Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 6, 1993 TAG: 9312060147
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON LENGTH: Medium
A few minutes earlier, Thornton and fellow spacewalker Tom Akers had detached the 400-pound solar panel from the Hubble Space Telescope as a prelude to attaching a new set. They clamped on a triangle-shaped handle which Thornton held in both hands.
"Piece of cake," she said.
The shuttle's robot arm, extended to its 50-foot length, moved Thornton forward over the cargo bay, away from the telescope for the release.
As the shuttle moved into sunrise over the south Red Sea Desert, Thornton let go.
"No hands," she said.
"There it goes," said Akers.
Thornton gave a slight wave as the array and Endeavour separated. In the crew cabin, commander Richard Covey fired the shuttle's small jets ever so slightly to put distance between them.
The panel floated like a kite, tumbling slightly and reflecting sunlight, with the blue ball of Earth in the background.
"It looks like a bird," Thornton said of the disappearing panel.
While the two astronauts were detaching it, the panel - a thin blanket of plastic - flexed slightly and waved like a flag in the wind as Thornton held it aloft.
The solar array, one of two, had been one of the most vexing pieces of equipment on the snakebit telescope since it was launched into orbit 3 1/2 years ago.
The Akers-Thornton spacewalk was the second of five to restore the telescope's vision, electrical and guidance systems to full health. It was the highest-altitude service call in history and the most expensive at $629 million.
The Endeavour was orbiting 367 miles above Earth.
One solar array had rolled up as it was intended, like a 40-foot-long window shade. But the other one retracted about 30 percent of its length and stopped. Mission Control considered the problems involved and decided simply to put the array overboard.
Astronauts Akers and Thornton, like their two predecessors on the first repair spacewalk, left the crew cabin more than an hour ahead of schedule.
"The epic continues," shuttle commander Covey said.
But the spacewalkers encountered a snag immediately. A radio receiver in Thornton's suit wasn't working, and she could hear only Akers. A decision was made that he would relay all messages from Mission Control and the shuttle.
NASA said it accomplished all its objectives during the mission's first spacewalk earlier Sunday.
Story Musgrave and Jeff Hoffman spent nearly eight hours in the open cargo bay. When they left, the space telescope had six working gyroscopes again to guide it, three electronics units to run the gyros and a new set of eight fuses.
On Tuesday, the astronauts are to install the new planetary camera; on Wednesday it is corrective optics for other instruments on the telescope, and on Thursday more electronics will be replaced.
Keywords:
INFOLINE
by CNB