-Good morning, and welcome to the launch-minus-1-day-countdown
status briefing for mission STS-103.
I have with us this morning as participants Doug Lyons,
the NASA test director, Steve Ernest,
the STS-103 payload manager and Ed Priselac,
our shuttle weather officer,
and we'll begin this morning's briefing with Doug Lyons.
-Well, thank you, and good morning.
The STS-103 countdown is currently
in a 4-hour built-in hold,
and we plan on resuming the countdown
at T minus 19 hours and counting at 9:30 a.m.
this morning, and that's Eastern Time,
and I am pleased to report the ground
and flight systems are all go.
We're not tracking any problems from a technical aspect,
and we are right on schedule.
Over the course of the last 24 hours,
we have completed a battery of checkouts and tests
on our shuttle avionics and electronics systems,
and we completed that work with no anomalies reported.
We also powered up and tested our orbiter
navigational landing systems and also performed preparation
as far as fuel cell loading, cryogenic loading operations.
Yesterday evening, we did clear the pad as scheduled
and performed our shuttle ordinance systems checkout,
and then we did proceed into our fuel cell,
cryogenic loading operations.
We have completed those operations
just a short time ago,
and have regained access into the launchpad.
Looking ahead for our significant work today,
we do plan on performing preparations
and final checkouts on our shuttle main engines,
and we will also power up our orbiter
and NASA worldwide ground communications systems.
Early Thursday morning, we'll come in
and perform our final pad configurations for launch,
and we do plan on rotating the rotating service structure
to the park position at 3:45 a.m.
And subsequent to that, we will clear the pad at 9
a.m. on Thursday for external tank loading.
The mission management team is scheduled
to come in at 11:30 on Thursday.
They'll assess any technical issues
that have come up over the last 24 hours,
and they'll also take a look at the weather.
Pending a go decision from the MMT,
we do plan on picking up our external tank
loading operations at 12:30 p.m.
That's Eastern on Thursday.
That's about a 3-hour operation,
so wrap that up around 3:30 p.m. and be in stable replenish.
At that point, we will send in our final inspection team
and perform an assessment of the external tank,
and we'll also send the close-out crew
up to the crew module to prepare for the flight crew's arrival.
And the flight crew is scheduled to depart
to the pad at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday.
As you're probably aware, the launch window for Thursday
attempt opens at 9:18 p.m.
Eastern and will close at 9:59:55 p.m.
which represents a 41-minute and 55-second launch window.
And based on a Thursday launch and a 10-day mission,
we do plan on landing back here at KSC
on the 26th of December at approximately 6:56 a.m.
So in summary, we're not working any issues or concerns.
Both flight and ground systems are go,
and we're looking forward to a successful launch on Thursday.
Thank you.
-Okay, Doug, thank you very much.
And now for an update on our payload.
Steve?
-Okay, the HST hardware is powered down for countdown.
We continue to monitor the GN2 pers
to the scientific instrument, the Fine Guidance Sensor,
and we're not tracking any problems or issues,
and we're ready to fly. -Okay.
Thanks, Steve, and for our weather.
Ed? -Good morning.
Conditions still look very good for a Thursday night launch.
We've been getting fronts through here about day
and a half or 2 days, basically no rain, however.
And very quickly, if you could glance at the satellite imagery,
you'll see a low pressure up in the northern plains
and a swath of clouds down through Louisiana,
eastern Texas.
That's the next boundary that will be going through here
by tomorrow morning.
Once that clears us,
then conditions will start clearing behind the front,
and we should be in excellent shape
for weather conditions on Thursday evening.
If we can look now to the surface data,
this surface map doesn't show up too well,
but what you're seeing is high pressure
just to the west of Florida,
and the front that will be going through here tomorrow offshore
to our east and southeast.
Going through the tanking forecast,
standby please, and we'll try to...
I'm not sure as to how good the video is for you,
but just some scattered clouds in the local area,
good visibility, some blustery north, north northwest winds,
but no concerns as far as any tanking constraints
are involved.
Looking to the launch forecast,
did another tag up this morning with the folks in Houston at SMG
and coordinated our forecast,
and we dropped the anticipated amount of clouds
down to about two-eighths coverage in the lower levels,
3.000. few clouds with just a 10 percent chance
that we might have a ceiling at or below 3,000 feet.
Otherwise, strong winds out of the north
running about 12 to 20 knots at the pad.
The temperature at launch time estimated about 52 Fahrenheit.
Does give some concern to our Ice Team folks for ice
accumulated on the external tank.
With regard to the SRB recovery area,
it will be a little windy out there,
and the sea is up around,
oh, maybe anywhere, 7 to 8 feet perhaps,
no worse than that during the splashdown
of the solid-rocket boosters.
If you look now to the 24-hour delay forecast,
and similar conditions.
Winds perhaps a little more northeasterly,
but only a 20 percent chance of having a low cloud ceiling
in the local area around launch time or RTLS time.
Conditions good, and as I mentioned,
just a 20 percent chance of a weather no-go on Friday.
And looking quickly into Saturday,
basically the same thing.
North to northeast winds
and just a few clouds in the lower levels,
maybe a few high clouds and only a 20 percent chance
of having a ceiling down in the lower layers of the atmosphere.
So now into the other sites in the CONUS, first at Edwards,
SMG just forecasting a few clouds
at 25,000 feet, good visibility.
Winds northeast at 8 to 12 knots. and no concerns there.
White Sands also looks good, a few clouds at 25,000 feet,
good visibility and winds from the northwest at 7 to 12 knots.
Looking into Friday, if we have to delay,
Edwards still looking good, a few clouds at 25,000 feet,
good visibility, winds westerly at 5 to 10 knots.
At White Sands, same cloud conditions,
good visibility, northeast winds 8 to 14 knots.
Looking at Saturday, Edwards, still a few clouds
at 25,000 feet, good visibility, winds 290 at eight peak 15,
borderline for crosswinds at Edwards
if we do go into Saturday.
White Sands, a few clouds at 6,000 feet,
scattered at 25,000, good visibility,
winds 200 at 10, peak 18 knots.
Looking to the TALs, Banjul still looking very good,
with just scattered clouds at 25,000 feet,
good visibility, winds northeast at 7 knots.
We're still looking for crosswinds at Ben Guerir,
sky conditions scattered at 3,000, good visibility
and looks like zero six zero at 15 peak 24 knots.
