Dec 22 1999
From The Space Library
Robert S. Ruggeri, a retired NASA engineer and pioneer in de-icing research, died at the age of 75. Ruggeri had begun working for NASA's predecessor agency in 1944, retiring from NASA in 1980. NASA had applied his findings from studying ice buildup on airplane wings in the 1940s and 1950s, to the development of rockets and Space Shuttles. When the United States sought to speed up its space program following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, Ruggeri had also researched the effects of cavitation-partial vacuums in flowing liquids-on cryogenic rocket pumps, looking for ways to make the pumps more efficient for rockets. Later in his career at NASA, Ruggeri's work had focused on the design of compressors for advanced aircraft engines, as he sought ways to increase fuel efficiency, reduce air pollution, and minimize the noise of jet engines.
In the second-longest spacewalk in NASA's history, lasting 8 hours and 15 minutes, Steven L. Smith and [[John M. Grunsfeld] successfully replaced all six of HST's gyroscopes and had "just enough time to equip each of the telescope's six batteries with a voltage regulator to prevent overheating." NASA believed corroded wires had caused the gyroscope failures. To avoid repeating the failure, engineers used pressurized nitrogen rather than air to force fluid into the new gyroscopes. Smith and Grunsfeld alternated working inside the tight space housing the gyroscopes. Because of his long arms, NASA assigned the 6-foot-3.5-inch-tall (1.9-meter-tall) Smith, who had worked on HST during its last service call in 1997, the task of replacing the two sets of gyroscopes on the sides, which were more difficult to reach. The spacewalk lasted 2 hours longer than scheduled. Although Smith and Grunsfeld went to work an hour early and quickly organizing their tools in the cargo bay, the pair needed extra time to open coolant-line valves on a disabled infrared camera and encountered difficulty latching the doors of the cargo bay holding the equipment.
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