’t pulling fluids down into your legs, the fluids move upwards, and your fingers tend to swell up, which would make rings suddenly not fit anymore, so you’d have to either put it away or put it on a chain. Sometimes the physical changes can be really dramatic — I seem to recall there was one astronaut (during the Shuttle-Mir program, IIRC) whose chest and spine expanded so much in space that there was a very real concern that he wouldn’t fit into his custom-made Sokol suit anymore.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:11 am
I still have a dream of finding a way to have Hubble hang in the Air & Space Museum. Sadly, it will probably remain a dream.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:26 am
Nuts, I can hear Gollum: “They took it from ussss! We wantsss it back! The preciousss….”
@ Michael L.
But I would guess, those fungi grew inside the MIR, hence in an environment that is filled with oxygen and water vapour. I don’t think those nasty things grew outside on a solar panel, e.g.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:44 am
So, how long until we see pics from the new camera?
May 21st, 2009 at 11:32 am
@T.E.L.,
Well, my point was that if proper attention is paid to decommissioning the shuttles they could be kept in flyable shape for some time. Of course you’d need a tank, pair of boosters, etc. so there’s a problem. An extra tank would need to be manufactured while the tooling and expertise still exists. If the Aries continues to be based on the Shuttle SRM then it wouldn’t be a big stretch to recreate those.
Yes, using the orbiter to bring Hubble back would not be a trivial cost, but much cheaper than constructing a whole new vehicle.
- Even though the shuttle requires manual operation now it really is just for landing as I understand it. Everything else is run by computers anyhow. Autolanding systems have gotten much, much better over the last 25 years so I bet one could be fit into it and work to bring her in.
- Snagging the telescope would be tough, but you’d have lots of time to do it. I can’t imagine it being too much harder than driving around Mars!
- As I understand it, the HST was originally intended to be brought back on the shuttle. That notion disappeared very early, however the telescope should still fit in the bay (yes mounting structures would have to be built). The only question I think would be the mass for landing. Rip out all of the crew support stuff (chairs, potty, food & water, oxygen, etc) and I bet you can get there.
Yes I know it’s just a dream … but it’s fun to think about.
(anybody want to pool on some Powerball tickets?)
May 21st, 2009 at 12:00 pm
@firemancarl
I think I heard something like September until they release the first pictures…. seems to be the beginning of a “hot autumn”, keeping in mind the (hopefully better than last time) start of the LHC…
May 21st, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Michael Gray Says: “I was shocked that the astronauts still use imperial measurements! When are you dudes going metric?”
I’ve been singing that lament since high school, which has been more decades than I want to admit.
Strangely, the metric system IS the official measurement system of the US, thanks to Thomas Jefferson. TJ was a huge fan of the Rationalist movement in 18th Century Europe, and he made sure that the system was legally incorporated into our new government. However, the compromise in Congress was that we be allowed to legally continue using the Imperial system until the population could be educated and convinced of the superiority of metrics. Should only take a generation or two, he thought.
Beginning to sound like Texas all of a sudden.
- Jack
May 21st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
DrFlimmer Says: “Oxidizing is quite hard out there”
Actually, the monoatomic oxygen at that altitude can be quite damaging. The LDEF (Long Duration Exposure Facility) experiment in the ’80s showed that quite dramatically. This was a hollow structure roughly the size of Hubble that had an exterior skin made up of all sorts of different materials. The mission was to bring it up on one shuttle, let it sit in orbit for six months or so, then bring it back on another. Unfortunately, one of the missions in between was the Challenger disaster, so it wound up orbiting for more than two years until the shuttles returned to flight. In fact, IIRC, retrieving it was the first new mission since its orbit had decayed to the point that it was about to reenter on its own. I believe pieces of it are on display at Air & Space.
The exposure duration was a lot longer than originally intended, and the surface looked really bad after only two years. Attack by oxygen was the main culprit in the deterioration of most of the materials.
- Jack
May 21st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
As I pointed out. Moving it slowly to the international space station via attached ion thrusters would be cheaper in terms of mass that needs to be launched to the orbit. But everyone here dismissed the idea out of hand
May 21st, 2009 at 5:44 pm
This video is fake. You can tell because there are no stars in the background.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Very inspiring. Too bad the U.S. military is trying to “Take Up Space” (as their slogan goes) in a military sense. Yes, the American military-industrial complex wants total military domination of Planet Earth, and NASA often functions as a means of mastering the technology required to do so.
We need more Knowledge for All, and less Power for the Few.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:51 am
That is sooo freaking amazing! I’ve watched that video a bunch of times now… never gets old!
But why does the earth not move quickly like you see in other space videos?
May 25th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Awesome video!
(Que Lee, this takes place in direct sunlight, so the stars in the background are too faint, relatively speaking, to be seen)
May 26th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
What part of the globe is this event taking place? It looks like a desert.
September 9th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Unfortunately, this video is now no longer visible, because it seems that someone in NASA has decided that it should be private. A great pity.