Friday evening, basically the same,
light northeast winds at Banjul, scattered clouds at 25,000 feet.
Ben Guerir, scattered at 3,000, 7 miles visibility.
winds zero five zero at 12 peak 20,
so still a crosswind-violation forecast
at Ben Guerir both Thursday and Friday.
Into Saturday, about the same conditions at Banjul,
scattered at 25,000, good visibility,
winds northeast at 12.
And Ben Guerir, scattered at 3,000, good visibility,
wind zero five zero at 12 knots,
which is not a violation of crosswinds.
And that's it, Bruce.
-Okay. Thank you very much, Ed.
Let's open it up for questions at this time.
Please wait for the mic. We'll bring it to you.
Any questions?
Okay, Bill?
-If nobody else wants to, I'll ask a couple.
Ed, you said winds out of the north,
so I'm assuming that whatever crosswind component
for 15:33 is minimal?
I mean, what is the expected crosswind?
-Basically nil, yeah, because it's almost down the runway.
Yes, sir, yep.
-And I guess one for Doug, since we heard
from the higher-ups yesterday about this particular flow
and how things stand, what's your perspective on it
because obviously those of us on the outside,
it does seem kind of rushed to get this thing off
before the end of the year, so as more of a working-level
troop, what's...
Give you a chance to hang yourself,
but what's your thought on it?
-Well, I appreciate the news you laid out there for me.
No, but in all seriousness and honesty,
I think that this whole process
and flow has been a challenge for us,
and I think that we've done the right things,
and from a working level, we feel very confident
in the decisions that management has made to go repair items
that were found that have been discrepant,
so we feel like we've got a real good launch vehicle.
Our training has been uncompromised throughout this,
so we feel like the team is ready to go,
and we're very anxious to go ahead and launch.
It's been a long while,
and that's what we're in the business to do,
so we're all looking forward to Thursday
and a successful mission.
-And just for the record, is there any grumbling
at all about holidays and... I guess you got a crew
that always has to be ready to go to Edwards or whatever.
I mean, is there any feelings about that?
-Well, I think, you know,
it's natural that everybody would prefer to be at home
with family and friends over the holiday period,
but we all recognize we've got a job to do.
It is a job we all love,
and that's, you know, to go fly this shuttle,
so I think we're going to stand up and go to the plate
and do what's asked of us,
and I don't think the folks will have any issue with that.
That's what we're paid to do, and we look forward to it.
-Go ahead, Mark.
-I'm Mark Carreau from the Houston Chronicle.
My question has to do with the concerns,
slight it may be, about the ice formation tomorrow,
and I wonder if you can...
Ed, maybe you're the best one to kind of talk
about what the weather conditions
are that would conspire to create some on the tank,
and, Doug, maybe you could say what the concern is
or what you'd be looking for if it forms
and when you kind of reach a point
where you couldn't deal with if it got...
if there was a lot of ice.
-I'll give you just very slight information.
When the temps get down in the mid to lower 50s,
the Ice Team does get concerned,
concerned about ice accretion on the tank.
Hopefully the winds will stay up a little bit,
and that will give us a little bit of a break.
That will mix more of the warmer ambient air near the tank,
but again,
it's just something they'll have to assess in real time
if there is some concern about ice formation on the tank,
especially going in after sunset.
-And I can follow up on that.
As far as the criteria for icing
on the tank, it's pretty complex.
There's some areas that are no ice-formation areas,
and some you're allowed a certain, you know,
level of icing to occur.
Our Final Inspection Team folks that are going to do
the assessment have math models
that they've been running over the last several days
based on the information Ed has been providing to us,
and these models take into account
all of the pertinent factors that would lead to icing.
And while we will have some low temperatures,
they're pretty confident that it shouldn't pose an issue for us
for this launch countdown.
And as I mentioned earlier, what we do is, as soon as we get
the external tank loaded and we get in to replenish,
we send the Final Inspection Team
out to the pad to do an on-site inspection,
and those folks will be providing information
back to the firing room and come back
and give us a final recommendation
as to whether or not we commit to launch.
But again, all that we see now with our math models
and assessments say that we need to keep a close eye on it,
but it shouldn't pose a problem for us.
-And just a quick follow-up on that,
I guess you're saying
you kind of do expect to see some, then, tomorrow.
It looks like the conditions will be right
for some formation,
it's just how much and where it is.
It's what you'll be looking for and assessing.
-Well, what I was referring to earlier
is that there are criteria that allows
for a certain amount of ice formation on the tank.
Our models are showing that we don't really expect
any noticeable formation.
We're going to have some frost on the tank.
It will appear a bit white,
but we don't expect any significant ice buildup at all.
-Okay, Peter? -Peter King CBS News Radio.
Back in May when we were making our...
When we had our first flight of the year,
we were talking about, you know,
what you did to keep the launch team hot and ready to go.
I'm just wondering what you've been doing the last 5 months
in terms of training,
drills, extra practice, that kind of thing?
-Well, what we've done is, we've kept with
the same training regime as we would have had
if we would have been launching almost a monthly basis.
We've been performing full integrated simulations
with the KSC and JSC teams,
the launch control team and the mission control team.
There's simulate and terminal count,
and we throw in all sorts of anomalies
that the team has got to overcome and contend with,
and we go all the way through T-0.
In addition to that, with that, two management sims
in which we've gotten mission management here at KSC,
and we've run through the same kind of format
where problems are introduced, and the team has to react.
So through all that training,
we feel like our communication is there,
we understand the procedures
and how will this position problems,
and I think we're in real good shape
to go in and successful launch on Thursday.
-Okay, any other questions? All right.
Not having any, just a reminder that at 10 o'clock
this morning Eastern Time we have a Hubble Space Telescope
science briefing, and then we will not have
a countdown status briefing tomorrow.
The live TV coverage of the countdown
begins at 4 p.m. Eastern.
Thank you very much.
-Good morning. Welcome to today's briefing
for the payload for the STS-103 mission.
Here with us on the panel today
to discuss what's going to happen with the Hubble Telescope
during this mission are, to my left, Dr. Anne Kinney,
who's the director of NASA's Astronomical Search for Origins
and Planetary Systems Program at NASA headquarters,
and to her left, Dr. John Campbell,
who is the Hubble program manager
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
We'll start off with Dr. Kinney.
