spacetoday.net: Astronauts install new Hubble camera

Posted: Thu, Mar 7, 2002, 12:52 PM ET (1752 GMT)
STS-109 EVA #4 (NASA)

Shuttle astronauts performed the fourth Hubble Space Telescope repair spacewalk Thursday morning, replacing the last of the observatory's original instruments with a new camera. Astronauts Mike Massimino and Jim Newman spent seven and a half hours outside the shuttle Columbia Thursday to successfully complete the fourth of five EVAs scheduled for the STS-109 mission. The astronauts removed Hubble's Faint Object Camera, which had been on the telescope since its launch in 1990, with the new Advanced Camera for Surveys. The new instrument is ten times more powerful and will allow astronomers to peer deeper into the universe and thus earlier into its history. The astronauts also wired up an electronics package that will be used by a new cooling system for another Hubble instrument, NICMOS; that cooling system will be installed on Friday's spacewalk, the last of the mission. If all goes well the telescope will be released from the shuttle on Saturday.