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Servicing Mission 3B
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Launch!
We boarded buses at the KSC visitor's center for the launch on March 1 2002 at 4 am.
We were lucky enough to be assigned to the VIP launch viewing site of the Banana Creek Viewing location.
I was in a hurry to board the bus and accidentally cut the picture of at Christopher's nose...oops.
At the launch viewing site, I had the incredible honor of meeting
astronaut Dr.
Story Musgrave, who did the
space walks to repair HST on its first servicing mission in
1993.
Here, I interviewed him for Jan Poets (on the left)
for the report on the launch.
The kids met him too.
It was really cold at the launch site. It could have been
even
colder for us as the
launch was postponed one day due to even colder weather the day before.
The launch of Columbia (STS-109) was beautiful because the morning
turned to day briefly, and the sunlight only hit part of the trail.
This caused that part of it to be brightly lit. Just before
launch,
we could see HST come over the horizon like a bright
star. This made the flight to HST much more
tangible. Click here
for a huge version. Bottom image shot by A. Barrett (KSC).
During the Mission
Goddard Space Flight Center's Space Telescope Operations Control Center (STOCC). Together, we assist the astronauts during their space walks.
The console position that I staff is called the Systems Manager, and I work with three others to be the engineers that solve any HST and Shuttle combined
problems.
This is part of Building 9 at JSC. In the background is the
ground
based version of
the SSRMS, space station's robot arm. You can also see a
version
of the Orbiter Cargo Bay and
a mock hab module in the background. This is used for
training.
RMS operators such as Nancy Currie spend hours on this trainer to learn
how the
robot arm works. You can see the arm as the white horizontal
beam on the port side
of the Orbiter sill.
There are several mock-ups of the Orbiter, some with only the front
section. Astronauts take courses to familiarize themselves
with the various parts. They don't see the real Orbiter
except
for visits when they go to KSC.