-Oh, I wanted to talk a little bit about Hubble Space Telescope
as an operating telescope in space,
and what it's done for space astronomy,
and then John will talk more about
a lot of the technicalities of this mission.
Hubble Space Telescope was conceived
in the '40s by Lyman Spitzer,
and it was designed in the '70s and '80s,
and it was designed to be serviceable,
and we all know after watching the horror of spherical
aberration how important that was to the telescope.
The first servicing mission went up
and fixed the spherical aberration,
fixed it as well as the laws of physics would allow,
and since then, we've done further servicing missions
to update the instrumentation, and so Hubble Space Telescope,
in spite of being designed in the '70s,
is really a state-of-the-art instrument.
Now, of course, today, it's sitting up there
with itself in safe mode,
and that, again, shows how important the serviceability
is to this facility.
I also wanted to mention a little bit
of the way Hubble Space Telescope operates.
It's a facility that is used
by the American astronomical community.
The astronomers compete for time on this telescope,
and it is highly competitive.
There were over 100 proposals submitted this year,
just for this year's time,
and approximately one out of five of those proposals
was chosen because it was oversubscribed so much.
And then the way that the time is allocated
is that a panel of astronomers, a panel of peers,
comes together and judges.
They use their scientific judgement
to choose the best astronomy
that can be gotten out of the telescope.
So this is a very active facility
designed to do the best possible science.
There's also another interesting aspect of it.
Now that we have Chandra in orbit,
there is an exchange
between Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra
so that people can propose for observing time
on both facilities at the same time to look at objects
that emit in both wavebands and are variable
so that you can see them both at the same time.
And again, that is designed to optimize
the science out of these facilities.
I think Hubble Space Telescope has set the standard
for this type of science, space science,
and, you know, the return has been enormous.
In a few minutes, I'll address some of the science issues.
John. -Okay, good morning.
I wanted to cover three different areas this morning.
I want to tell you a little bit about
what the status of the spacecraft is.
I wanted to put this mission in context
with the other missions that preceded
and will follow this mission, and then talk fairly quickly
about what we're going to do on this mission
in terms of changing out boxes and making repairs.
So since...In the last month, namely in November,
the 13th, the fourth of six gyros that are onboard
Hubble failed, and that left only two operational gyros,
and that stopped the servicing mission,
and so we have... or the science mission,
and so in the last month, we haven't been doing science.
The Hubble is in a...
called a zero-gyro safe mode, uses no gyros,
and if you pretend you're the Sun,
then this is what you would see,
that the Hubble is locked onto the Sun line
and Hubble rotates around the Sun
about one revolution per hour.
Now this isn't... The aperture door is closed,
and this is in a quite safe mode.
What we will do, though, about 5 1/2 hours before grapple.
we will go to a backup mode,
this is called a hardware safe mode,
and there are three gyros that are available only to it.
Those are backup gyros.
They're appropriately called retrieval-mode gyros.
They were designed for this specific case,
and when we go into this mode,
the telescope will remain pointing to the Sun
as I just showed you, and will just stop rotating.
It will become fixed in space
and then the orbiter will be able to come up
and grapple essentially a fixed target.
So the crew is all trained to do this,
and everything should work out okay.
Because this gyro has failed, it hasn't really changed
anything in terms of our mission.
We had intended to change out all six gyros that Hubble has,
and so the mission and the plan for changing things
just remains the same as we've originally planned.
And I'm going to talk to you a little bit more in
just a couple of minutes about the gyros
and tell you a little bit more about them.
I can tell you, though, that the Hubble team is anxious
to have the servicing done, the gyros replaced,
and we can get back doing science
that Anne has talked about.
May I have the next chart, first graphic?
To place this in context,
Servicing Mission 3A is of course now in 1999.
The Hubble mission is a 20-year mission
started in 1990,
it was launched, and it will go through 2010.
There were two servicing missions before this one,
Servicing Mission 1 in '93, Servicing Mission 2 in '97.
Then we have two more,
Servicing Mission 3B in the summer of 2001,
and Servicing Mission 4 in the summer of 2003.
After that, we go on to extended science mission
without further servicing until 2010 when the mission ceases.
Now just a couple of things that we're looking forward to
for the next servicing missions, in Servicing Mission 3B,
the next one after this,
we plan to replace one of the instruments
with Advanced Camera for Surveys.
This camera will have an increase of sensitivity
over the current camera by a factor of 10,
so it should open new science areas.
In another science area, the near-infrared camera
that was installed in Servicing Mission 2
has now exhausted its cryogen, its solid nitrogen
that's required to cool the detectors, and it's dormant.
We plan to install a refrigerator
in the next coming servicing mission
and rejuvenate the near-infrared camera.
Another thing that is important to us
is that we'll be replacing the solar arrays
with a rigid set of solar arrays,
and these solar arrays, then, are designed to last
for the remainder of the mission into 2010.
In Servicing Mission 4, there are two new instruments
going in, Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
This is a spectrograph which is optimized for near
and mid-ultraviolet light
And Wild Field Camera 3,
which will replace Wide Field Camera 2,
that is the camera that has that notch in it,
and I assure you this new one won't have that notch in it,
and so it'll have a nice square picture to it.
And in addition, though, it will have infrared capability
which will really replace the near-infrared camera
from Servicing Mission 2,
and then that camera will become a backup
for Wide Field Camera 3.
So that's where we're going,
and now let's focus on this mission,
and I'd like to have the next chart.
This is a bird's-eye view of Hubble docked to the orbiter.
It's docked on a lazy Susan device there.
It's a ring that allows the spacecraft to be rotated
or tilted so that the astronauts can get access
to the doors that are around Hubble in an easy way.
This lazy Susan device also has an automatic umbilical cord
which will plug into Hubble, and Hubble will be powered
by the orbiter as long as Hubble is docked there.
In front of where that lazy Susan device is,
is another carrier, we call it, and that holds...
There are containers on that carrier
that hold the black boxes.
And these containers have foam, and they have heaters on them
so that the black boxes get a very nice,
warm ride as they come up into space.
Now moving on, the gyros,
of course, are required for the science mission.
They're required for the extremely accurate pointing.
These gyros that the Hubble uses are the most accurate gyros
ever produced, and I want to show...
We're showing you an animation now that we're flying
into the aft part of Hubble where the three packages
containing two gyros each are located,
and you can see two gyros there in the one package.
