There were not any constraints at all, not even anything close. They changed the possibility
of a landing once around abort and decided that they would switch to Ben Gurrier because
of it would be a better primary site if there are any problems. So the countdown clock is
continuing and it looks like everything is go for an on-time launch. 831 is the schedule.
They are at one minute right now and counting. A beautifully clear day at the Space Center.
They had a few low clouds a little earlier but everything with the weather is perfect
this morning. T minus 33. We've had a hold. We do not know at this time what the problem
is. We'll be standing by forward but the clock is holding at T minus 31 seconds due to a
system failure.
So at 31 seconds they have halted the countdown. Liquid oxygen fill and drain valve. The problem
with that, the clock made it down to 31 seconds and that's where they are right now trying
to decide what they can do.
We have the closed power on and the open position off. We can cycle one time and try to pick
up the closed position but we have to pick up the closed power.
Okay and MTS we have a message that we were blocked by a prerequisite sequence, BCL 18.
What has happened is the ground launch sequencer would not hand off to the orbiter's computers
to complete the count because the liquid oxygen fill and drain valve was showing off when
it should be on.
An analysis of the problem has begun.
We've been holding two minutes.
SBE this is CMTS, we're going to make an attempt to purge the valve closed. We've got the pull-back
set off if this works and we should be in good shape.
Copy, proceed.
We have seven minutes of run time available on the auxiliary power units. We've been holding
now about two minutes and twenty seconds.
CMTS the valve is closed, we're good.
There's the confirmation that we have successfully recycled.
Pick up terminal sequence MTS.
I left the terminal so we're good. We're in good shape.
Okay you have a go to proceed.
GLS pick up the count immediately.
Copy.
Alright the clock has started again. Apparently the problem has been fixed with the liquid
oxygen valve. Let's listen in as they count down the last twenty seconds.
Sound suppression water system has started. T minus thirteen seconds. T minus ten go for
main engine start. We are go for main engine start. T minus six, five, four, three, two,
one and liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope, our window
on the universe.
Mission Control Houston.
Roll program.
Roger roll Discovery.
The roll maneuver puts the vehicle in the proper launch plane.
Guidance officer confirms a good roll maneuver. Engines now throttling back.
The throttle down maneuver assist in reducing the aerodynamic loads on Discovery as it passes
through the area of maximum dynamic pressure.
Velocity now twelve hundred feet per second. Discovery downrange three nautical miles.
Discovery go with throttle up.
All three engines now throttle back up.
Engines at a hundred and four percent. The go with throttle up call signifies that all
systems are performing well. All three auxiliary power units look good. Discovery's velocity
now twenty three hundred feet per second and is downrange eight nautical miles.
The long range tracking cameras that you're seeing now following it eight miles away from
the Kennedy Space Center, a fantastic view of Discovery streaking across the sky.
And the moment everyone waits for the solid rockets fall away from Discovery as it streaks
towards space.
Discovery's velocity now forty three hundred feet per second at a downrange distance of
thirty five nautical miles.
So seven years and two weeks plus the problem we have with the auxiliary power unit two
weeks ago that stopped the count at four minutes. A similar problem, a similar problem at thirty
one seconds this time but not with the auxiliary power units. They had a problem with the liquid
oxygen fill and drain valve that stopped the count automatically at thirty one seconds
when the ground launch sequencer computer refused to hand over control of the shuttle
to the firing room and it simply shut down the clock at thirty one seconds.
Discovery sixty nautical miles away from the launch site.
So it is the beginning of a mission for astronomers that they have waited a long, long time for.
One day from now they will deploy Hubble, they will put it at the end of the robot arm
out into space and prepare to release it.
CNN's John Zeroa joins us now from the Kennedy Space Center.
John, it was another one of those right to the edge of the cliff and this time instead of
staying on land they jumped to space.
Boy, it was a last second we thought for sure it looked like they might have to hold.
You know, they run out of time with those auxiliary power units.
They only had five more minutes left to go but they managed to manually close that or
open that valve and get the proper sequences started again and they were going.
It certainly was a pretty launch.
You were mentioning about the long delays. Well, there's no one who has waited longer
for this mission than Bob O'Dell from Rice University and Dr. O'Dell about twenty years
since the beginning of the Hubble project for you. What a feeling this morning.
This is marvelous. In a few minutes we'll know the main engines have done their job
and half an hour we'll know we're in the orbit we want to be and then we're off and going
for great science.
An interesting story that at first after all the years in the program there was some question
as to whether you'd have time on the telescope but your colleagues donated some of their
time to give you the opportunity to use the telescope.
That must be something you just can't wait for.
That has been the greatest reward I have received and heading the program for those eleven years.
My colleagues actually giving up time so that I could be an observer too and I can't wait.
