Fourth spacewalk ends after 8 hours, 2 minutes.
by colleen on May.18, 2009, under SM4
Astronauts Mike Massimino and Mike Good completed SM4’s fourth spacewalk today in 8 hours, 2 minutes, making it the 6th longest in U.S. spacewalk history.
Massimino marvelled at getting to work in space “as the world goes by” and commented on Hubble, saying it was “a privilege to get to work on this great machine.”
Since so much time was dedicated to the STIS repair today - a bolt with a stripped head gave the spacewalkers some trouble - the New Outer Blanket Layer work will likely be completed during tomorrow’s fifth and final spacewalk of SM4.
Today’s mission status briefing is scheduled to begin no earlier than 6:30 p.m. EDT (0:30 CEST).
1 Comment for this entry
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Welcome to the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4 Blog
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ESA/Hubble Outreach Coordinator Colleen Sharkey blogs live from the launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA and from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where a team of European engineers and scientists provide mission support.
May 18th, 2009 on 04:14
Hi Colleen, I enjoyed watching some of the repairs yesterday on spacewalk three when they were taking out the circuit boards and stowing them away. They used that special tool to pull them I think. They were turning a swivel type of joint rapidly at times. Was that designed to inch the boards out very slowly until they could pull them out safely by hand?
Secondly I was wondering what they do with a stripped head. I use a screw or head extractor. That’s a pretty delicate thing to do. Did they use an extractor tool for that? I sure hope they had some of them. stripped heads is a regular headache with home repairs.
I loved the last quote too from Mike Massimino. What scenery right? A view from the top of the world - WOW! It was very uplifting for me to read that the astronauts feel it is a privilege to work up there. It’s how I felt as an engineering librarian as I spoke to students and faculty members to open gateways to the world of information for them. Please keep up your great work and I hope you give us some more human interest blogging about the astronauts.