May 14, 2009 1:34 pm US/Eastern
Md. Astronauts Control Hubble's First Spacewalk
GREENBELT, Md. (WJZ/AP) ―
A pair of spacewalking astronauts successfully installed a new piano-sized camera in the Hubble Space Telescope on Thursday, the first step to making the observatory more powerful than ever.
The repair job -- all the more dangerous because of the high, debris-ridden orbit -- got off to a slow start.
John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel had trouble removing the old camera from the telescope because of a stubborn bolt. They fetched extra tools, but none seemed to work.
Finally, Mission Control urged the astronauts to use as much force as possible to free the bolt.
"OK, here we go," Feustel said. "I think I've got it. It turned. It definitely turned." And then: "Woo-hoo, it's moving out!"
The effort put the astronauts a little behind schedule in their first spacewalk of shuttle Atlantis' mission. In all, five high-risk spacewalks are planned to fix Hubble's broken parts and plug in higher-tech science instruments.
Mary Bubala reports controlling the mission from the ground are scientists at Maryland's Goddard Space Station.
Goddard is where the Hubble was developed and has been monitored 24/7 for the past 19 years.
With the repairs, they hope to keep the Hubble running for another five years.
"It is sort of this great American story, you know, having a problem and sticking with it and fixing it," said Lee Feinberg, NASA engineer.
As the astronauts do the "heavy lifting" in space, they will be guided by the crew at Goddard's Space Flight Center.
"Maryland is ground control here. Right here at Maryland at Goddard, we are running the thing, and the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore is where all the data goes," said Jim Garvin, Goddard's chief scientist.
That guidance also includes an added tricky element--space junk. There is so much junk in orbit, there is a 1 in 220 chance of a collision.
A 4-inch piece of space junk passed within a couple miles of the shuttle Wednesday. Even something that small could cause big damage.
"It's a question of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. We know where all the dangerous stuff is," said Dr. Marshall Kaplan, JHU Applied Physics Lab.
NASA weighed the risks to the benefits and they're huge. The Hubble has changed the way astronomy is taught. The telescope has produced a stream of spectacular images that have astounded the scientific community and us.
The tools in the astronauts' hands were developed at Goddard. Thursday's mission, a camera swap, replaced a 15-year-old one with a new $132 million camera. That's easier said than done.
"Most of the equipment is similar to equipment here, and has large knobs and is easy to manipulate. Other equipment on the Hubble was never designed to be manipulated, so when you try to pick up something...it's pretty tough," said Paul Richards, former astronaut.
So much is riding on this Hubble repair mission, especially for Maryland. About a thousand jobs here are tied to the telescope.
"The scientists have a lot at stake because their careers are built on these discoveries they know Hubble is going to make," said Karen Weaver, Goddard scientist.
The next spacewalk will happen Friday.
In 2014, NASA plans to replace the Hubble with the James Webb Telescope. It is much more powerful and will be used to get a glimpse of some of the first stars and galaxies created.
When the Hubble is no longer used, it will be boosted into deep space. It is not brought back to earth because it is too difficult to control where it would crash land.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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