Posted 12/05/2007 05:09:00 PM by Douglas

NASA's going to give the Hubble one last shot in the arm next summer.

Next August, after 20 years of hype, disappointment, blunders, triumphs and peerless glittering vistas of space and time, and four years after NASA decided to leave the Hubble Space Telescope to die in orbit, setting off public and Congressional outrage, a group of astronauts will ride to the telescope aboard the space shuttle Atlantis with wrenches in hand.

But not just any kind of construction mission. I can't imagine even trying something like this:

One of the bigger challenges of the mission will be surgery on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which can take pictures of things and break down their light to analyze their composition. The spectrograph had an electrical failure in 2004. To get inside the spectrograph, 111 screws that were never meant to be removed in space have to be unscrewed and kept from floating off. The plan is to clamp a plate over them beforehand and unscrew them through tiny holes.

Ever dropped a screw when you're working on something in your driveway? Imagine 111 of them, in zero-G, while wearing 2 sets of gloves and a diaper.