Our culture makes you take vacation after you get married. Well, we did get away to Duluth for a couple of days, which did have a lot of honeymooners for such a town. But, our for real vacation will be to Florida to watch a group of highly talented scientists and pilots get strapped to massive amounts of fuel to be launched into a very high orbit, all the way to the Hubble Space Telescope to make some upgrades and repairs. Part of the work will involve removal and replacement of circuit boards aboard the telescope, which will require the astronaut to take out over 100 tiny screws while in a space suit, and wearing a protective glove. I'm lucky if I can take out 25 screws on a laptop, and not lose one. Hopefully these screws are a bit bigger, but still, I'm glad I'm not doing it. We landed tickets to see the launch from the Kennedy Space Center, along with a huge crowd. We also picked up "lunch with an astronaut," which is actually at 11:30 that night. I hope the launch happens on schedule, but we'll be there all week in case it's postponed for weather. We plan to make the most of the visit, including catching a glimpse on Endeavor out on the second shuttle launch pad before it's rolled out to 39A for its November launch. Yay space exploration!
1 comment:
Removing 117 screws from the telescope without losing any of them will be impressive, but not as impressive as when Mike Fincke took apart the spacesuit and fixed the cooling system in Zero G during Expedition 9. Can't wait for him to return to the ISS next Expedition. I also want Curbeam to get one more Shuttle flight in before its over. I'll always remember Steve Robinson asking for "one more Curbeam shake" of the solar panels to get them retracted.
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