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Hubble Servicing Mission 3A Update - Dec. 25-26 Day 6

The sixth working day onboard the Shuttle Discovery (officially flight Day 7) was the day of the release of Hubble. At 21:01 CET Jean-Francois Clervoy grabbed hold of Hubble with the robotic arm and at 22:20 he lifted the telescope out of the payload bay.

At 23:28 Hubble's aperture door was opened for the first time since the telescope went into safe mode on November 13. This procedure went on without any problems and at 00:03 CET on Dec. 26 Hubble was released with Discovery slowly backing away. Only minutes later Hubble started a slow rotation to point the telescope away from the Sun.

At 00:27 Hubble reached another milestone: A long awaited return to normal gyroscope control for the first time in more than a month!