>> CHRISTY: As I mentioned, as John mentioned earlier which we
talked about not doing and I did anyway. >> JOHN: It’s okay,
this is why we train.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
>>JOHN: Hi, I'm John Grunsfeld, NASA astronaut.
>>CHRISTY: Hi I’m Christy Hansen,
Johnson Space Center EVA task astronaut training lead, and
flight controller. >> JOHN: An “EVA” means extravehicular
activity, which is just another long way of saying “spacewalk,”
and I got to do eight spacewalks on the Hubble Space Telescope.
You might wonder, how did we learn to do the complex tasks
using all the cool tools that we used on the Hubble Space
Telescope? Christy, how did we learn how to do all of that?
>>CHRISTY: So as the EVA task training lead, one of my big
duties was to work together with the astronauts, for about two
years, as well as my Goddard engineering colleagues, to
develop tools, techniques, and procedures to train crews. But
generically, from Johnson Space Center, I had to train the crew
on how to work on mockups that simulated flight-like hardware
on orbit. And there are various venues that we did that. So the
neutral buoyancy tank is a giant swimming pool that’s 40 feet
deep, 6.2 million gallons of water, and we can take mockups
which are volumetric equivalents of space tools and science
instruments on orbit, take them down under the water and put
them in flight-like positions. “Volumetrically similar” meaning
same size, screw positions are in the same location, um
distances from point A to point B are the same as what you’ll
see on the telescope. So in the neutral buoyancy tank we have a
mockup of the Hubble Space Telescope, so it’s built out of
different materials with holes in it you know because you don’t
want a heavy metal object in the pool but in terms of distances
to a science instrument, or like a hand rail sill those are all
the same. >>JOHN: This particular mockup which means
model of what we have on orbit on the Hubble, I actually had on
my desk for a long time because I wanted to practice over and
over and over again. My goal was to you know, memorize to learn
every single screw of the hundreds of screws that we had
to remove on Hubble, so that when I got to orbit there were
no surprises. Same for how to use the tools, and how to turn
the lights on, [TOOL WHIRRS] run the tool, change the torques,
change the direction of the tool. All those things had to be
second nature so when I got to orbit it was just about fixing
the Hubble. Sometimes I would come to the Goddard Space Flight
Center where we had the full mockup of the camera and I would
put on EVA gloves, spacewalking gloves, and practice removing
the screws and doing the whole task. >>CHRISTY: One thing about
doing these tasks at Goddard, because they did have higher
fidelity mockup units in the building 29 clean room was
understanding, not only the tasks at hand, but what areas
you can’t touch when you’re in a spacesuit. So in a higher
fidelity volumetric simulator at Goddard for example, when John
is performing the duties on this advanced camera for survey
upgrade task he can look around inside the telescope and it
looks more like what it’ll actually look like in space. As
compared to the neutral buoyancy tank where you just see kind of
a lot of plastic around you, and you can envision there are
certain areas, like seals, and radiators that you’re not
supposed to touch, and sharp edges, you learn- so you piece
all those parts together. We also have the virtual reality
lab. So the pool, you know the pool’s good for body
positioning, and translating, and managing tools, but it’s not
really good cause there’s drag in the water right? So you’re
not really- you don’t really- you know you’re moving a mockup
but you’re not really feeling what a 500 pound mass feels
like. So we take that into the virtual reality lab where we
have a mass simulator called Charlotte. And we can take the
giant axial instruments that weigh what 800, 900 pounds? Or a
battery. Put in all the mass specs into the simulator, and
then the crew, like John, can stand there with a headset on
that makes it look like he’s in space, holding handrails on a
mockup and simulates what it would feel like to move an 800
pound mass around an orbit. >>JOHN: All in all, the tools,
the training, the mockups allowed us to repair and upgrade
the Hubble Space Telescope so that now it’s doing better than
ever. [UPBEAT MUSIC]
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
[SILENCE]
>>CHRISTY: [LAUGHS] Ready, should I start?
>>JOHN: Just don’t be late. >>CHRISTY: I know don’t be late.
I hate when people are late by the way. Okay. Ready?
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
>>JOHN: Hi, I’m John. [LAUGHS] >>CHRISTY: Do I need to
do this? [LAUGHTER] >>JOHN: Do it again, one more time.
>>CHRISTY: Okay ready?