Well, we'll be all waiting with you I'm sure. Dr. O'Dell, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
Well, Tom, it certainly is a happy moment and it will be a much happier moment a day from now
when Hubble is deployed and then in a week or so when the first picture is sent back to Earth.
Tom, a milestone here for NASA.
A major milestone. Once again Discovery, a safe launch this morning.
They're on their way to space. Columbia is now remaining on the other side of pad 39.
It is scheduled to go about the 16th of next month where they will put up another astronomy package.
But right now it is Hubble in center stage as the beginning of the search of our outer solar system begins.
Let's back up a few moments now and take a look as the countdown clock continued after 31 seconds of being stopped
and move forward after some hair-raising moments to get Discovery off the ground.
And daybreak will continue in just a moment.
Start. We are go for main engine start T-6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery
with the Hubble Space Telescope, our window on the universe.
The process is a painstakingly slow one while the crew makes sure everything is well in space.
On the ground here in Maryland at the Space Telescope Operations Center,
another group of scientists is using their computers and their computer consoles
to talk with the computers on board the space telescope itself.
In a few minutes the Hubble will be disconnected from the space shuttle's cargo bay and the power supply there
and it will have to operate on the power supply that is provided by the solar panels which will be unfolding.
There is about a five-hour light on those batteries that are aboard the space telescope
so those panels have to come out and be just right at exactly the proper instance for this to all go well.
Joining us to talk about the complexity of the telescope is Rick McDonough.
He is a NASA astronomer. Rick, this is a very complicated piece of equipment
and as I just pointed out it is going to take a lot for this to all work like clockwork,
which is what it seems to be doing right now.
Right. It is probably the most complex scientific spacecraft that NASA has ever launched.
On the other hand, it is also the one with the most preparation and back of it,
the most care has been taken with its development and NASA has taken every precaution to make sure that things go right.
As an astronomer, what do you expect to see when they open up the aperture door a few days from now?
Well, the very first images won't be very sharp because the telescope has to be put to the focus
and all the instruments have to be tested out.
In fact, the first couple of weeks will be mostly just engineering tests and very, very preliminary images.
Of course, after that, when the detailed scientific and engineering test program has started,
we expect to get very sharp images of almost everything in the universe.
How is this going to compare to what we can see now from telescopes on the ground?
Well, the space telescope is superior in several ways.
First of all, the images are a lot sharper.
The atmosphere, as we all know, is rather murky and blurred and makes the stars twinkle.
In space, the stars are very sharp and there is no twinkle.
So all the images will be much sharper.
Secondly, the space telescope can look in a wavelength span that the human eye can't see because the atmosphere gets in the way.
The ozone layer blocks the burning ultraviolet light.
It's good for us, it's bad for astronomy.
So the space telescope will be able to observe in those wavelengths and it hasn't been done before.
And finally, the space telescope has a suite of extremely high-precision instruments,
instruments that are in some way superior to those on the ground.
So it can obtain data that is just not possible in other ways.
Yeah, Rick, you mentioned at the beginning of our interview that the preparation that goes into this is so,
so much more than has been done for any other science project NASA has been involved in.
And right now, up in the shuttle, Bruce McCandless and Kathy Sullivan are filling up drinking bags inside their spacesuits,
but they're not in the spacesuits yet.
It's the first time for that, right?
Yeah, as far as I know, NASA has never planned for an emergency before.
In other words, this is such an important one that NASA has taken out the extra insurance,
the astronauts are trained to handle a wide variety of contingencies
just in case something goes wrong.
Hopefully one won't have to use this contingency, but...
If it happens, I guess we'll know about it in the next hour or two.
Right.
Rick, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thank you as well.
We'll continue to watch the situation here.
I'll leave Tony Clark standing by at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as well,
we'll keep you posted all day.
John Hollis, CNN Live, Goddard Space Flight Center.
And at the lower end of the device would last for maybe five hours before the solar panels had to be deployed.
Because of the two-week delay caused by the problem with the space shuttle launch system a couple weeks ago,
they were able to recharge these batteries so they have a little extra life.
They can last for maybe eight hours if of useful time.
What is about to happen in the next 15 minutes, some booms that are now stowed along the side of the space telescope will come down.
It's already in the process of being lifted out of the cargo bay,
so it's up from the cargo bay where it flew into space.
These booms on the side will come down and then about 15 minutes after that, maybe 30 minutes from now,
motors which are located down in this area will come on and the solar arrays themselves will begin to unfold.
Scientists here are fairly sure that this will work without a hitch, but in case it doesn't,
there are two astronauts, McCandless and Sullivan, who are standing by next to their spacesuits,
their extravehicular activity outfits, as NASA calls them, ready to jump into those and go outside.
They can do that with a thousand hours notice just in case some of this doesn't work correctly.
