CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 5 (UPI) -- Taking up where their partners left off, a new pair of spacewalkers left Columbia's crew cabin early Tuesday and finished installing a new set of solar wings for the Hubble Space Telescope.
The seven-hour outing by James Newman and rookie astronaut Michael Massimino was nearly identical to the spacewalk made Monday by John Grunsfeld and Richard Linnenhan. The four men work in pairs on alternating nights to prepare the world's premier observatory for another eight years of work. Columbia's mission is NASA's fourth flight to service Hubble.
"Beautiful day for a spacewalk," said Newman, as he and Massimino crawled out of the shuttle's airlock and floated into the open cargo bay.
"Incredible," added Massimino, a first-time spacewalker, taking in the unfettered view from 360 miles above the planet.
With more than six hours of work ahead of them, there was not much time for sightseeing. Newman started setting up tools, while Massimino took a few minutes to test his space legs. The men then headed to the telescope, mounted on a work platform in the cargo bay, to detach an old solar array and install a new smaller and more powerful wing.
Newman and Massimino then replaced one of Hubble's gyroscopes, which are used to hold the telescope in position for observations. One of the gyroscopes shut down for a short time in November and NASA decided to replace the equipment once engineers determined the failure was likely to repeat. Hubble has four gyroscopes and needs at least three to carry out its science programs.
Before returning to Columbia's crew cabin, the spacewalkers installed a thermal shield over an equipment bay to protect the gear when the telescope's power is completely shut down in preparation for the mission's third spacewalk early Wednesday when Grunsfeld and Linnehan install a new power distribution system.
"For the first time in 12 years, the world's greatest telescope, an international resource, is going to be entirely turned off," said Grunsfeld in a preflight interview.
"I'm a little bit nervous that once we finish the job and we go to turn it back on, that everything's going to come up properly," he added. "All of the experts say ... they've analyzed it, they've done tests, that it should come up nicely. But I know I'll feel a lot better when ... we get the call from the ground that Hubble's up and running again."
