-We had a good time.
It gave us a chance to review our procedures
and just hone ourself to that razor edge.
Claude designed our patch, here,
and we're very proud of that patch.
It looks very much like Hubble does up in orbit.
Launch morning, one of the first things we have to do
is get in those orange-pumpkin suits.
You can tell Scott is pretty nervous,
being the rookie here.
But everybody is pretty excited.
We've been in quarantine, like I said, a few more days,
and Steve is ready to go, and Billy Bob,
you know, he's pretty tense,
and he's thinking about that Canadian arm,
fly it around.
John is ready. What we're doing here
is actually doing some pressure checks on this suit,
making sure the integrity of the suit --
Mike is ready to go, and he's never without a loss of words.
And good old Claude,
and obviously he couldn't be here with us tonight.
Well, we left the quarantine facility
on the way out to the pad.
Notice the Sun is out.
The weather is good, and we're ready to go.
The folks at USA and mission
control had checked out Discovery,
and it's in perfect condition, so we're ready.
-Here we are exiting on the 195 foot level
of the launchpad prior to manning up,
another beautiful view of Discovery.
Here is Curt strapping into the vehicle.
As you can see, we are in the vertical,
and that's easy to tell here.
Here is myself getting ready to go in the orbiter
in what's called the White Room,
and Jean-Francois getting into his seat.
John Grunsfeld is to his right.
Another beautiful night view.
Obviously we manned up during the day.
Here is 2 minutes prior to launch.
You can see the beanie cap
coming off the top of the external tank.
About 6 seconds prior to liftoff,
the main engines light,
and when the computers check them out
and see that everything is okay,
the solid-rocket motors are ignited.
Here is the view inside the cockpit at SRB ignition,
and you could see a lot of shaking going on.
Looks a little bit slow coming off the pad,
but there's nothing slow about it.
The things that come to my mind are power and speed.
Here is a beautiful view of the orbiter.
You could see here, it gets pretty hot down
at the bottom of the external tank,
but the insulation does a really good job.
About 2 minutes after liftoff,
the solid-rocket motors come off.
Here is a, obviously, an external view,
and the next view is from inside the cockpit,
and you can see. It's very, very bright.
It's the first time I looked out the window during the ascent,
really got my attention.
Here is the view from the other solid-rocket motor.
Certainly a spectacular view,
but not something we could see from the cockpit.
Once the solids come off,
it takes about another 6 minutes to get into orbit.
Here we are at zero-G.
I didn't believe it, so Curt had to tell me.
And once we get into space,
we have to convert our rocket ship into a spaceship.
One of the first things we do is open the payload-bay doors.
Here is some jet firings, and you can see the ice
that followed us into space from the cold, cryogenic propellants.
-The second day on orbit is dedicated to checking out
all the main equipments we'll use
for rendezvous which are the arm.
You see here, that's the RMS robotic-manipulator system,
Canadian-built robotic arm, and you see the snare
that will be used to grapple the telescope.
And here Steve is checking out the suits
with the other EVA crew members before going EVA 2 days after.
-Well, the most important event of this whole flight
was the rendezvous, obviously,
because without the rendezvous, we couldn't do the EVA.
Anyway, that's from a pilot standpoint.
So we started a rendezvous from the ground,
actually, when we launched.
We were launching into position to rendezvous
with the Hubble Space Telescope.
We did a few more burns the day before the actual rendezvous,
and then on rendezvous day we did a few more,
and the first good glimpse we got of Hubble was beautiful.
She was in a little bit different attitude
than we had planned,
and our trainers had trained us well to capture it.
-When the telescope is very stable, the arm is moving.
As you can see, I use this target on top
to stabilize the end effector
and the snare that you saw earlier in the movie
snaring that grapple pin
and then do a firm attachment to the telescope.
The next scene is the berthing of the telescope.
-It was a great relief
to finally have Hubble in the payload pay
and to get ready for the spacewalks.
John and I, about an hour after waking up that third day,
got our suits on.
We'd end up having the suits on for about a total of 10 hours.
Here we are setting up for the first EVA.
You can see Hubble in the background.
That's John in the foreground getting the tools set up.
Our first task, as Curt said, was the gyroscope replacements.
The aft shroud doors are open,
and inside are the three small boxes
that contain a total of six gyroscopes.