After that is done, the huge communication antennas that are located along the sides of the telescope
will be floated up and pointed back toward the communication satellite.
So there's a lot going on right now.
The next five or six hours are critical to the successful operation of the space telescope,
and the people here are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to see what happens next.
John Holliman, CNN Live, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Cameras in the payload bay, the color camera giving us a beautiful view of the Hubble telescope
lifted out of the payload bay using the robot arm.
Steve Holley grappled the telescope about an hour and a half or so ago.
They did some checkouts.
They put it on its own power.
It's got about eight hours of battery life.
And so what we're seeing now is they're moving it to the low hover position.
It's one of the early stages of what is a six hour, six hour plus deployment activity.
They pull it up to a low hover position, put it up to a high hover position,
then open up, unfurl the Hubble telescope solar panel so that it can operate on its own power from here on out.
And that's the tricky part is to wait for the solar panels to unfurl
so that the Hubble telescope can operate off of its battery power.
As I say, it's been an active morning for the crew of the Discovery.
They've been taking photographs of the telescope as it's been moving up,
everything going very smoothly, the embellicle disconnected,
and we've been seeing some spectacular pictures.
What will happen then, as soon as it gets to the high hover position
and the solar panels are unfurled, at a point around two o'clock eastern time,
it will be disconnected from the shuttle's robot arm.
If everything is going according to plan, at that point the shuttle will back 40 miles away
from the Hubble telescope and kind of station keep watch it for the next 48
hours or so just to make sure everything is okay. Norma? Tony, will the astronauts
have to take a spacewalk to try to help deploy that telescope? If anything goes
wrong with the deployment as it is it is currently everything's going smoothly
but if something should go wrong if if it should not disconnect if the aperture
door should not open if the solar panel should not open astronauts Kathy
Sullivan and Bruce McCandless are standing by in fact they're in the
mid-deck right now getting prepared so that there will be very little delay if
they need to go out and help the Hubble satellite Hubble telescope be deployed
they'll be able to do it. I'm Tony Clark CNN reporting live from the it's
extending just a slowly a little bit at a time what the controllers at Goddard
Space Flight Center ended up doing is overriding a computer limit on the the
solar panel opening that limit that is designed to keep it from unfurling when
it gets tense when it gets too tight they said that they think the limits on
that may have been incorrect and so they overrode that and what is in effect the
third time trying to open up the solar panel by overriding that the panel has
been opening up in the meantime astronauts Kathy Sullivan and Bruce
McCandless have gone in these shuttles airlock they are all suited up to do a
spacewalk if necessary they just started depressurizing the airlock so that they
could get out to do a spacewalk and open up the solar panel manually if necessary
but right now it looks like that solar panel is opening up on its own and that
a spacewalk may not be necessary. I'm Tony Clark CNN reporting live from the
junk on the part of astronomers from around the world now as we can see in
graphics that NASA is providing there are now two objects floating around
separately they are the Discovery Space Shuttle and the Hubble telescope and
everything is still though very calm as the Hubble telescope and the space
shuttle are moving farther and farther apart the only words from mission
control and and discovery it was Houston discovery here step one complete Roger
discovery very matter-of-fact bringing to a close a day's long work of getting
the Hubble telescope into orbit we'll have more later I'm Tony Clark CNN
recording live things in the universe by a whole factor of 10 at one time is when
Galileo first put the little telescope up to a high unhampered by the visual
interference of Earth's atmosphere the space telescope literally will be able
to see back in time looking at the light from galaxies that were evolving 10
billion years ago closer to home the space telescope also will study our own
solar system offering views of Jupiter and Saturn and other planets similar to
those captured by the Voyager spacecraft but Hubble's 15-year journey of
discovery will provide a longer period for exploration we're kind of the
Columbus folks in the modern times and somebody said the other day when I was
talking about this gee you know you guys have a great new clipper ship to go
exploring in and that's really kind of the way it is well the Hubble space
telescope will open new windows into space that does not mean that the old
windows open by Earth base telescopes will be closed in fact the space
telescope will place more demands on existing observatories new avenues of
research will open up as a consequence of what the Hubble space telescope will
be finding and much of that new work these new directions can be pursued from
the ground in addition there are some projects for which ground-based
telescopes are more practical Schmidt says his discovery of quasars is an
example quasars are exceedingly rare so one has to spend a lot of time to find
them I don't think we want to spend time on the Hubble space telescope searching
for a rare type of object the combination of the space telescope and
its earth-based counterparts may prove to be a partnership of all else of the
Hubble telescope yesterday the ground controllers at the Goddard space flight
center lost contact with the telescope briefly because of a mispointed antenna
they've had the same kind of problem although they don't know why right now
in fact we were supposed to be at this time watching the astronauts go through
a student experiment but instead that has been postponed to give the
