It's the last spacewalk of the last mission to Hubble. I'm pretty sure
it's also John Grunsfeld's last spacewalk of his long career, and
probably his last space mission ever.
True to form, Grunsfeld is pushing hard for managers to let him add to today's tasks the insulation blanket replacement that they had to skip yesterday (because fixing the STIS instrument went so extra long).
Last night we got a rare glimpse of some negotiating (or "horse trading," as our sound man put it) between ground controllers and the astronauts. They were trying to decide how to revise today's spacewalk agenda, and how hard to push to add yesterday's skipped item (the insulation blanket) to today.
We heard them go back and forth: Grunsfeld was saying, in effect, "I want to try it," and the ground was basically saying "we'll see." I was thinking that in the end, the astronauts are the ones up there, and I wondered how hard Grunsfeld would actually force the issue.
He's not just an astronaut, he's a scientist, and no one seems to love Hubble more than he. I have a feeling he would never openly rebel or defy orders. But I suspect he will do his absolute best to get his way - probably by being so fast and productive today that they'll have no choice but to let him do the extra work.
Their first job today is to replace the Fine Guidance Sensor - a huge (baby grand piano-size) instrument that is p art of Hubble's precise pointing system.
We filmed Drew Feustal and John Grunsfeld practicing this over a year ago on a device called "pogo" that makes it feel like the 800-pound instrument is actually weightless. They have to learn how it feels to move nearly a half-ton mass in space. (They use their fingertips and watch out not to go too fast, because even though it's weightless, it still has mass and momentum - and once moving, stopping it would be really hard, it could easily smash into Hubble).
Today John's first step is to remove the old Fine Guidance Sensor - and it is held in by the exact same kind if bolt mechanism that almost doomed the Wide Field Camera 2 replacement on spacewalk #1.
Sure enough, when Grunsfeld went to undo the bolt, once again it wouldn't budge. But after their experience trying to get Wide Field 2 out, today they just went immediately to the same last resort that Drew Feustal did on the first spacewalk. Grunsfeld applied more force - extremely slowly and carefully so as not to break the bolt - and he got it free.
As of now, the new Fine Guidance Sensor is successfully in. So far, so good.
True to form, Grunsfeld is pushing hard for managers to let him add to today's tasks the insulation blanket replacement that they had to skip yesterday (because fixing the STIS instrument went so extra long).
Last night we got a rare glimpse of some negotiating (or "horse trading," as our sound man put it) between ground controllers and the astronauts. They were trying to decide how to revise today's spacewalk agenda, and how hard to push to add yesterday's skipped item (the insulation blanket) to today.
We heard them go back and forth: Grunsfeld was saying, in effect, "I want to try it," and the ground was basically saying "we'll see." I was thinking that in the end, the astronauts are the ones up there, and I wondered how hard Grunsfeld would actually force the issue.
He's not just an astronaut, he's a scientist, and no one seems to love Hubble more than he. I have a feeling he would never openly rebel or defy orders. But I suspect he will do his absolute best to get his way - probably by being so fast and productive today that they'll have no choice but to let him do the extra work.
Their first job today is to replace the Fine Guidance Sensor - a huge (baby grand piano-size) instrument that is p art of Hubble's precise pointing system.
We filmed Drew Feustal and John Grunsfeld practicing this over a year ago on a device called "pogo" that makes it feel like the 800-pound instrument is actually weightless. They have to learn how it feels to move nearly a half-ton mass in space. (They use their fingertips and watch out not to go too fast, because even though it's weightless, it still has mass and momentum - and once moving, stopping it would be really hard, it could easily smash into Hubble).
Today John's first step is to remove the old Fine Guidance Sensor - and it is held in by the exact same kind if bolt mechanism that almost doomed the Wide Field Camera 2 replacement on spacewalk #1.
Sure enough, when Grunsfeld went to undo the bolt, once again it wouldn't budge. But after their experience trying to get Wide Field 2 out, today they just went immediately to the same last resort that Drew Feustal did on the first spacewalk. Grunsfeld applied more force - extremely slowly and carefully so as not to break the bolt - and he got it free.
As of now, the new Fine Guidance Sensor is successfully in. So far, so good.
Wow nice site. I wish mine would look like this.