May 17 2009
From The Space Library
Astronauts Michael J. Massimino and Michael T. Good undertook the fourth spacewalk at HST, attempting to fix the spectrograph and to replace worn insulation on the telescope. To fix the spectrograph, Massimino first needed to remove a handrail, but a stripped bolt hampered his work. Even using various specially designed tools, he was unable to remove the bolt for 2 hours. As a last resort, after engineers at GFSC conducted two tests on a mock-up, Mission Control in Houston instructed Massimino to “use his muscles.” After successfully pulling the bolt off, Massimino tried to install a special plate to remove 111 tiny screws that held the spectrograph’s cover in place, but the battery of one of the tools became depleted. Massimino returned to the Shuttle, swapped out the batteries, and recharged his oxygen supply, but this task set the spacewalk another half hour behind schedule. After Massimino had successfully replaced the spectrograph’s internal electronics power-supply card, the astronauts still faced more than 90 minutes of cleanup and closeout work. Therefore, spacewalk coordinators decided to delay the insulation task until the fifth and final spacewalk. The spacewalk lasted more than 8 hours, the sixth longest in NASA history.
Seth Borenstein for Associated Press, “Stuck Bolt, Dead Battery Bedevil Hubble Repairs,” 18 May 2009.
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