communication satellite over to the ground controllers at Goddard space
center so that they can try and figure out why they are unable to establish
contact with the telescope right now they're trying to work through that
problem it it is a problem and I don't want to make it sound more serious than
it is it's a problem that they something that they had not expected but it's also
something that they feel that they can work through they think that they'll
reacquire the signal shortly and that everything will be going smoothly with
the shuttle schedule this morning's wake-up call for the five shuttle crew
members was symbolic of the feeling of astronomers technicians and others who
worked on the space telescope for the past 20 years they're cheering yesterday's
successful deployment of the railroad car sized observatory throughout the day
today Hubble controllers at Goddard space flight center will be checking out
the telescopes electrical and mechanical systems they want to be certain that
they have complete control of the telescope are able to point it exactly
where they want before the aperture door is open they don't want to take a chance
on the telescope being pointed at the Sun when the door is open because that
would damage the sensitive scientific instruments on board from their
position of 43 miles away the shuttle crew could see the telescope shining in
the sky the shuttle with its payload bay empty has maneuvered to a station
keeping position 40 nautical miles away from the telescope it will stay there on
standby in case a problem develops in opening the aperture door in the meantime
the crew members will be running through a handful of experiments including a
crystal growth experiment that's been run on several shuttle missions in
microgravity near perfect crystals can be grown those are used in developing
designer drugs there's also a student experiment on board it looks at the
effects of near weightlessness on electricity from their record high orbit
the shuttle crews getting a good view of Earth and taking lots of pictures I know
you're using the wide-angle lenses once in a while a particular interest is the
Rio Grande River area in South Texas where there's been a lot of rain
recently the astronauts have been asked to see if they can get shots of flooding
and silt deposits caused by the storm here is hailed San Antonio tornadoes
reporting of a city of Kelly Air Force Base Lapland and Del Rio's 6,000 broken
I'm those had two and a half inches of rain the last hour Austin has heavy
thunderstorms now so you ought to be able to get some good pictures of very
high thunderstorms in fact weather is also a potential problem on Sunday when
the shuttle is scheduled to land at Edwards Air Force Base this morning
mission control gave the shuttle crews some instructions on conserving some of
their supplies in case delay may be caused by weather of course the shuttle
plans on two extra days beyond the normal landing time period and so there
is not a concern there it's just a precaution to be safe in case weather
causes a problem later on Bob Tony you said NASA reports it has at least
temporarily lost contact with the Hubble Space Telescope can you elaborate a
little bit on what you mean by contact in this case it it is a complicated
system that sends signals from the Goddard Space Flight Center outside
Baltimore up to the Hubble Telescope to get telemetry to get data on exactly
where it is what kind of an orbit it's in what kind of data is flowing back and
forth from Goddard to a telescope what we refer to as the TDRS telescope it's
the tracking and data relay telescope and on to the the telescope and so what
we're having the problem with now they they haven't been able to make that
contact and so what they're doing is going around a different route to find
out why they have lost contact and try and reestablish that contact all right
thank you Tony Clark we'll continue to monitor the situation regarding the at
least temporary loss of ground last night and then again this morning they
had problems acquiring the signal from the telescope and though they have
reacquired contact with the telescope they are getting telemetry now they want
to understand what the problem was so that they can prevent it from happening
in the future
controllers at the Goddard Space Flight Center spent the morning trying to
reestablish contact with a one and a half billion dollar space telescope my
speculation might be that we have some pointing error in the telescope that
would allow us to be four to five degrees off of pointing to the TDRS
satellite and if that's the case then that would explain why why the TDRS is
not receiving the signal from us TDRS is a communication satellite that links
ground controllers with a telescope as well as the shuttle this was the second
time contact with a 12-ton observatory has been lost human error was blamed for
the hour-long loss of contact Wednesday night and though the cause of the second
loss of contact wasn't immediately known neither was treated as a major problem
that's just a communication configuration problem it means we don't
receive telemetry but switching back to the low-gain antennas with let us acquire
telemetry and we could have you know we could see what was going on with the
telescope the troubleshooting forced a short delay in running a student
proposed experiment looking at the effects of microgravity on electricity
this is one of a handful of experiments that the astronauts are performing while
they watch over the Hubble Space Telescope from 40 miles away in addition
to keeping an eye on the telescope the all-veteran crew is pointing its cameras
toward Earth their record high orbit is giving them a good view of thunderstorms
rolling across Texas and in less cloudy areas commander Lauren Shriver says the
view is spectacular NASA officials have mentioned some concern about possible
weather problems when the shuttle is scheduled to land Sunday forecasters say
the weather at Edwards Air Force Base may not be favorable so the astronauts
have been asked to conserve their supplies that's not a serious problem
because the shuttle always carries enough supplies to last two extra days
in orbit I'm Tony Clark CNN reporting live