Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Blog

Live from the control room @ Goddard:

The necessary preparations on Hubble for capture and subsequent moving of the telescope into Atlantis’ payload bay have also been successfully executed. The HST telescope door has been closed to avoid contamination of the telescope optics and the two high gain antennas have been folded back to the telescope body.

ESA contribution:

The ESA HST team is in charge of the drive motors that operate Hubble’s solar “wings,” or arrays. The telescope’s lifeblood, the wings are its power source. They have been closely monitoring solar array position commands and ensuring that the alignment is perfect for capture.

All commands have been successfully executed and the SADM (solar arrive drive mechanism) motors positioned the wings properly into the capture, or grappling, configuration. For grappling, the solar array drive electronics will be switched off as precaution to avoid unintentional operation of the solar array motors.

Part of the ESA HST team, Michael Eiden (left) and Udo Rapp man their consoles at Goddard Space Flight Center during SM4.

The HST ESA team has started its full 24 hours engineering support provision to NASA with two shifts of 12 hours each: the “orbit shift” (aligned with the astronauts/EVA crew active time) with Michael Eiden and Udo Rapp and the “planning shift” (aligned with the functional checks and possible re-planning efforts during the EVA crew sleep time) composed of Lothar Gerlach and Manfred Schmid.

The “planning shift” crew completed their first 12 hours and they are now sleeping. Eiden and Rapp are presently in the “orbit shift” at the STOCC (Space Telescope Operations Control Center) console, which has started at 03:00 hours in the middle of the night. Planning shift handover is scheduled for 15:00 this afternoon.

The ESA contingent is following the approach of the orbiter Atlantis to the HST live on overhead screens.

We are “go” for rendezvous with the HST!