And what's shown here is a blue fluid
that the rotor of the gyro is encased in,
and we've honed in onto a wire there that is broken,
and we think that is the reason why the gyros
that have failed to date have failed.
Just to give you a scale, I'm holding up in front of me
now a actual gyro so you can see what size that is.
And these wires are on the inside of this gyro,
and I won't even try to show them to you
because they're smaller than a human hair,
and we already know that you can't see them
from a camera out there.
The gyros that we're installing now,
as I say, there's six, and five of those six gyros
have been manufactured with a new technique
we think that will keep those wires from breaking.
The sixth gyro has been manufactured before,
and we just ran out of time manufacturing these gyros.
We were only able to manufacture five with the new technique.
Now, we do plan to change all six gyros again
in Servicing Mission 4, and those six gyros will,
in fact, be manufactured with the new technique.
An improvement we're making,
if I could see the next graphic, is an advanced computer.
This is an Intel 486 computer unit.
In that box are three separate computers
so that we have triple redundancy.
We only use one at a time.
If one should fail, then we can use
one of the others that are backup.
And the computer that was launched
is a very old-style computer
that was built in the early '80s or late
'70s, and the computer we're installing now
will have 30 times the memory of that original computer
and 40 times its processing power.
This will result in lower operations costs,
software maintenance costs and the ability to do work-arounds
or improvements to get more out of Hubble
in terms of being able to do better science.
If I could have the next chart.
This is an example of how the boxes are stored
and where they go on Hubble.
The boxes are stored in the containers.
The crew takes the box out of the container,
typically opens a door that is on the circumference of Hubble,
installs the box
and then returns the old box back into the container
that the new one came in, and so these...
The new boxes are the same size,
and they're easily replaced one for one.
Next chart, please,
another thing that we're doing this mission
is changing out one of the three fine guidance sensors.
The fine guidance sensors are used to lock
onto the target stars
that make Hubble very, very stable
while we're observing stars or galaxies.
The one you see here was removed from...
during Servicing Mission 2,
and we installed a spare at that time.
That box that was brought back, the fine guidance sensor,
has been refurbished, and we're reinstalling it.
This mission, the one we're taking out,
we're going to refurbish that and reinstall it
in Servicing Mission 4,
so we will have refurbished all three fine guidance sensors
by the end of the servicing missions
after Servicing Mission 4.
Just to give you an idea of scale there
that the fine guidance sensor weighs around 500 pounds,
and it's 5 1/2 feet tall.
Next graphic, please, now, Hubble,
when it gets science data,
stores it onboard in terms of ones and zeros,
and then when it can get communications context
with NASA's tracking and data relay satellite systems,
it transmits them to the ground.
Now, one of the two transmitters that are on Hubble have failed.
They're redundant transmitters,
and so the science mission hasn't been impacted at all,
but we plan to change out that transmitter during this mission.
Next graphic, science production is our most important product,
and over the years, we have increased this production
by a factor of 11,
and as I said, the science data is stored onboard
before it's transmitted to the ground,
and we put that data on recorders.
Hubble was launched with three mechanical recorders,
reel to reel.
Some of you may remember what the reel-to-reel
tape recorders look like.
They look much like that.
They're not particularly reliable,
and they don't store a lot,
so we've already replaced one of those
with a solid state recorder made out of computer chips
and that can store a factor of 10 more science data
than the original ones,
and we're going to put up another one
to replace the second mechanical tape recorder
so that we can process
and handle this amount of science data,
and as we install the new science instruments
in the next couple servicing missions,
we expect to increase the amount of science data
ultimately by a factor of four, so we'll be even four times more
than what you see on that video or that chart.
Another thing that we're doing is installing an improved way
to charge Hubble's six batteries that are used to power
Hubble when Hubble goes into the nighttime.
These are called the battery voltage
temperature improvement kits.
There are six of them, and they just get installed
in-line with Hubble's six batteries.
Now, when Hubble goes through its day-night cycle,
it has wide temperature excursions,
and it gets as cold as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit
at night and 180 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime,
and coupled with the radiation environment
and strong ultraviolet light,
there needs to be a skin on Hubble
to protect it from these thermal excursions
and from the radiation.
Now, the original skin that was put on has degraded over time,
and we intend to change this skin,
and now if you'll roll the clip,
I'll explain to you what we're going to do.
First, we're going to install stainless steel plates
over doors that are on the circumference of the Hubble,
and then we'll cover over the insulation
on the sun side of Hubble using wallpaper-like rolls.
There are seven of them,
and the largest roll is 18 feet by 5 feet.
Now, here is a quick look at astronauts
in short sleeves who are testing these...
The installation of these wallpaper rolls,
and you may have noticed that there's all kinds of writing
on there.
Those are installation instructions,
and they will stay there,
and it won't be a clean spacecraft when we get done.
It'll have letter writing all over the place
in terms of the installation of this
to be sure that it was done properly.
I'd like to point out that today in the audience with us
is Jackie Townsend who's a materials engineer from Goddard.
She's been on the Hubble team for a long time,
and I know there's a lot of interest in this insulation,
and she's available for questions later
as we get into the question period,
so, Anne, that's all I wanted to talk about,
so maybe you'd like to continue with the science.
-Mm-hmm.
Well, let me talk a little bit more about the science,
but let me start by correcting...
I misspoke earlier.
The number of proposals submitted this year
was close to 1,000, not 100,
so, you know, there's a great deal
of scientific interest in this program.
It has been almost 10 years since Hubble launched,
and so I'd like to talk a little bit about
just a few science fields and where they were 10 years ago
and where they are today.
Of course, in 10 years' time,
there's been a lot of advance made on the ground, also,
and the big eyes have opened up.
Some 8-meter and 10-meter facilities have opened up,
but they are very synergistic with the Hubble Space Telescope
because it is extremely difficult
to get over the fact that on the ground,
you have to look through the atmosphere,
and the atmosphere blurs.
It's very much like looking at the sky
through the bottom of a swimming pool.
The changes in density in the atmosphere
cause the images to blur,
and it's very difficult to get over that,
so Hubble Space Telescope gets extremely clear images.
