Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Spacewalk Being Performed by Astronauts from Space Shuttle Columbia

Aired March 04, 2002 - 07:50   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And you are looking at live pictures or about to look at live pictures from NASA of a spacewalk being performed by Astronaut John Grunsfeld and Rick Linnehan from the space shuttle Columbia. They, of course, had been out there for six hours now working to repair the Hubble space telescope.

CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien has been covering this latest mission and joins us now from Atlanta.

Good morning Miles. How's the mission going?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: So far so good Anderson. Really the only problem is one bulky bolt, which put the spacewalkers a little bit behind their timeline. They were trying to attach the old solar ray to the cargo bay of Columbia. And I don't think they got out the can of WD40 exactly, but they did give it a little extra torque in the old cordless screw gun and off to the races they went.

These are live pictures from the helmet cam worn by John Grunsfeld, beamed down live to you, and you're looking smack dab into the Hubble space telescope. That's bay number six, in case you wanted to know that information. Put that into the category of information you don't necessarily need to know, and what you're looking at when they pop into the picture are the $20,000-gloves that spacewalkers wear - a little bit beyond the Isotona category, I guess you could say.

Let's take a look at some highlights of this six and a half-hour spacewalk, and it really did go fairly well and it is some wonderful pictures, especially when you consider where they are, 350 miles about the planet, and climbing up and down the four-story Hubble space telescope, using that 50-foot robotic arm to assist in their endeavors.

Rick Linnehan was on the end of it for most of it, essentially becoming a human socket wrench as he bolted his feet into the end of that arm and moved around that old solar ray, which kind of wound up like a window blind, and then put in the new one, which is a rigid version, which is two-thirds the size of the old one - check out that gleaming Hubble space telescope there. I guess for $6 billion it ought to gleam, but you can see spacewalker John Grunsfeld very well in the reflection as he uses those yellow handholds to climb up the four-story structure. Let's take a brief wide shot, and I'll give you a sense of what was going on here and how things were working. This is the old solar ray rolled up like a window blind, as I say, and it was brought down into the cargo bay, latched down with the help of John Grunsfeld who is the free floater, and Rick Linnehan who is attached to the robot arm for most of the duration of the spacewalk.

When I say free floater, that's not entirely accurate. They are double tethered at all times to something. These solar rays combined cost about $19 million. In all, the astronauts over the next four days will put in about $172 million worth of gear, if all goes well on the Hubble, allowing it to see 10 times better than it can, giving it a little more electrical capability, as we just told you.

Tomorrow, another pair of astronauts will do the mirror image job on the other side, putting in another new solar ray, and we'll be watching that one as well - Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Miles, thanks a lot. Amazing pictures this morning, thanks.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

COOPER: Paula.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) think that that ultimately might help us better understand, go back another billion years.

COOPER: Yes. It's amazing to ...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: ... think that stuff is going on right now as we speak just above our heads (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ...

ZAHN: The magic of live ...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Thanks Anderson.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com