Space Shuttle Catches Broken Hubble Telescope

Space shuttle Discovery and its astronauts captured the broken Hubble Space Telescope on Tuesday for a service call 370 miles above Earth.

“We have Hubble grappled,” astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy reported. Mission Control at Johnson Space Center congratulated him on “your first-class job.”

The two-day chase culminated with an evening catch several minutes early over the Gulf of Mexico. Beginning today, the astronauts will make three spacewalks over three days to get the Hubble working again and to refurbish it.

The Hubble has been disabled for nearly 1 1/2 months because of failed gyroscopes, which are needed to keep the telescope steady for aiming at stars, galaxies and other celestial objects.

With commander Curtis Brown at the controls, Discovery edged ever closer to the Hubble as both spacecraft hurtled around the Earth at 17,500 mph. Then Clervoy deftly plucked the 43-foot, 25,000-pound telescope from orbit with Discovery’s robot arm. He anchored the observatory in the cargo bay.

It is the third service call to the $3-billion Hubble. In December 1993, astronauts fitted the telescope with corrective optics because of a mirror with a design flaw. The Hubble got its last tuneup in February 1997.

Besides four dead gyroscopes with corroded wires, the Hubble has a broken radio transmitter, an old-fashioned computer and data recorder, batteries that are increasingly prone to overheating and peeling skin.

At least some of the decline is attributed to the fact that the Hubble has been orbiting Earth for almost 10 years and traveled 1.4 billion miles, more than 15 times the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Discovery’s four designated spacewalkers will replace all those parts and more with improved units and hang stainless steel covers on the outside of the telescope to protect it from the sun.