Even though it is a smaller telescope
than the ground-based ones, it still has an enormous impact,
and in fact, there's a lot of work done in collaboration
between the big telescopes on ground
and Hubble Space Telescope in space,
but let me just choose a few topics
and talk about the science of them,
and this is by no means complete,
and these are sort of my personal favorites,
so they don't cover the whole range of topics,
and one of the things indeed that's unusual
about the Hubble Space Telescope
is that there are so many different scientific topics
that it has been able to make contributions to.
It's not a one-question telescope.
It's a very broad... It has very broad applicability.
The first topic is to me
is perhaps the easiest to talk about.
It's galaxies, and if you look at where galaxy research
was 10 years ago before Hubble launched,
people worked very, very hard to get images of galaxies
that went as far back as 20 percent of the way
back to the beginning of time.
That was a real victory when the ground-based telescopes
could get back to 20 percent,
and they started to get the first intimations
of how galaxies evolved,
and that was the beginning of a new topic
is actually the life of galaxies.
That's a much bigger topic than...
Well, bigger is the wrong word in astronomy.
It's an older topic, perhaps,
than people have taken on before,
and with Hubble, you started to be able to make images
that were very deep such as the Hubble Deep Field
where you actually sat on one patch of sky for 10 days.
I call it Zen astronomy
because the way they chose the field with Hubble is,
they searched for an area that had nothing in it.
They really worked very hard
to find an area that had nothing in it
because they wanted to see as far back as possible,
so they wanted no nearby galaxies,
nothing local in our home galaxy to obscure this field of view,
and one of the most difficult parts of planning
the Hubble Deep Field was to look for a patch of sky
that really had nothing in it,
and then they did this... It's like drilling a core.
They took a very deep image and were able to see galaxies
as far back as 60 percent of the way back
to the beginning of the universe and saw a very different picture
than what people expected to see.
What they saw was that they saw galaxies that were already old.
At that very early time, these galaxies were already old,
and so they could conclude that galaxies formed even earlier,
and this leads to what will be some of the future astronomy
that is done on this telescope and also on other telescopes
like the next generation space telescope.
When the advanced camera goes on,
you will have a camera that will be able to take deeper images
with a larger field of view than the WFPC,
and that's one of the areas that we really expect
to make progress on in Hubble Space Telescope
in the future is to understand...
We now understand that galaxies formed
even earlier than we thought they could,
and we want to keep pushing that envelope
and understand how they first began,
so that's one certainly a favorite topic of mine
that Hubble has made wonderful advances in,
and it's also an example of the strong collaboration
between Hubble and some of the ground-based telescopes
because Hubble discovers these objects
because it has such a clear view.
The images are... Have such clarity to them,
and then the telescopes like Keck will go
and take a spectrum of it and get the exact red shift
and make some conclusions about the composition
of these galaxies,
so there's a wonderful synergy between the sets of telescopes.
Another favorite topic, and, you know,
these really are some of my personal favorites
is black holes.
Ten years ago when Hubble launched,
there was not one confirmed black hole.
People loved black holes.
It was such a great idea.
It had to be true,
but obviously, they're hard to detect!
They don't emit.
They swallow everything up,
and so how do you detect something that is,
you know, by definition invisible?
And of course, the way you do that
is you look for the things that revolve around it
because a black hole is very dense,
and anything that revolves around it
is going to go very fast,
and so the first detection was M87.
With the Faint Object Spectrograph,
they were able to put the aperture
very close to the center of this galaxy,
and what they saw was material moving
in an extremely high velocity,
and the bottom line was that if it wasn't a black hole,
it had to be something even stranger,
something that we didn't even...
You know, we'd have to invent it,
so that was the first proof, you know, really hard evidence
for a black hole, and since then,
Hubble has been detecting many black holes to the point
where there was a column by Art Buchwald a year or so ago
where he listed all the articles that he didn't want to read
one more time in the newspaper, and one of them was,
"Hubble Space Telescope finds another black hole,"
so, you know, it has been very successful
at finding black holes,
and it finds them in the centers of many galaxies,
and so one of the things, again,
that we'll be able to do in the future
is demographics of black holes.
We'll have yet better spectrographs.
They'll be able to go deeper
and look at the full range of galaxies.
Is there a black hole as the seed
in the center of every single galaxy?
We don't know the answer to that question,
so that's an area where I expect that poor Art Buchwald,
he's going to have to read a few more articles
on discoveries of black holes, and then the final topic
and the one that is probably near and dear
to all our hearts is the solar system,
and this is an area where, you know,
when Galileo first pointed his telescope,
his little spyglass to Jupiter,
and he saw that there was actual motion around Jupiter,
that, you know, that was so astounding
that he was basically threatened with death,
with, you know, capital punishment for so much change
in people's point of view about the universe,
and he did that by seeing that things move in the sky,
and that was not our idea.
We thought the sky, you know, the heavens were unchangeable,
and in fact, every time you look at something more closely,
you find that it changes, and Hubble has been able to...
What it has been able to do that you couldn't do before
is have a longtime presence looking at planets
and watching them over and over.
Now, Hubble does not see the planets as close up
as many of the planetary missions do
because we don't do flybys.
We just go around and around the Earth,
you know, and look off,
but we have the time constancy to be able
to look at these things over and over, and of course,
what you see then is that the planets really change,
and even though the planets are very different than Earth,
they have very different conditions than Earth,
still, like the Earth, they change constantly.
They have weather.
They have catastrophic events.
They have volcanoes.
We observed a spectacular storm on Mars
that you could see from Earth.
You could see it progressing.
We observed Aurora on Saturn and Jupiter,
you know, spectacularly beautiful, Aurora coming up...
Coming down on the poles that,
you know, look somewhat similar to Aurora on Earth,
and then of course the most spectacular thing of all which
Hubble can't actually directly take credit for
is the comets on...
the comet collision with Jupiter,
but Hubble was there to watch it and was able to see...
There was a lot of fortuitous positive accident
with that collision that we were able to see
the plumes come up into the atmosphere at the collision
and then see the fallout,
and people really did a thorough diagnosis
of the atmosphere of Jupiter and the impact,
but all of those things very much change
our picture of the solar system as an active system
with day-to-day changes much like the day-to-day changes
we have on Earth with weather, with volcanoes,
and so in the future,
what will we do with planets in the future?
