Issues being approached for the Hubble Repair Mission are due to ground diagnosis for the telescope, using clues from telemetry by NASA similar to a mysterious “CSI Goddard Mission” based on little things viewed or obtained through data. But the hardware is not on the ground, so newly developed tools are being designed to handle Hubble issues being diagnosed on Earth as if the team was in space.

The repair of the instruments is very much an experiment on such a huge magnitude, with the new instruments considered a major part of the experiment. The astronauts and EVA Task Timeline are what NASA feels what “may be encountered”, not what is 100% known for a fact, while using simulations for training. What helps is the fact the servicing machine has a crew with several going to the Hubble on previous missions.

The Hubble Telescope is operated every day, twenty-four hours a day, located 353 miles above Earth. The task ahead has involved several years of preparation for the EVA Mission, with preparation at Goddard for delivery of the tools, the equipment needed, and the crew involved. Two main elements have been heavily involved with the mission: (1) crew familiarization where the astronauts are part of the developing team which offers the hardware maintenance a hands-on training, and (2) the MBL at Johnston Center mockup of a space shuttle in their underground water tank, with mockup tools and hardware, providing training for the repair mission. In the tank are twenty engineers in addition to astronauts, performing repair training to simulate the movements and actions in space onboard the Hubble telescope.

The newly designed Hubble Repair tools provided for the repair mission provide efficiency and bring a task into the “do-able” process against not being able to complete a task. Today the hardware is pretty much complete, in addition to all the tools. Testing capabilities and simulation is being practiced and performed on a daily basis for testing loads, vacuum of space, hardware operation, acoustic chambers against working of hardware, HST testing, slick carrier carries 4,000 pounds of hardware is being tested for launch loads.

HST main center for Hubble is operational for 365-days a year, 24-hours a day with the Hubble remaining powered up during its maintenance—which includes charging batteries, heated bay areas, hardware turned off when astronauts are on-duty for operations, spare hardware always on call, hardware is now delivered to launch site as this writing, final configures at Kennedy Space Center of hardware. The hardware will be loaded for the shuttle launching preparation, with fully charged batteries completed before launching, and anything else than needs to be completed in order to not get in the way of the Kennedy operations for launching preparations.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Space Agency News, Technical Concerns, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.