One of the things you want to notice during the EVAs
is sometimes they're occurring in the bright sunlight,
like this, but then you'll also see scenes
that are in the very dark nighttime passes,
and you can imagine going to work
and having 45 minutes of light and then 45 minutes of day
and then 45 minutes of night and 45 minutes of day.
It's a strange work environment.
The suits weigh 300 pounds on Earth,
and, of course, in space, they don't weigh anything,
so it's really a pleasure to work in them in space
because on Earth, every time you have them on,
you're actually supported by a crane.
Here we are actually inside the telescope,
replacing the gyroscopes.
Again, it's three small boxes.
We used both power tools and manual tools.
Every time we held onto a box or a tool,
we had to have it tethered to ourselves
so that if it came out of our hands, it didn't float away.
The EVA lasted about 8 hours and 15 minutes.
John and I had cross-trained to do each other's tasks in case
we were called to do that, and at the end of the EVA,
we actually did end up doing that.
After the gyroscopes were installed,
we closed the aft shroud doors and went to work
on the voltage-improvement kits in the front of the telescope.
Here is John opening that door,
and I was on the back of the telescope
placing some handrail covers on some handrails
that had some degraded paint on them.
-After Steve and John had done such a fantastic job
basically putting the telescope to rights,
and they could have easily let go of the telescope after that,
and it would have served as well.
They then -- The program risked
having Claude and myself go out and change out the computer,
and here you see me opening the bay.
Not nervously, of course.
Actually, I was just checking that the door stay was free.
Opened up the door and pulled out the old 380 with coprocessor
and installed the 486
which is basically a pretty souped-up computer
that can handle all the radiation that the Hubble sees
while it's in orbit at 360 miles.
That took us about 2 hours, and Claude assisted me there.
Here you see me installing some insulation
onto the outside of that computer bay.
The new computer uses a lot less heat,
uses a lot less energy and produces a lot less heat,
and as a result, the computer needs more insulation
to keep it warm against the cold night.
Having finished that task, it became Claude's job
to change out the Fine Guidance Sensor.
This is, like, a small baby-piano-sized box,
weighs about 300 pounds,
and here he's installed a handle onto it
so he can pull it out of the telescope.
It's what's called an axial instrument
and has a mirror at the end of it that intercepts the light
coming into the telescope down the axis.
Once we'd extracted the box with a little difficulty in yaw,
we installed it on a temporary handhold, as Curt put it,
like a gun rack on the port side of the shuttle.
And then with that stored, as you can see on the right-hand
side of the screen there,
we pulled out the new FGS which Claude is slowly
pulling up out of the bay, straight up,
and then I get on the left-hand side here
and just basically pull off the mirror cover
that covers the very fragile but clean mirror
that's going to receive the telescope's light,
and we slide it in.
About this point, we had some difficulty inserting it,
and it was when we had it kind of halfway in and halfway out,
about that time Claude had a carbon dioxide sensor,
a false one, I should say, message which made us wonder
what we were going to do next,
but luckily we quickly ascertained
that as to being a false alarm and carried on.
-Well, with three EVAs under our belt
we did get a little chance to look out the window.
Here we are flying over Merritt Island
and the Kennedy Space Center where we launched from.
You can see the runway.
Day 3, we set out to take care of some rewiring of a box
that helps the Fine Guidance Sensor do its job.
These are new, improved Fine Guidance Sensors
and can not only help point the telescope,
but also to do science in themselves.
They're scientific instruments.
So Steve and I went back to rewire
the optical control electronics,
and when we do these tasks high up on Hubble,
we're very close to the solar array,
so it's kind of a touchy time.
And Mike, as the IV, intervehicular,
crew member directing the whole scene kept reminding me:
"Don't lean back," and, "Watch out for the solar arrays."
Next we were off to bay five to replace
the S band single-access transmitter.
This is one of the two transmitters
where all the science and engineering data come through,
and we had a lot of very fine tasks
with using just our fingers on connectors
which were aptly named subminiature-assembly
connectors, and they're really tiny.
They're smaller than what you have,
coaxial connectors on the back of the TV.
And along with Goddard, we developed some special tools
to be able to do that, so here you see a little torque wrench.
