Hubble Upgrade Starts Out ‘100% Successful’

Working with practiced ease while circling Earth at 5 miles a second, a spacewalking duo plugged two new science instruments into the Hubble Space Telescope on Friday to expand its vision of the cosmos.

Space shuttle Discovery astronauts Mark Lee and Steven Smith turned in a by-the-book performance 370 miles above Earth during the first of four spacewalks to modernize the $2-billion telescope, which was launched in 1990.

The new instruments--a spectrograph with two-dimensional detectors and a near-infrared camera--should be 30 to 40 times more efficient and powerful than the old ones, and allow astronomers to peer back into the universe practically to the beginning of time.

“One-hundred percent successful,” Mission Control’s Jeffrey Hoffman told the crew. “Great way to start.”

Spacewalk No. 2 was scheduled for Friday night. This time, astronauts Gregory Harbaugh and Joe Tanner were to install three lesser components: a guidance sensor needed for Hubble to lock onto astronomical targets, an electronics package for the sensor and a data recorder.

The shuttle crew also planned to boost the telescope into a slightly higher, and ultimately safer, orbit.

Lee and Smith ventured outside the shuttle late Thursday night and spent 6 1/2 hours in the open cargo bay with the shimmering Hubble, using top-of-the-line power tools as well as old-fashioned muscle power to replace two 1970s-era spectrographs with modern gear.

“From an astronomical point of view, it is almost impossible to imagine the Hubble Space Telescope being any better than it’s been for the last three years, but you guys have made it so,” said Hoffman, an astronaut-astronomer who took part in the 1993 mission to fix Hubble’s blurred vision.

The two new components passed initial tests, but it will be weeks before astronomers know whether the instruments are working. NASA hopes to release the first improved images in early May.

Lee and Smith are scheduled to go back out tonight to install more Hubble parts. Harbaugh and Tanner will wrap up the work Sunday night during spacewalk No. 4.