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CNN Live At Daybreak
Two Astronauts on Space Shuttle Columbia Back at Work
Aired March 05, 2002 - 05:35 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Two astronauts on the Space Shuttle Columbia are back at work. They successfully installed a smaller, more efficient solar panel on the Hubble Space Telescope. They are putting another one -- or they are putting in another one now.
Our space expert and guru, of course, Miles O'Brien, joins us to talk about that. And he has been playing with soup cans again. He built a little something for us.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: That's a $6 billion soup can you are looking at right there. Well, that's the Hubble Space Telescope. And yes, a second pair of astronauts now about four hours into the second spacewalk of this critical Hubble upgrade mission.
Thus far, they have completed the primary task, which was to attach a new solar array to the Hubble. So that is the mirror image of the job that was done yesterday and will provide Hubble, assuming it all checks out -- the first one checked out just fine -- with additional power.
Now, the question that you might ask: Why does it need any more power (UNINTELLIGIBLE)? And...
PHILLIPS: We talked a little bit about that this morning.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And the reason is -- well, first of all, longevity is an issue. The solar panels degrade over time. So whatever it is now, it's going to be worse eight years from now, when it's time to say goodbye to Hubble. But the other thing is if you provide a little more juice, you can run more instruments simultaneously. So...
PHILLIPS: Such as?
O'BRIEN: Well, let's say you want to do something with the Wide Field Planetary Camera, but you would also like to do something with this new Advanced Camera for Surveys, two instruments that take up some juice. Now, you could point in one direction, you could fire up both instruments, and you might get a little serendipitous science. And I know how you feel about serendipitous science.
So let's take a little bit -- some pictures, shall we? Let's get to the pictures.
PHILLIPS: Let's get to the light of day.
O'BRIEN: Enough with the models already.
PHILLIPS: I've been talking about these live pics all morning.
O'BRIEN: This is what it looks like when a solar array is coming in. At the end of the robotic on the human socket wrench is Mike Massimino, who is -- not just a rookie spacewalker, but a rookie astronaut. That's unusual to allow them to do a spacewalk on their first flight, much less around the Hubble Space Telescope.
PHILLIPS: So why are they doing it?
O'BRIEN: He is pretty darn good.
PHILLIPS: There you go.
O'BRIEN: And he is among the first to tell you that. No, he is actually a very humble guy. This is the solar array we were telling you about, folded up. It opens up like a book, and they did that without a hitch. It's all attached, and they'll be checking it to make sure it's alive very shortly. Let's take a look at...
PHILLIPS: Is...
O'BRIEN: I'm sorry.
PHILLIPS: Well, no, I was going to say, is he attached by the feet?
O'BRIEN: Oh, yes.
PHILLIPS: Oh, OK.
O'BRIEN: Yes, he's clamped on.
PHILLIPS: All right.
O'BRIEN: He's...
PHILLIPS: We'll go back to that in a minute.
O'BRIEN: Yes. That's how he -- can you imagine, if you didn't have your feet locked down and you used a wrench or something, you'd spin around like a clock.
PHILLIPS: Right.
O'BRIEN: Here is Massimino. He's looking kind of happy there. I'd say he's doing all right. And that's the pilot of this operation, Digger Carey. Once again, I still don't have a good answer for that Digger thing.
PHILLIPS: See? He's waving at us.
O'BRIEN: But -- and that's from the flight deck down to what they call the mid deck, and that's where the potty is and the kitchen. And that's also where we find on this evening Mr. Jim Newman, who is the spacewalking veteran of this mission. This is his fifth foray into space, putting on his $14 million EVU, as they call it. And Kyra knows what that stands for.
PHILLIPS: I know what an emu is.
O'BRIEN: This has nothing to do with...
PHILLIPS: It's part (ph) of an ostrich.
O'BRIEN: This is -- it's not an ostrich. This is an Extravehicular Mobility Unit.
PHILLIPS: Oh, EVU.
O'BRIEN: EVU.
PHILLIPS: Oh, OK.
O'BRIEN: And this is, once again, Mr. Newman doing some work on the outside of the telescope. Here he is swapping out what they call a diode box. You don't really need to know that, except that they put on a new one, which supports the new solar arrays. You put on the solar arrays, you've got to put on the associated boxes.
Now, we asked Mr. Newman, who is after all a five-time spacewalker now, putting him in the veteran corp., to give us a few of the finer points.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM NEWMAN, MISSION SPECIALIST: When you are a free floater, you have to use your hands to crawl around. And we call them spacewalks, but in truth they are really space crawls, because there is nothing to walk on in space. So we actually crawl on handrails from one place to another. And it's very hand intensive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: As a matter of fact, a lot of the spacewalkers, Kyra, golfers can relate to this. They walk around with those little squeezy deals all of the time.
PHILLIPS: Great. Oh, I have those.
O'BRIEN: And what they tell me is after you are out there for six-and-a-half, seven hours, you know, you are constantly working against an inflated glove, because the suit is inflated with pressure, because you're in the vacuum in space. They take the gloves off, and sometimes they are just -- they can be bloody literally from doing this work. It's tremendously hand intensive. That is where they really get fatigued.
And the real spacewalk to watch related to this whole issue is tomorrow's, where they are going to be going into one of these equipment bays here, somewhere along this diameter here...
PHILLIPS: OK.
O'BRIEN: ... and changing out the power control unit. This is something that the Hubble designers never intended to be changed out by astronauts, and they are going to have to do it blind with the left hand using only eye kind of peeking in. It's kind of like trying to connect the connectors on the back of your computer without looking at them, except you are wearing this heavy glove. It's inflated.
PHILLIPS: And also your computer is not $6 billion, right?
O'BRIEN: Another good point. It's amazing how you have immediately gotten sort of the nub of the issue here, haven't you?
PHILLIPS: I don't understand this all.
O'BRIEN: Yes, thank you. Thank you.
PHILLIPS: I understand the folks at NASA are watching us this morning. They have been tuning in.
O'BRIEN: They are. They have been tuning in. They have been enjoying this, and as a matter of fact, they are enjoying watching their model right now, which...
PHILLIPS: Of course.
O'BRIEN: ... I need to tell them arrived without a solar array attached. Don't worry...
PHILLIPS: Miles (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is on a mission here.
O'BRIEN: ... I'll be doing my own EVA a little bit later to take care of that. And a little bit later on, I'll come back to talk to you about what else is in store. They are going to be -- did you ever played with a top as a child?
PHILLIPS: Yes.
O'BRIEN: The tops, you know?
PHILLIPS: That's actually the -- yes.
O'BRIEN: It's essentially a gyroscope, you know.
PHILLIPS: Sure.
O'BRIEN: It's basically that same principle that keeps the Hubble pointed in the direction it's supposed to be pointed, a series of tops spinning. Well, one of them needs to be changed out, and we're going to tell you what they are going to be doing about that. But we're also going to show you some of the Hubble pictures that that top enables.
PHILLIPS: Very good -- we'll see you in a little bit. O'BRIEN: Then we'll fix our array.
PHILLIPS: There we go.
O'BRIEN: All right.
PHILLIPS: A little super glue. All right.
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