Introducing Blogger Colleen Hartman

(Written July 1, 2008)

Two FBI agents appeared at my small inner office door at NASA Headquarters and flashed their badges. It was 1984. They asked to see my financial files on the Space Telescope. Congress had initiated an investigation of NASA’s financial records on the Great Observatory. As the twenty-eight year-old Space Telescope financial analyst, this shocking visit was not the welcome I had wished for from Washington. Yet this event, great in my young life, was miniscule compared to the journey that we who worked on Hubble would be taking.

Fast-forward twenty-four years to today at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The Hubble Space Telescope has had eighteen incredibly successful years of science. Hubble pictures of our Universe are in textbooks and on dorm walls all across the world.  Hubble is the first and only space telescope that has become an American icon. As Matt Mountain, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, proudly stated today, Hubble is now producing twelve scientific discoveries a week!  However, it may be that Hubble is so loved by Americans because it was almost the ugly duckling story in reverse. The faulty mirror was corrected with additional optics–optics that could only have been placed inside the orbiting Hubble by astronauts.

Now, after four repair missions successfully upgraded the observatory over the years, Hubble will be repaired one last time, but what a doozie this last time will be!

Of course, as with all things Hubble, there has to be some drama, and the story of Servicing Mission 4 is no exception. It was a seemingly never-ending series of on-again, off-again, flip-flops.

This final repair mission was originally approved for 2002. Then in February 2003, we had the Columbia disaster. In April 2004, then NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe canceled the repair mission due to Shuttle safety considerations. After intense public pressure, O’Keefe approved the study of an alternative approach using an autonomous robotic mission. Although autonomous repair will one day be common to spacecraft designed from the get-go for robotic upkeep, Hubble had no such birthright.  Hubble’s robotic repair was clearly possible, but it would certainly be expensive.  Initial cost estimates put it at $1.3 B. The initial Goddard robotic design was completed in November 2004.  An independent look that same month by National Academy of Sciences concluded the robotic mission too complex and recommended a Shuttle repair mission for Hubble. But O’Keefe said the Shuttle mission was too risky, and the robotic repair was too expensive, so he canceled the mission again. Two months later, O’Keefe resigned as NASA Administrator and left the Agency. When Mike Griffin, NASA’s new Administrator took over, he ordered a second look, and bolstered with new ways to ensure Shuttle safety, the repair mission was back on.

On this mission – – repair mission four (note, this is called repair 4 because NASA counts the other missions in an odd way: 1, 2, 3A, 3B) — the schedule is crowded with EVAs or extra-vehicular activities.  Six gyroscopes used to maintain the telescope’s orientation will be replaced, two scientific instruments will be installed along with new batteries, guidance sensors, and blankets, and –for the first time ever – two instruments will be repaired. How ironic that this mission will also remove the corrective “eyeglasses” put in place on the very first Hubble repair mission.  All the new instruments themselves now contain corrective optics that will compensate for the spherical aberration in Hubble’s primary mirror.

Shuttle Atlantis will carry a seven member crew into orbit on the nominal 11-day mission. The commander is a Hubble veteran. The pilot and flight engineer will be making their first flights.  Astronauts Scott Altman, Gregory C. Johnson and Megan McArthur will handle the tasks inside the Shuttle.  Megan will “man” the Shuttle’s robotic arm, grappling Hubble and placing it in the Shuttle’s cargo bay, where it will wait for four astronauts to give it the overhaul of its long life.

The four astronauts on tap to perform the space-walking feats are John Grunsfeld, Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, and Mike Massimino. Over the years, close collaboration between engineers and astronauts has resulted in significant advances. For instance, in the case of one of the science instruments to be repaired (the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph or STIS), cleverly designed tools will allow the astronauts to remove one hundred and eleven screws from a cover over the instrument. Now, this might be tedious on the ground, but at least it’s not dangerous. In the weightless environment of space, floating screws could be a menace. Engineering tricks are called for so that all the pieces are captured, and after the instrument is repaired, a new cover will be installed that easily latches, even with large astronaut gloves. The pictures below show how busy the largest clean room in the free world can be.

Figure 1. The large silver tube lined with yellow on your right is a mock-up of the Hubble instrument bay.	Figure 2. A good look at some of the bunny suits used in the largest clean room in the world – 1.3 million cubic feet of pristine, contaminant-free working space.

The hardware will be shipped to the Cape in thirteen days, so there’s no time to lose. Today, the four EVA astronauts are in the clean room familiarizing themselves with the new tools designed for this mission. The clean room you see here has the maximum allowable number of human beings in it. We humans are the source of much of the potential contamination to space hardware. The ‘bunny suits’ you see here cover as much of the human and her/his clothes as possible. As the Integration and Test Manager, Joe Reed, said today, the safety of humans in the clean room is first priority. Then comes the safety and cleanliness of the hardware. In the left image below,the large silver tube lined with yellow on your right is a mock-up of the Hubble instrument bay. The image on the right shows a good look at some of the bunny suits used in the largest clean room in the world—1.3 million cubic feet of pristine, contaminate-free working space.

For myself, helping to plan the Great Observatories (Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer) early in my career emboldened me to return to school for a PhD in physics. Of course, there was no way I would forgo my day-job working for NASA in astrophysics. Today, I’m teaching at the Elliott School at George Washington University and enjoying writing about space and Earth science and how they intersect with politics.

So I’m hoping that my years of tenure at NASA will help me to serve as your tour guide to activities leading up to the ultimate Hubble repair mission. I’ll introduce you to the individuals who are working on Hubble and on this mission.  These folks live in almost every state of the union. They do more than spend their working life on Hubble, but during the coming weeks leading up to the flight on the 8^th of October, their personal lives will be placed on hold while they ensure another 5 years of science from the world’s premier telescope. I hope you’ll join me on this journey to the stars.

Oh, and the consequences of that little visit from the FBI? You’ll have to check future blogs to find that out!

Til then,

Colleen