-Woo!
-And the crowd goes wild! Hey!
[ No sound ]
-T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
and lift off on Space Shuttle Columbia
to broaden our view of the universe
through the Hubble Space Telescope.
-Houston now controlling the flight of Columbia,
the pioneer shuttle headed for the Hubble Space Telescope.
-Roll program.
-Roger, roll, Columbia.
-Columbia into the roll, placing the shuttle
in a heads down, wings level position
for the 8 1/2-minute ride to orbit.
[ No sound ]
-Okay, guys.
-All right.
[ Indistinct talking ]
-Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
-Push it in.
-Yeah, push down.
[ Indistinct talking ]
-How does that feel compared to the trainer?
[ Machinery whirring ]
-You can see some detail in here.
That means it may not go in all the way.
So if you see that as it goes, it shouldn't --
[ Indistinct talking ]
[ Beeping ]
[ Indistinct talking ]
-How does that feel compared to the trainer?
-Push it in. -Yeah, push down.
[ Indistinct talking ]
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
[ Indistinct talking ]
-It's one of those police lights.
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-There we go, okay.
-We hadn't heard anything about it.
On Cooper's calendar,
it says that they're supposed to be putting patches in today.
[ Indistinct talking ]
-And what does he say?
[ Speaks indistinctly ]
[ No sound ]
-T-minus 10, go for main engine start.
We are go for main engine start.
T-minus six, five, four, three, two, one,
and lift off of the Space Shuttle Discovery
with the Hubble Space Telescope, our window on the universe.
-Mission Control Houston?
-Roll program.
-Roger, roll, Discovery.
[ No sound ]
-Hubble is a 20-year mission to explore the universe,
and over that period of time,
its science instruments have been changed
and upgraded to take advantage of new technology
so that we could do new and more exciting science with it.
The science instruments that are going to be installed
on the upcoming servicing mission
will extend its capability,
and on Servicing Mission Four, there will be another large
jump in capability of the observatory.
Hubble can look at objects within our solar system
and our galaxy as well as outside of our galaxy,
and the increased sensitivity of the new instruments
will result in some really profound discoveries,
we believe, over the next 10 years,
during the remainder of its mission.
Servicing Mission 3B for the Hubble Space Telescope
is important for two reasons:
Number one, we're providing a major upgrade
in terms of science capability.
We're adding a new science instrument,
and we're bringing back to life the infrared camera.
And reason number two is we're making important upgrades
in terms of maintenance to the observatory.
We're adding new solar rays,
and we're changing out the power control unit
which is a critical element in the electrical power subsystem.
[ No sound ]
The biggest challenge to the Hubble Space Telescope Program
is servicing the observatory while continuing to pump out
a stream of world-class scientific data and information.
That's a tough thing to do.
[ No sound ]
-Another very important thing for the advance camera
for surveys and the NICMOS camera,
if we're able to revive it with a NICMOS cryocooler,
will be to continue to explore this subject
of why is this universe accelerating?
What is the dark energy?
What's the negative gravity that's causing the universe
to speed up instead of slow down?
Probably the single biggest mystery in physics today
is that question, and I believe we'll make significant progress
with the new instrumentation
to at least start to outline the parameters of the answer,
if not provide the direct answer itself.
[ No sound ]
I'm amazed by what Hubble continues to do
that surprises us, and we have some new stories
coming along that I'm not at liberty
to talk about right now that are big surprises,
not just the outcome of the story
but the fact that Hubble could do it all.
And 40 percent of the highest-impact subjects
that Hubble has --
Highest-impact results that Hubble has achieved
were totally unexpected before Hubble was launched.
And I expect that, 5 or 7 years from now,
Hubble will be working on subjects
that we can't anticipate today.
We don't even know how to ask the questions today.
That's the way science progresses.
That's the way it works,
and Hubble has been a superb tool in being there
and being ready when new questions come along
to be able to go after the answers
in a really solid, rigorous way.
And I'd just like to see Hubble
continue to do that forever and ever.
Of course, it can't last forever,
but one way or another,
we need that capability in space all the time.
[ No sound ]
-The cryocooler is a very interesting
piece of high technology that, I think,
we want to develop for NASA's portfolio, for future missions.
It's also a piece of equipment that will improve
Hubble's productivity tremendously.
It's an experimental piece of equipment.
We do want to highlight the fact that, you know,
unlike many things in Hubble, where we work very hard
to guarantee that things will be working
because Hubble is such an important international asset,
this particular piece of equipment
is an experimental piece of equipment.
We've done our best to make sure that it will work,
but since it is new, and it's never been done before,
it's very hard to guarantee.
And so we do hope that it will work for a 5-year-ish
sort of time frame, and we have every expectation
that it will do the job that we expect of it.
Measuring the infrared
is a very important goal for Hubble right now,
especially because the scientific is up to the point
where we can begin to understand
what's happening in the earliest phases of the universe.
And we're really looking back at a time when the stars,
galaxies and all the structures
that we know are in the universe were just being born,
and we have a chance to understand that
and fundamentally understand where it is we came from
and how the universe got to be the way it is.
And, so, in this particular area of study,
the infrared instruments are extremely important,
and equipment like the cryocooler
is really what enables these kind of of measurements.
So what we expect to be doing with the cryocooler
is that we'll open the doors at the aft shroud of the Hubble
which is where the NICMOS instrument is.
The astronauts will install the cryocooler into the aft shroud
and connect up two bayonets in the flexible tubes
to two fittings
that are currently on the NICMOS instrument.
And so what this will do is make the gas connections
and the electrical connections to make sure
that the cooler is working.
Then what we'll do is, we'll turn on the cooler,
and there will be three loops
that are involved in cooling the NICMOS.
First is a loop that connects between the cooler
and the NICMOS instrument itself,
so it'll be circulating gas from the NICMOS to the cooler
so that they can remove the heat
that's inside the NICMOS into the cooler.
There's a second loop in the cooler
that then chills the cooler itself
and removes the heat there from the place
where the NICMOS dumps its heat to an external plate.
And then the final cooling loop
between the heat exchanger thermal plate
and then the radiator on the outside,
which is where all the heat gets dumped out into space,
so it's a three-loop system.
It requires an external radiator
because the cryocooler does burn a lot of electricity,
and we need to reject that heat into space
through those radiators.