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American Morning

Hubble Gets New Camera

Aired March 07, 2002 - 09:22   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: Another chilly day in space where shuttle astronauts just completed their fourth space walk in as many days. You are seeing live pictures right there. Columbia astronauts Jim Newman and Mike Massimino were busy this morning as they worked to replace some obsolete instruments on the Hubble Telescope.

CNN Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien woke up very early this morning to catch the challenging mission as it began, and he joins us now. How did it go for them, Miles?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Well, actually, they are still out there, Anderson. They started a little bit late, some problems with the time line, no big deal, no big problems to report. Let's take a look at some live pictures. Mike Massimino's view of the world right now. He is literally inside the Hubble Space Telescope right now. You don't want to be a bull in a china shop here. You break it, you own it, for sure.

Massimino, wearing his $20,000 gloves, is carefully attaching a series of connectors to this device, which is an electronics box, which is going to support resuscitating an infrared spectrometer, which will go online tomorrow. That cooling unit is the main event for tomorrow. This is a preparation task.

The main event for today was the installation of a $75 million camera, which is ten times better than anything that has been on Hubble ever. Let's take a look at some of the pictures which came down as that installation occurred. Of course, a lot of folks might not remember phone booths, but this is a phone booth-sized instrument. It is designed to fit into the Hubble in a modular way. The Hubble was designed to be upgraded.

This advanced camera for surveys, which you see a little bit here in the dark. It came out of a -- looks almost like a coffin. It was carried up in that box, was slid into place by astronauts Massimino and his partner, Jim Newman, up there, at the end of the shuttle's robotic arm.

There you see Massimino doing his work. Newman is up here out of site. There you see Newman carrying that device in there. Right like that. There it is. And it slides in, almost like a drawer. It is designed to be changed out like that, and it's going to improve upon pictures like this one that you're about to see. This image was taken by the wide field and planetary camera. That is still on board the Hubble. But basically, what they did, Anderson, is they took an image of a spot in the sky, right there, that they thought had nothing in it. They turned on the Hubble for 10 days straight, 10-day time exposure, and in that spot that they thought was just blank, they found thousands and thousands of galaxies that take you right back to the beginning of time.

Now, the theory is that the advanced camera for surveys, doing the same thing in less time, might take us back further in time, even farther out in the universe. At least that's the hope -- Anderson.

COOPER: That is amazing. Those -- amazing presentation. Thanks a lot, Miles.

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