Return to Home Page
From: starrfie@hydro.la.asu.edu (Sumner Starrfield) Subject: MCC Status Report 09 Date: Mon, 6 Dec 93 11:08:27 MST Mission Control Center STS-61 Status Report #9 Monday, December 6, 1993, 8 a.m. CST Spacewalking STS-61 astronauts Tom Akers and Kathy Thornton, working in the Space Shuttle Endeavour's payload bay, successfully jettisoned a bent solar array and installed two new solar arrays on the Hubble Space Telescope during a six hour and 36 minute spacewalk that ended at 4:05 a.m. CST Monday. During a Monday morning press briefing, HST managers applauded the crew's performance. "I believe that the first objective has been met," said Joe Rothenberg, HST flight project director. "We can handle on-orbit servicing and we can handle contingencies." The early Monday spacewalk marked the second extravehicular activity in as many days during the HST servicing mission. Crew members are expected to perform three more spacewalks during this mission. Akers and Thornton spent the duration of their spacewalk working with the telescope's solar arrays which provide power to the four-story tall orbiting observatory. The spacewalking duo began their work in the payload bay at about 9:29 p.m. CST Sunday. At about 10:51 p.m. CST, Thornton, who was positioned at the end of Endeavour's robot arm alongside one of the arrays, attached a transfer handlebar to the right solar array which failed to completely retract on Sunday because of a kink in its bi-stem framework. Akers then disconnected the array at the telescope body and its electrical connections were broken before Thornton released the array above the payload bay. After Mission Specialist Claude Nicollier, the robot arm operator from the shuttle's flight deck, moved Thornton back down into the cargo bay, Commander Dick Covey and Pilot Ken Bowersox maneuvered the shuttle away from the drifing array. The astronauts and ground observers got a long last view of the kinked solar panel and observed its solar blankets flutter as they felt the shuttle's gentle firing pulses. "It looks like a bird," Thornton told ground flight controllers as the array drifted away from the shuttle. Scientists have estimated it will take the discarded solar array about one year to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up. At about 11:17 p.m. CST, Thornton used the transfer handle once again to lift one of the new solar arrays from the solar array carrier in Endeavour's payload bay and into position on the telescope where it was installed. Thornton and Akers then manually folded down the other old solar array which had been automatically rolled up Sunday, and at about 2 a.m. CST Akers tied the old array into position in the solar array carrier. The old solar array will be returned to Earth for study. Just before 3 a.m. CST Monday, the spacewalking astronauts completed the installation of the second solar array and a few minutes later controllers at the Space Telescope Operations Control Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, confirmed that both of the new solar arrays were electrically alive and well. The new solar arrays will be unfurled after the fifth spacewalk is completed early Thursday. At about 4:05 a.m. CST as the spacewalking astronauts were wrapping up their payload bay activities, CAPCOM Greg Harbaugh congratulated Akers who had just broken the record for longest EVA time in the shuttle era by logging in 22 hours and 50 minutes, surpassing fellow astronaut Jerry Ross' record by one minute. "Thanks, but I'm afraid it'll be short lived," Akers said, referring to his new record entry. At the end of the EVA as the two spacewalkers had re-entered the airlock, Thornton reported ear problems. As a result, the airlock was depressurized and then repressurized at a slower rate until the airlock's pressure reached the 10.2 pounds per square inch requirement. Crew members' sleep period begins at 9:57 a.m. CST and they will wake up at 5:57 p.m. CST today to begin their sixth flight day activities. The mission's third spacewalk will highlight the sixth flight day. EVA astronauts Story Musgrave and Jeff Hoffman, who performed this mission's first EVA, once again will step into the payload bay where they will changeout the telescope's wide field/planetary camera. All of Endeavour's systems continue to perform well as the shuttle circles the Earth every 95 minutes in a 320 by 313 nautical mile orbit.
Return to the Daisaku Nogami
vsnet-adm@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp
