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From: starrfie@hydro.la.asu.edu (Sumner Starrfield) Subject: MCC Status Reports 10 and 11 Date: Tue, 7 Dec 93 10:38:33 MST Mission Control Center STS-61 Status Report #10 Monday, December 6, 1993, 7 p.m. CST Mission Specialists Jeff Hoffman and Story Musgrave will put on their space work clothes for the second time about 9:47 p.m. CST tonight for a four-hour replacement of the Wide Field/Planetary Camera and a one-hour installation of two new magnetometers. The seven-member crew of Endeavour was awakened at 6:02 p.m. Monday by flight controllers who played "Doctor My Eyes" by Jackson Browne. Hoffman will step into a foot restraint on Endeavour's robot arm for the WF/PC swap, and Musgrave will be on a portable foot restraint anchored near the WF/PC opening on the Hubble Space Telescope. Both astronauts will be anchored on the end of the robot arm for the magnetometer installation. Controllers at the Space Telescope Operations Control Center will begin powering down WF/PC I at 11:15 p.m., then begin reconfiguring their equipment to support the new WF/PC II. On the aft flight deck, Mission Specialist Claude Nicollier will drive the robot arm, moving Hoffman into position to grasp WF/PC I. Musgrave will help stabilize the instrument as Hoffman slowly pulls WF/PC I out along its guide rails, pausing to allow Nicollier to reposition the arm. Before WF/PC I is completely removed, the trio will conduct a practice session to prepare for installation of WF/PC II. As Hoffman is placing the old camera in a temporary parking fixture in the payload bay, Musgrave will inspect the WF/PC orifice and begin preparing the new camera for removal from its transport container. The pair will then attach a transfer handle to the new camera and pull it out of the transport canister. Before Hoffman begins installing the new camera into the body of the telescope, Musgrave will remove a protective mirror cover. Then, the astronauts will carefully align the new camera on its guide rails and insert it into the telescope. STOCC controllers will conduct an "aliveness" test on the new camera at 1:20 a.m. Tuesday, and begin functional tests about 4:40 a.m. A science data dump will recover images from the functional tests for processing by the WF/PC Instrument Development Team as early as 7:35 a.m. Results of those tests should be available within 30 minutes. The telescope will be tilted forward on its work platform so that the robot arm can reach the top of the telescope, where the magnetometers are located. STOCC controllers will configure the first magnetometer for replacement about 1:40 a.m. After the astronauts install the first new unit, the STOCC will conduct functional tests about 3 a.m. After those tests are complete, the space walkers will install the second unit and the STOCC will conduct its functional tests about 3:20 a.m. 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. ________________________________________________________________________ Mission Control Center STS-61 Status Report #11 Tuesday, December 7, 1993, 7 a.m. CST The flawless installation of the Wide Field/Planetary Camera II early Tuesday morning highlighted the third back-to-back spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope. "Ohhh, look at that baby, it's a beautiful spanking new Wifpic," space walking astronaut Jeff Hoffman said as he pulled the replacement Wide Field/Planetary Camera II out of its storage locker about 11:24 p.m. CST Monday. "We'll see some nice pictures with that." Following the removal and storage of the original WF/PC which will be returned to Earth for post-flight analysis, STS-61 space walking astronauts Story Musgrave and Hoffman installed the 620 pound camera about 12:05 a.m. CST Tuesday while in the Space Shuttle Endeavour's payload bay. The camera sits just below the telescope's midpoint. About 35 minutes after the installation was complete, ground controllers reported that the camera had passed the first electrical "aliveness" test, as it is called. "I hope we have a lot of scientists eager to use this beautiful thing," Hoffman said after the installation. The space walking duo completed the installation of the camera in record time. Pre-flight predictions provided a four hour time slot for the detailed installation. The original camera experienced focusing problems shortly after the telescope's deploy in April 1990. The problems were attributed to a manufacturing flaw in the telescope's 94-inch wide primary mirror. Blurred photographs were the result of the flaw. The new camera has four small precisely ground mirrors that should remove the blur by focusing the stray light of the telescope's primary reflector. Hoffman and Musgrave also installed two new magnetometers during their six hour and 47 minutes spacewalk. The astronauts began the third spacewalk at 9:35 p.m. CST Monday, more than an hour earlier than planned pre-flight. The magnetometers , which are located at the top of the telescope, sense the magnetic field in three directions and are needed to keep the Hubble's momentum wheels operating with optimal efficiency. At the end of today's third spacewalk, Musgrave had accumulated a total of 19 hours doing spacewalks and Hoffman had racked up a total of 17 hours and 51 minutes. Both astronauts have been on three separate spacewalks, two of which have occurred on STS-61. Musgrave was the first person in the shuttle program to conduct a spacewalk and he did so on STS-6. Hoffman's first spacewalk occurred on STS-51D. Crew members will begin their sleep period at 9:57 a.m. CST and flight controllers will awaken them at 5:57 p.m. CST today. Musgrave will begin his seventh day in space with a television interview at 8:27 p.m. CST today. He will talk with Ted Koppel, the host of the ABC news program Nightline. The interview is expected to last about 15 minutes. Following the interview, crew members will devote their attention to the fourth spacewalk scheduled for this mission. During tonight's spacewalk, astronauts Kathy Thornton and Tom Akers will replace the telescope's high-speed photometer with the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement. The COSTAR has 10 small mirrors that should properly focus light from the Hubble camera's primary reflectors. Thornton and Akers are scheduled to begin their spacewalk at 10:52 p.m. today. 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.
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