http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/13/tech/main5010908.shtml As Atlantis Closes In On Hubble Telescope, Crew Member Keeps Earth Informed On Twitter
(CBS/AP) That's one small tweet for a man; one pretty cool leap for communications. Astronaut Mike Massimino used Twitter to send the first tweet from space. Checking in as AstroMike, he says "Launch was awesome!!" and reports he's feeling great and working hard. Before Monday's liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis to the Hubble Space Telescope, Massimino posted regular updates on his training to the micro-blogging site. Now, the 46-year-old from Long Island, New York tweets that he's enjoying the magnificent views from space, adding "the adventure of a lifetime has begun!" Massimino has said he'll send Twitter updates as time allows during his busy schedule in orbit. He's set to do two of the five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope. Atlantis was due to catch up with the Hubble Wednesday, at which point astronaut Megan McArthur will use the shuttle's robot arm to grasp the school bus-sized telescope and place it in the shuttle's payload bay. This repair mission is especially risky. A rescue shuttle is on standby for the first time ever because of the debris-littered orbit of Hubble. On Tuesday, astronauts uncovered a 21-inch stretch of nicks on Atlantis. But NASA said the damage did not appear to be serious. "The area is not as critical" as other parts on the shuttle wing, deputy shuttle program manager LeRoy Cain said in a Tuesday afternoon news conference. "The damage itself appears to be relatively shallow and it's not a very large area of damage." The debris strike was detected in launch images as well as sensors embedded in the wings. CBS News correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports a far more serious debris strike on a very sensitive part of the wing is what crippled Columbia's heat shield in 2003, causing it to break up during re-entry. All seven astronauts onboard were killed. Columbia's left wing was punctured, along a vulnerable edge and at the time NASA managers ignored an engineer's request for more photos of potential damage. NASA said the nicks on Atlantis are in a less sensitive location. NASA managers initially said they wanted to spend Tuesday night and Wednesday looking at photos of the damage to see if a more detailed inspection of the tiles would be needed on Friday. But just before astronauts went to sleep, Mission Control told them that the examination with Atlantis' robot arm was not required. Even before damage was discovered, NASA was preparing shuttle Endeavour to rush to the astronauts' rescue if needed. Nothing so far has been found that would require a rescue. Unlike other space flights, the astronauts cannot reach the international space station because it is in a different orbit to the telescope. Meanwhile, Atlantis' launch pad took more of a beating than usual during Monday's launch. The heat-resistant material that covers the bricks beneath the pad was blasted off a roughly 25-square-foot area. Some nitrogen gas and pressurized air lines also were damaged. The damage to the bricked flame trench - which deflect the flames at booster rocket ignition - was near a previously repaired spot but not an area severely battered last year. Monday's damage was not as bad, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. And the other launch pad, where Endeavour sits, was struck twice by lightning late Monday, but the shuttle appears to have no damage because of a lightning protection system, Cain said. *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
