by Matt Hampton
Astronaut Mike Massimino recently when he conducted two spacewalks totaling nearly 20 hours in space.
Massimino also became the first person to “tweet,” or update his Twitter feed, from space. Massimino’s feed, online at http://twitter.com/astro_mike, has kept space enthusiasts updated on his status, both before and during his mission.
After the first of his two spacewalks, Massimino wrote from orbit, “This is an awesome experience, the privilege to fly in space and work on the Hubble is beyond my dreams.”
As for the mission itself, Massimino has helped his six fellow astronauts maintain the Hubble Space Telescope, now moving close to its third decade in orbit around the earth. His job, as a mechanical engineer and mission specialist, has been to update equipment on the orbiting space observatory to keep it working until at least 2014. During both spacewalks, he and partner Mike Good made repairs and equipment improvements, including upgrading the telescope’s power supply. One of the replaced power supply units failed in 2004 and hasn’t been fixed since.
The second spacewalk, which lasted eight hours and two minutes, was the sixth longest in history. Massimino and Good removed 111 screws on the body of the Hubble to change the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which is used to determine the chemical composition of everything from planets and comets to entire galaxies, NASA officials said.
During the removal of the screws, a handrail on the telescope prevented Massimino and Good from installing a special operations plate, and the handrail could not be removed because of a stripped screw. Massimino, along with a ground crew, had to improvise a method to break the handle off in space — without endangering himself or the telescope — to install the operations plate.
Before the second spacewalk, the astronauts were roused from sleep by the song “New York State of Mind,” played specifically for Massimino.
Massimino and Good, as well as mission specialists Andrew Feustel and John Grunsfeld, all spend time in space wearing protective suits with life support and oxygen supplies. They used the robotic arm attached to the space shuttle to do everything from grabbing and docking the Hubble to working on the telescope while using the arm as a platform.
Atlantis is scheduled to return to Earth later this week with Massimino and his fellow crew members aboard.
