Subtitles section Play video
-
[music]
-
[reporter] What's going on right now?
-
We are getting ready for EVA day 2 on our servicing mission, and today is important
-
because we're doing two big things to extend the life of the telescope.
-
The first thing will be the gyros, replacing the gyros...
-
The gyros help keep the camera steady so you don't get a shaky picture - we're
-
targeting photos pretty far off so you want to keep the camera still and the
-
gyros help keep the telescope still, so we take clear pictures.
-
We've done gyros before. We've changed the procedure, we've improved the procedure
-
over the years, over the servicing missions, and we've developed new tools...
-
...and refined the procedure. So it should go smooth.
-
[reporter] So how difficult a task is this?
-
It's a pretty difficult task. When the astronauts working inside the telescope
-
there are plenty of surfaces that they have to avoid. Mike's going to go in,
-
Mike Massimino is going to go in on his back...
-
...there's a bunch of delicate instrumentation inside that he has to avoid, and he's got to
-
snake those big arms of his past all this sensitive equipment to get to the bolts
-
that will release the RSUs.
-
It's physically challenging. We've got a rather large
-
astronaut inside a very cramped space, but you know what? Those long arms
-
are going to serve him well, I think.
-
[reporter] Why do you keep teasing Mike like that?
-
Mike's a buddy...[laughs].
-
[announcer] Michael Good now seating the new Rate Sensor Unit.
-
[applause]
-
That was fun, huh? RSU, the first RSU installed very nicely, and with the
-
second one - ran into a little difficulty because we had contingency procedures
-
ready. We were able to fall back on those and come up with a fix.
-
So we got the second one installed and the last RSU installation we had to go to
-
retrieve our spare.
-
What we are looking for is debris that could be going into the telescope or coming from
-
the telescope - because we wonder did something break on the telescope or is
-
there something that could get in the way of an electrical connector that the
-
astronauts are going to mate.
-
There are a lot of reasons we need to keep it clean, and so we see something in the
-
video - we run back there - they have a Tivo - so we say "play that back" - they
-
run it back and forth a couple of times, and then we try and think about it, and
-
I don't know if you saw us looking at the monitors, we have models of the telescope,
-
and we try to see if it's coming from say this red area here it could sweep out past
-
the field of view - imagine that the astronauts is laying on his back inside
-
the telescope looking out at space while he's working and we see these particles
-
going by - we say where did they come from? So we start thinking in our heads, we'll
-
maybe it's back here - there's actually a port that water is dumped out of the
-
orbiter and ice crystals can build up there.
-
So our thought now is that maybe that's just ice crystals we saw difting by in
-
the field of view of the camera - didn't come from the telescope at all, didn't
-
go inside the telescope, so it's OK.
-
[reporter] This mission has been described as one of the more dangerous ones because
-
of the altitute at which it's flying in, you hear about space debris, and you
-
mentioned debris. Are we talking about the same debris?
-
No, the space debris is already up in orbit, and it's moving a lot faster
-
relative to the shuttle and the telescope, and so we wouldn't see that on a video
-
because it would go whizzing by so fast you wouldn't even see it, unless it hits
-
something in which case it would just make little pin holes if it's small,
-
if it's big it could be a bigger problem, but we have people on the ground with
-
radar that are tracking the large pieces and they actually move the shuttle out
-
of the way if we are going to get close to something like that.
-
The batteries are 19 years old. The capacity has degraded over these years, and by putting
-
in new batteries we will restore the original capacity of these batteries to run the
-
instruments.
-
That was a longer than expected spacewalk, but Hubble now has six new gyroscopes and
-
three new batteries. But on tomorrow's schedule, the first ever camera repair
-
to be done in space.
-
[music]