French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy has spent his last day off until late October - in an aircraft.
The airliner whisked him away from his Paris show duties yesterday, heading for Houston, Texas - then to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Clervoy is the NASA mission specialist robot arm operator for the Space Shuttle mission that takes off on 14 October.
He and his six crewmates will perform an intensive 10 days servicing the famous telescope.
Spacewalkers
The mission was originally planned for June 2000 and four spacewalkers were already training for it when, earlier this year, an attitude gyro failed on Hubble, leaving it with just three gyros out of six. One more failure and the spacecraft would go into safe mode and stop observations.
The Shuttle mission was then divided, one half it being reassigned to October this year with the added job of replacing all six gyros.
The other part of the mission will fly in late 2000. It is quite possible that Clervoy and his crewmates will fly this as well.
Clervoy and the commander and pilot for the mission were selected only recently and have been plunged into the most intensive training effort for the Shuttle programme - hence no days off.
Clervoy, who says that the crew was feeling the strain, adds that there will be four EVAs, the first to fix the gyros. Other EVAs will fit a new computer, radio transmitter, fine guidance sensor, data recorder and voltage improvement kits. The final EVA will be to fix new thermal insulation blankets on the spacecraft.
An example of the intensity of training is the 10 hours Clervoy and Swiss spacewalker Claude Nicollier spent the day before he left for Paris, using virtual reality (VR) technology to evaluate the spacewalking tasks and develop the right techniques to accomplish the fourth EVA.
"This has never been done on Hubble before and will require some very difficult and awkward arm movements. The VR is very useful to simulate this and work out movements."
Source: Flight Daily News