Well, one of the things that I think that we'll be able to do
is a very detailed analysis of the atmospheres
of these planets,
and we will be able to look at the atmospheres
across a very broad wavelength range, ultraviolet
and optical and infrared and start to understand
the composition of these atmospheres,
and there's also more planetary science
that we will do in the future on the formation of planets
once we get the NICMOS back
and running where you get an infrared capability,
and what the infrared does for you
is it allows you to see through those dark clouds
where stars are forming.
In the optical, they are obscured to you.
The very regions of star formation are obscured to you,
but as you go to the infrared,
you are able to penetrate these regions,
and again, that's an area where Hubble Space Telescope
has had wonderful advances in seeing the little disks
that appear around the forming stars
which look to an astronomer's eye
very much like a solar system before it's born,
so I think that that's another area
where Hubble Space Telescope
will be making some real impacts,
so I think we have some wonderful astronomy
to look ahead to,
and what we need to do now is get up there
and get the telescope serviced so we can get back to work.
-Okay. Well, thank you.
We'll start now taking questions here at the end of the row.
Please wait for the mic,
and give us your name and affiliation.
-Good morning, Peter King with CBS News Radio,
and I hate to burst a bubble with the first question,
but I was reading that the Hubble costs
millions of dollars to operate every day,
that it has not been functioning for the past month.
I'm wondering if you could tell us
how some of that money is spent
and give us some idea of where it's being spent
while it's not operating versus while it is operating?
-Well, I think the cost for mission operation
and data analysis is about 20 million a month,
and, you know, obviously, when the telescope stops operating,
you can't fire everybody and tell them to come home
and come back later,
so there is, you know, that funding is ongoing,
but, of course, at the same time,
Hubble has been taking data for 9 1/2 years,
and the people who are doing data analysis
are not doing data analysis on the data today.
They're doing the analysis on the data that has been in hand,
and likewise, there's a lot of work going on
in the scheduling of the telescope,
and for example, they have constructed schedules
that are dependent on exactly which day the telescope
starts to work again
because what you schedule depends on, you know,
when you flip the switch and you start work again,
so a lot of it is ongoing work.
-I guess the question I had is, do you have a bunch of people
who are sitting around and not doing anything right now
and just waiting for it to come back online?
-We never never people like that.
-Okay. -No. No.
No, I mean, you know, there's an enormous amount of work
both on the one end and on the other end.
In fact, these things sometimes cause more work.
As I said, they have to rework schedules,
and they have several contingency schedules
going at the same time so that they can pick it
right up again when they're ready to go.
-The majority of that 20 million per month
is the people that do the servicing,
and when the gyro failed,
that caused us to rework our grapple time line,
for example, and so these people actually began working harder,
I think, than they were working before
as we were getting ready for the mission,
so we certainly have not had our feet on a desk
waiting for the shuttle to come.
-Nobody likes delays,
and they don't make anything easier for anybody.
They really make things harder.
-Okay, and one clarification of a figure
that you gave us earlier, Dr. Kenny,
that was that 1.000 proposals every year.
How many proposals are accepted for the Hubble every year?
-Let me give you the exact number this year,
914 submitted proposals. 145 accepted proposals.
and the acceptance rate is one per five by proposal,
but it's one per six by orbit
because many of the proposals are...
They allocate slightly less sometimes
than what people ask for, so those are the exact numbers.
-Okay.
Well, I'll take Jay and then back to Bill.
-Jay Barbree with NBC, Dr. Kenny,
I have some basic science questions,
but first, I want to clarify, John,
you said that the Hubble in its position now
is rotating around the sun every hour and a half.
You mean, of course, the face, the sun side
is rotating on its own axis as it faces the sun, right?
It's not rotating around the sun.
-Oh, no. Sorry.
-Yeah, okay, but... -Yeah, so it can...
-But anyway, what is this doing?
What is the time period that it is rotating now 360 degrees?
-It's about one revolution per hour.
-One revolution, about the same length
as the orbit around Earth.
-Yeah, approximately. -Yeah, and Dr. Kenny,
what are the estimated number of stars now in the universe
that Hubble can account for, the number...
-Oh. -...of galaxies
that it can account for now and the farthest distance?
You were talking about talking about looking 60 percent
by galaxies.
What is the farthest distance in light-years
that Hubble has recorded an image to date,
and how close are you
to determining with Hubble the universe's age?
-Hubble Space Telescope can observe
exactly a squidzillion stars.
I don't know... -Spell that out.
-I can't spell it, no. I don't know...
I don't know how to...
I don't know how many zeros behind the number,
but too bad Carl Sagan isn't here,
and you could say billions and...squidzillion.
-Squidzillion, right?
-I made that word up, so... I'm sorry!
-I was going to quote you! -Oh, dear.
Yeah, but, you know,
there's about 10 to the 11 stars per galaxy.
That's the billions and billions of our...of dear Carl Sagan.
-How about the number of galaxies that there are?
-Let's see. That's almost as many.
Again, I don't have the...
-Are you saying you quit counting?
-Yeah.
Yeah. -Yeah.
-I don't have the number on the tip of my tongue
like I did for the number of stars.
-How about the farthest distance?
-Well, let me tell you a really innovative proposal
that is the deepest observation that Hubble has ever made,
and it's really... It's just so clever.
You know about gravitational lensing.
If you have a massive body with something shining behind it,
that massive body bends the light and focuses the light.
You can also do this with wine glasses,
but you have to hold them up,
so you can't have anything in the wine glass.
A wine glass seen from the end operations
something like a gravitational lens.
It focuses light, so you can, through a gravitational lens,
you can sometimes observe an object that is very distant,
and there was...
This trick was used with a very distant galaxy
that was observed as a lens,
and they actually put a slit on it
and were able to take a spectrum of it
with Hubble Space Telescope, and that particular image
went back to 93 percent of the age of the universe.
It went really very far back, and of course,
what it really meant was there are galaxies
back at 93 percent of the age of the universe.
-What's the age? -Hmm.
-I mean, what's the latest thinking?
-I think the latest thinking is about 12 billion.
-Twelve billion? -Yeah.
-Bill. -Bill Harwood, CBS,
John, just...
I want to make sure I understood the grapple attitude,
what you were saying earlier.
If you take Earth out of the picture,
and once you turn on the retrieval mode gyro assembly,
and it basically stops the rotation,
you were saying a little bit before TI, I guess,
that's a random position as far as the astronauts are concerned,
but when the astronauts finally get there,
they will essentially, if you take Earth out of it,
approach it from the base like an R-bar approach.
