Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
Fifth and Final Spacewalk for Columbia Astronauts
Aired March 08, 2002 - 06:19 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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: But now, Deborah, we have to go live to space. Yes, we're going to talk about the shuttle astronauts and their work on the Hubble Telescope.
And Miles has brought in the big hardware.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Here it is. Here it is, folks, the big Hubble, courtesy of Maria.
COSTELLO: Wow! Maria's our floor director, and she actually fixed the Hubble.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
COSTELLO: Yes.
O'BRIEN: This comes from the Space Telescope Science Institute. Last time I got it, I broke it terribly. I sent it back hoping they wouldn't notice. They gave it back to me, this time they said you can have it but you've got to return it fixed. Thank you, Maria.
This is the Hubble. And let me just tell you quickly, the work this morning, or it's not really morning in space, during the past three hours has been going on right in this area here. That's where a device called the NICMOS is. And I know Carol knows what NICMOS stands for now.
COSTELLO: Oh yes, I've got it written on my hand.
O'BRIEN: Near infrared camera and multi object spectrometer. That really doesn't matter. Just the point is it's not like -- it's not unlike the night vision cameras we've seen from Afghanistan. What -- you know when it's dark and you can't see your hand in front of you, you put those night vision on and boom, you can see what's going on. That's what it's like when astronomers use NICMOS to look at the stars.
Live pictures now from space, 350 miles above us, astronauts at the end of the robotic arm. Just to give you a sense, we, right here, are at the elbow of the 50-foot robotic arm on Columbia. And our astronauts doing the work today, we have Rick Linnehan there and John Grunsfeld there doing their job. They have successfully attached a $21 million cryo-cooler to the NICMOS machine or near to the NICMOS machine. Let me show you some animation how this is going to work or how it did work. There's the Hubble, not unlike the one we have right in front of us. Open the doors, there's NICMOS. In comes the cryo- cooler to the tune of $21 million, shipping and handling extra. It has neon inside, and the neon is supercool, about negative 100 Celsius, and runs that through the NICMOS. That allows it to pick up those faint heat differences way off at the edge of the universe.
Also attaching a radiator. That's what they're getting to right now to further cool it. When NICMOS was launched, it went up with essentially a thermos full of nitrogen. That should have been enough, except there was a leak in it. So this is the plan for the remaining eight years of Hubble.
Now let's look at some of the images quickly that NICMOS does, because after all...
COSTELLO: That's why we care, right?
O'BRIEN: ... I mean that's the point, right? And this is -- this is the visual spectrum, what you and I see, of a place called the Orion Nebula. Now let's move into the infrared spectrum, and you see the difference?
COSTELLO: Wow!
O'BRIEN: Tremendous numbers of stars that you couldn't detect otherwise. Now let's look at the Egg Nebula. This is a dying star formation. To the left is the visual; to the right is the infrared. The blue particles showing supercharged bits of hydrogen as stars are forming. This is really the formation of stars and planets, and that's what NICMOS is all about.
Back quickly to live pictures out there. The astronauts continuing their work. They've had a good run this week, two pairs of two. This is the fifth spacewalk. The most aggressive series of spacewalks ever attempted off a shuttle, and so far they have pulled it off.
COSTELLO: So far so good.
You're going to be in Houston this weekend. People can e-mail you questions and...
O'BRIEN: Yes. Yes, I'm going to be in Houston. I'm actually headed off this morning. I'm actually getting a little award, but I'll save that for later. I don't want to get too big on that.
But tomorrow morning on "CNN SATURDAY MORNING," Kyra Phillips and myself. Kyra will be here but she's going to participate in this, going to be live from the Johnson Space Center. We're going to be in the simulator room where the mock shuttle, the mock space station, all the spacewalking tools are, and we'd love for you to participate in the program. You can send us an e-mail now, WAM -- W-A-M -- @cnn.com is the place. We'll open up the phone lines as well. We'll have astronauts there. It's going to be Miles in his playground is what it's going to be.
COSTELLO: Yes, in your element.
O'BRIEN: Yes. Yes.
COSTELLO: And that is a pretty impressive award that you are going to receive.
O'BRIEN: Thank you very much.
COSTELLO: Congratulations.
O'BRIEN: I sort of fed you that, didn't I? Apologize.
COSTELLO: No, we're proud of you.
O'BRIEN: I thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
