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  • [music]

  • [reporter] What's going on right now?

  • We are getting ready for EVA day 2 on our servicing mission, and today is important

  • because we're doing two big things to extend the life of the telescope.

  • The first thing will be the gyros, replacing the gyros...

  • The gyros help keep the camera steady so you don't get a shaky picture - we're

  • targeting photos pretty far off so you want to keep the camera still and the

  • gyros help keep the telescope still, so we take clear pictures.

  • We've done gyros before. We've changed the procedure, we've improved the procedure

  • over the years, over the servicing missions, and we've developed new tools...

  • ...and refined the procedure. So it should go smooth.

  • [reporter] So how difficult a task is this?

  • It's a pretty difficult task. When the astronauts working inside the telescope

  • there are plenty of surfaces that they have to avoid. Mike's going to go in,

  • Mike Massimino is going to go in on his back...

  • ...there's a bunch of delicate instrumentation inside that he has to avoid, and he's got to

  • snake those big arms of his past all this sensitive equipment to get to the bolts

  • that will release the RSUs.

  • It's physically challenging. We've got a rather large

  • astronaut inside a very cramped space, but you know what? Those long arms

  • are going to serve him well, I think.

  • [reporter] Why do you keep teasing Mike like that?

  • Mike's a buddy...[laughs].

  • [announcer] Michael Good now seating the new Rate Sensor Unit.

  • [applause]

  • That was fun, huh? RSU, the first RSU installed very nicely, and with the

  • second one - ran into a little difficulty because we had contingency procedures

  • ready. We were able to fall back on those and come up with a fix.

  • So we got the second one installed and the last RSU installation we had to go to

  • retrieve our spare.

  • What we are looking for is debris that could be going into the telescope or coming from

  • the telescope - because we wonder did something break on the telescope or is

  • there something that could get in the way of an electrical connector that the

  • astronauts are going to mate.

  • There are a lot of reasons we need to keep it clean, and so we see something in the

  • video - we run back there - they have a Tivo - so we say "play that back" - they

  • run it back and forth a couple of times, and then we try and think about it, and

  • I don't know if you saw us looking at the monitors, we have models of the telescope,

  • and we try to see if it's coming from say this red area here it could sweep out past

  • the field of view - imagine that the astronauts is laying on his back inside

  • the telescope looking out at space while he's working and we see these particles

  • going by - we say where did they come from? So we start thinking in our heads, we'll

  • maybe it's back here - there's actually a port that water is dumped out of the

  • orbiter and ice crystals can build up there.

  • So our thought now is that maybe that's just ice crystals we saw difting by in

  • the field of view of the camera - didn't come from the telescope at all, didn't

  • go inside the telescope, so it's OK.

  • [reporter] This mission has been described as one of the more dangerous ones because

  • of the altitute at which it's flying in, you hear about space debris, and you

  • mentioned debris. Are we talking about the same debris?

  • No, the space debris is already up in orbit, and it's moving a lot faster

  • relative to the shuttle and the telescope, and so we wouldn't see that on a video

  • because it would go whizzing by so fast you wouldn't even see it, unless it hits

  • something in which case it would just make little pin holes if it's small,

  • if it's big it could be a bigger problem, but we have people on the ground with

  • radar that are tracking the large pieces and they actually move the shuttle out

  • of the way if we are going to get close to something like that.

  • The batteries are 19 years old. The capacity has degraded over these years, and by putting

  • in new batteries we will restore the original capacity of these batteries to run the

  • instruments.

  • That was a longer than expected spacewalk, but Hubble now has six new gyroscopes and

  • three new batteries. But on tomorrow's schedule, the first ever camera repair

  • to be done in space.

  • [music]

[music]

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