It's just it isn't on the R-bar.
Am I correct in assuming that?
-Yes. It is an R-bar approach,
and again, if you're the sun, then...
And we've fixed now,
and the grapple fixture is back behind here where I'm pointing,
and so the orbiter needs to get around
and be able to grapple that fixture,
and it should be easy to do because the telescope
will just be fixed in space.
-What I'm trying to figure is though,
does the commander position the orbiter
so that he's approaching low Z
to minimize plume impingement on the solar rays,
but he's approaching from...
There is no... I'm trying to say from below.
I'm picturing the regular R-bar approach,
but it's the same as that.
It's just it's not on the R-bar.
The Earth isn't below it.
-It's an R-bar approach,
and I'm about ready to exceed my knowledge
on how exactly the shuttle maneuvers,
but it's an R-bar approach,
and what low Z means is using a series of thrusters
on the orbiter as it's getting closer so that it does...
So the thrusters don't impinge the solar rays
or any part of the spacecraft.
It does that, and that's about as much as I can do.
I think we'll have to work offline,
and maybe we can get some of the shuttle folks to help out.
-I think I understand it,
and the other one is once the repairs are completed,
assuming you launch on the 16th, I know you have
to let things equalize once the shuttle goes away.
When is the earliest that it could be back up
to doing science again? -Right.
The nominal timeline would have us deployed on the...
late on the 23rd, and then we take about 2 more weeks
to test out what's been installed,
let the contamination that might have gotten in
from the astronauts working around,
get that outgassed, and after those 2 weeks,
we should be able to begin doing science using WFPC2.
-Todd? -Todd Halvorson, space.com,
for either one of you,
I was wondering if you could give us an idea
of how many observations with Hubble have had to be
either delayed or canceled since the shutdown in November,
and how many more would have to be either delayed or canceled
if this mission got pushed for some reason into January?
-Let's see.
I'm just trying to figure out how many hours in a day
and days in a month, 720 hours, two-thirds of that, 500 orbits,
500 orbits' worth of observations.
Observations will go anywhere from one orbit to 30 orbits,
so...
-So there's about four... -Probably...
-Four hundred and fifty orbits in a month.
-Yeah, so, you know, any...
A hundred programs, say, put off.
None of them are canceled.
That's why they are working on the cues.
They're working on the scheduling to getting all
these things running again, and in fact,
one of the considerations with this latest panel review
that I was telling you about
is it depends on how soon they can start operating again
because the sooner they start operating again,
the more orbits they have to allocate,
so this is something everybody cares about.
-Craig. -Craig Covault, Aviation Week,
for John, following on Bill's question again
on when you go to the RMGAs,
will you time that activation of RMGAs
to a particular Hubble attitude?
Do you have good attitude data on Hubble?
Is that part of the equation
in timing out the rendezvous and the Prox Ops?
-No, we don't have...
In a zero-gyro mode, we don't have good attitude information.
The telescope is kept on the sun line
by devices called coarse sun sensors
which are very coarse, and we don't have attitude.
We in fact will time the switch from the zero-gyro mode
to the hardware safe mode with these retrieval-mode gyros
according to where we are in the orbit,
and the zero-gyro mode does not have any control
during the nighttime,
and when it comes out of the night,
the coarse sun sensors are used to put the telescope
back onto the sun line,
and sometimes the telescope drifts off 15 to 30 degrees,
sometimes more on occasion,
and we want to wait until the sun line...
until the telescope gets back under this mode, is stable,
and so we'll put this... We'll change modes
about two-thirds of the way through the orbit,
guaranteeing that this new mode will lock onto the sun
and be stable as it goes through the night,
so the timing is done by where we were in the orbit
as opposed to where we are in altitude.
-Justin Ray with spaceflightnow.com,
I guess for John, I was wondering
if you could talk a little bit
about what effect losing EVA 4 would have
if you didn't make it off the ground until the 18th,
what effect that would have on the 3B mission.
Does that add another EVA to that mission,
and how many EVAs are currently planned for 3B?
-Okay, the question really points to the fact
that we're planning four EVA days,
that is, four spacewalks for this mission,
and if we launch on the 16th, we should have time to do that,
but if for some reason we're delayed
'til the 18th, then... so that we could fly
and get down before the end of the holidays
and the transition to the new millennium,
Y2K issues, et cetera,
that we looked at what we're doing and have decided
that we'd be willing to eliminate
one of the four EVAs, and this fourth EVA
is there nominally to put the wallpaper MLI on.
To date, we really have not seen any degradation
in terms of performance,
so this multi-layer installation is for preventive maintenance
rather than corrective maintenance,
so that's likely to be delayed to the next mission.
Now, the next mission has got five spacewalks
associated with it,
and we really haven't timed that out well enough
to be able to see whether this wallpaper would be...
We could put that on some time during these spacewalks.
Now, it's pretty simple to do because we don't have to power
boxes off or power boxes on,
so the ground doesn't have to get involved,
and the crew can put any one of...
There are seven of them... Can put on any one of them
at any time, and so there's a lot of discretionary choice
that the crew would have in servicing mission 3B,
and we're hoping that it would get installed then, and if not,
then we could even wait until servicing mission four.
-And I was wondering if, Anne, if you could talk at all
about next-generation space telescope,
where you are and the status of the designing of the mission
and some of the science observations and science
that the new telescope will bring beyond Hubble.
-We also have somebody else in the audience
that could help address that question,
but let me just say... Let me just say a few words.
We're about to go into...
We're making decisions right now about,
what are the highest priorities for instruments,
instrumentation for NGST?
And that is a discussion that is based
on a combination of optimizing the science
and holding the line on the budget,
you know, trying to avoid the Christmas tree effect
where everybody wants everything.
As far as the science goes, probably, again,
the easiest thing to discuss is the understanding
of the actual formation of galaxies,
and, as you know, as you look at something
in the very distant universe, it's redshifted,
so if you are looking at a galaxy
that emitted only in the ultraviolet,
but that galaxy were 90 percent of the way
back to the beginning of the universe,
that would appear to you to be infrared radiation,
and that, of course, is exactly what NGST is designed to do,
and do you have anything to add?
Dave Leckrone is here.
-Just want to say... -Oh, Dave, wait.
Please wait for the mic.