After that, we went about the task of improving
some of the thermal insulation as Mike and Claude
had done on the first day, on the bays,
after which another 7-1/2-hour EVA, close to 8 hours,
we had a chance to wish everybody a Merry Christmas,
since this was Christmas Eve.
And unfortunately, Curt had to order us back in.
We wanted to stay out, of course,
but he doesn't have a button to reel us in, so we came in.
With the EVAs complete,
it was time to send the newly repaired Hubble Telescope
back to science and back to the scientists on the ground.
It takes a lot of coordination to deploy the telescope.
It takes not only all the crew members that are on the flight,
but many, many people on the ground.
I like this view. You can see how bright the Sun
is coming through the windows of the orbiter.
-We want you to notice their shirts.
They're pretty awesome.
-Here is Jean-Francois
holding the telescope out over the payload bay.
He's going to release the robot arm,
and once the robot arm is clear of the telescope --
And this is actually in a not-sped-up video,
so the arm actually moves really quick.
And then we fire the forward jets of the RCS,
and the telescope quickly passes over our heads,
and it's really an impressive sight.
It almost makes you want to duck while you're in the cockpit,
and it's hard to tell here, but the telescope is rapidly
preceding away from the orbiter.
You can see the aperture door open on the telescope.
Here we are getting some good pictures of Hubble.
You can also see the high-gain antennas deployed,
and over the next several hours and the next several days,
the telescope gets further and further away from us.
We had a special visitor on that Christmas.
Once the telescope was finally repaired and gone,
we could have a little bit of fun.
Here is the commander spinning up the pilot.
Obviously we have to do normal hygiene-type things in space,
and also we get to talk to our friends and family at home.
Here is Mike doing some e-mail.
-Yes, we do got e-mail with friends and families at home.
Here is a housekeeping task gone wrong.
Of course, we're trying to keep
all those batteries [Indistinct].
One of the difficulties, I think,
that Curt has to go through is see his beautiful spaceship
after liftoff get turned into a murder home gone wrong.
Basically, with all the pieces of equipment
and the stuff on the mid-deck that we get out for the EVAs,
it really kind of tears apart the orderliness of the orbiter,
and we have to get that all back together.
Here you see us stowing equipment,
getting the suits back into bags,
all the extra equipment set away and all the seats and tools.
We get to the point where we can close up
the payload-bay doors
with ourselves already in orange suits,
getting ready for the onset of Gs.
Basically, Curt does a burn that high up
and brings us down into the atmosphere,
and here you see us waiting for free fall
and then entry interface when the Gs start to come on.
We had a Mini-Cam camera
that allowed us to take views inside the cabin
during the entry phase as well as a view through the HUD,
and here you see the Gs coming on.
-Well, the folks at mission control said
it was time to come home
and complete our Christmas adventure.
This was a view from the thermal camera on the ground
as the shuttle approaches the Kennedy Space Center.
Now looking through the heads-up display
which Scott and I have in front of us
to help land the shuttle, you can see the rectangle.
That's where the shuttle thinks the runway is,
but it's still pretty dark,
so we're not sure exactly where the runway is yet.
We're passing about 9,000 feet, 300 knots
and another thermal image here as we get down to the preflares.
Scott is going to put the gear down at 300 feet
above the ground, and we'll cross the threshold
and you can see the two little bright lights.
Those are the lights to light up the runway
since the orbiter does not have any landing lights,
and we'll just come on in here and do a night landing.
We've only done about 13 of those in the shuttle program.
I think this was number 13, and we'll go to the outside
just to give you a idea of what the view is.
With the orbiter safely on the ground,
Scott puts out the drag chute that helps slow us down
and also some of the derotation forces on the nose gear,
and we slowly start derotating.
Again, on the right side,
you can see the runway center-line lights,
and here is a view back through the HUD again
on the center-line lights.
At about 60, 70 miles an hour, so Scott jettisons the chute.
We roll to a stop.
The orbiter has been adamantly perfect on the mission.
We completed all the tasks that was asked of us,
even with a 2-day shortened mission.
We did the ground steps to safety orbiter.
We got off the orbiter into the Crew Transport Vehicle
and then had a chance to come out and walk around the orbiter.
Truly, just like the Hubble Space Telescope,
a truly impressive piece of machinery,
and that completed our Christmas adventure.