-Just saying that we're... Well, I can shout.
Just to add that working very hard
on all of the technologies that have to go into NGST
because to break this cost paradigm
and do something so grand at a low cost
will involve almost purely new technology
in every aspect of the telescope,
and there's very good progress on that front,
and we still look forward to launching NGST in 2007
or perhaps early 2008.
-More likely 8. -Yeah.
-We have questions up front there and then Marcia second.
He was first.
-Yes, Stefano Coledan with UPI
and Popular Mechanics, Dr. Kinney,
how many black holes has Hubble discovered
since it started discovering black holes?
-I'm not going to have a precise answer for that question.
I think it's above a dozen and, you know, less than 50.
What it has found is that it has found black holes
in the centers of normal galaxies,
not just the very bright active galaxies
where they were expected to be found
but also in the centers of normal galaxies,
and they're starting to correlate the black holes
with the mass of the galaxy,
and so that's the plot I'm trying to remember
as to how many objects are actually on that plot,
and I think it's, you know, of order 15 to 20.
That's a guess.
-When was the first one discovered?
Was it '94 or... -M87, I...was it...
-'94. -'94, okay, 1994, yeah.
-Marcia and then Phil.
-Marcia Dunn, Associated Press for Dr. Campbell.
If you get up there, and you see that the installation
is even in worse shape than you ever dreamt,
and you're stuck with it having to cancel that fourth EVA,
would you consider bumping something else at that point
so you could get the job done?
And also, is it feasible to think that the instruments
could start warming up in the next couple years
as you wait for another mission, which could also be delayed?
What's the risk, I guess is what I'm asking.
-We've actually talked about that
as we set the priorities for the mission,
and we're prepared to have more cracks and broken installation
on this mission than we've seen in the last one,
and yet, as I said earlier, there's been no effect.
That is, we can't see any change in thermal parameters
or focus of the telescope,
so we've decided that if that happens
that we're not going to change our priorities,
and if we don't get that done, then we'll do it later.
-And is there a chance
that that decision could come back to haunt you before 2001?
-I...Well, I don't know.
We think not.
We believe we understand what's happened to the installation,
that it's only the outer layer that's cracked
and that the insulation below that is working quite well,
so we don't expect to have a rapid degradation
in our thermal capability, and I think if you...
I don't know whether Jackie Townsend
would like to comment on that.
-I'd also like to ask her, here you have been...
Oh, there you are.
You've been rushing to get this ready what should been
a couple months ago, and how does it feel for you now
to think that you might have rushed for nothing?
-One of the things John didn't mention is that
there are two different types of insulation
replacement material that we're installing,
and the first is the nobles, those stainless steel pieces
with the vent plug that he showed.
Those are going on on day 3, so those are not at risk,
even if we lose EVA day 4, and those cover equipment bays,
so things that are more thermally sensitive
are inside those equipment bays, and that's what
our primary concern in terms of thermal issues go.
Up on the forward shell and light shield,
where the SSRFs are going on on day 4,
you're really talking about mechanical changes
to the telescope, kind of a banana effect
if you get thermal changes, and those have to be
enormous thermal swings for that to happen.
Thermally, the telescope is very robust,
so in terms of risking loss of science
due to insulation problems, that's a very, very low risk,
so your second question was, how do I feel with the delays?
This is actually my first launch and my first flow for Hubble,
so I'm actually still kind of excited and enthusiastic
about it all,
and, of course, I'm as eager as everybody is to get up there
and to resolve these issues,
so we can get back to doing our science.
-I guess you're up
to about 33 days now without science,
any idea of what the previous record was
and when that was set, longest time
you had to be out of service and any regrets
that we've had an incredibly bright nova recently that...
one lost target opportunity
that you're never going to be able to reschedule.
-Let me answer the first one. -Oh, good, you know the answer.
-Well, yeah, this is since launch and since commissioning
that we've never been down this length of time.
This is the longest time we've been down.
-But how long is the previous record
and any idea of when it was?
-That I'm not able to give you in terms of days.
Again, let me say that at launch in 1990,
there was a commissioning period
before the instruments were turned on,
and since then, when we have a servicing mission,
we're down for the period of time
that the servicing takes place and then roughly the 2 weeks
that I mentioned earlier before we can get
the instruments back up and operational.
-And as far as the other question,
it's always keenly felt when the telescope is not operating.
Now, I don't know if that nova would have been observed anyway.
To have been observed, someone would have to make a...
They would have either had to make a case ahead of time
for nova to be ready to go
when one goes off, or they would have had to submit
a discretionary proposal on the time,
and I have no idea if somebody did that.
I do know that there were no occultation observations
that were irretrievably lost,
or there were no unique astronomical events
that were uniquely...
that were known ahead of time that were lost,
you know, of the occultation type,
but it is absolutely keenly felt
that the telescope is up there not doing anything.
There is no doubt about that.
There is an enormous desire to get the telescopes fixed,
and you don't like the thing to not be working.
You want it up working. It's like a car.
You don't want to leave a car, you know,
sitting in the garage and not running.
That's not good for the car.
You want it operating, you know, flexed, at work, on target.
-I'll say. -And for John,
can you split down for us the cost of the gyros?
How much did it cost originally to develop and purchase
the flight set and backups in 1993 or in the 1980s?
How much did it cost for the refurbishment
on the first flight?
And I assume the $8 million figure being given
is just the cost for this particular mission.
-You all have fact sheets,
and this number that you're asking for is $8 million
for the building of six gyros,
and that cost would have been the same for the gyros
that we installed in the first servicing mission.
-So 8 million just for this mission?
-Eight million for this... these six gyros, yes.
-I think we have time for perhaps
one final question here, Todd.
-Todd Halvorson, space.com, for Anne Kinney, you mentioned
that you haven't missed any real astronomical events,
but I'm wondering if you can maybe pick out
of the top of your head a couple
of the more interesting projects that might be being delayed,
and I know every project is interesting,
but perhaps, you could give us an idea of a couple of things
that have been delayed because of the shutdown.
-I'd really prefer not to do that.
There is one that is of enormous interest to me,
but I just assume, keep quiet about it for now,
so the answer is,
I'm not going to answer that question.
-All right. All right.
Thank you very much. I don't believe there are
any other briefings scheduled for today.
We're looking forward to launch tomorrow night.
We'll see you then.