NASA OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

WASHINGTON, D.C.

**Media Teleconference**

**\"NASA to Discuss Hubble Anomaly**

**and Servicing Mission Launch Delay\"**

Briefing Participants:

**ED WEILER**, Associate Administrator,

Science Mission Directorate, NASA

**JOHN SHANNON**, Shuttle Program Manager,

Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA

**PRESTON BURCH**, Hubble Manager,

Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, NASA

Moderated by **J.D. HARRINGTON**,

Public Affairs Officer,

NASA Science Affairs Directorate

6:00 p.m., EST

Monday, September 29, 2008

P R O C E E D I N G S

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: At this time, all participants are in a
listen‑only mode until the question‑and‑answer session, at which time
you may press Star‑1 to ask a question. Today\'s conference is being
recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. J.D. Harrington. Thank
you, sir. You may begin.

MODERATOR: Thanks.

Good evening. I am J.D. Harrington, Public Affairs Officer in NASA\'s
Science Mission Directorate. I would like to welcome you to today\'s
media teleconference. We will discuss the situation involving the Hubble
Space Telescope anomaly that occurred this past weekend.

It involves Hubble\'s ability to store and transmit science data to
NASA\'s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Before we get started, a few housekeeping duties to take care of. We
have three panelists with us today. They will open with a brief
description of the anomaly and then open the phone lines for questions
and answers.

We also have related information, images, and as such available on the
Web that coincides with this telecon. You can log‑on at
www.nasa.gov/hubble to see this information.

This telecon will be limited to one hour. It is also being recorded.
Media representatives can dial in anytime during the next 30 days to
listen to the telecon again. I will provide specific dial‑in information
and number at the end of the telecon.

Because we have a large number of people joining us today, reporters
will be limited to one question with one follow‑up. If time permits, we
will start a second round of questions.

As the operator said, the lines will be muted. If you have a question,
you can push the Star‑1 key to signal us that you have a question. We
will then call on you in turn.

Finally, dial‑in numbers are for the media\'s use in asking questions.
If you are not a media representative, please hang up. You can listen to
the telecon online at www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

And now to the panelists. They include Ed Weiler, the Associate
Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in
Washington, D.C. John Shannon is the Shuttle Program Manager at Johnson
Space Center in Houston, Texas. We also have Preston Burch, the Hubble
Manager at NASA\'s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

With these brief introductions out of the way, I would like to hand the
mic over to Preston Burch. Preston?

MR. BURCH: Okay, J.D. Thank you very much.

Last Saturday evening, September 27th, around 10 after 8:00, Hubble\'s
main on‑board computer issued commands to safe the payload computer and
the science instruments. The payload system is managed by a system
called the \"Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System,\" and
what we have determined is that the Science Data Formatter Side A has
filed in that.

This box is pretty robust. It has operated successfully for well over 18
years on orbit. It is fairly large. It weighs just a little under 136
pounds. I think there is a photo of it on the web for you all, and it is
comprised of the NASA\'s Standard Spacecraft Computer No. 1, the Central
Unit with Science Data Formatter, and a number of to her boxes on board.
It is fairly robust, and it has a lot of redundancy built into it.

We have done a fair bit of on‑board troubleshooting in an effort to
definitely figure out what the condition of the Science Data Formatter A
is, and all of the testing and all of the efforts so far to restore it
have indicated that it has totally failed.

Our only option at this point is to switch over to Science Data
Formatted B, which is the redundant one. Unfortunately, switching to
that side will require the switch‑over of the Spacecraft\'s Data
Management System to the B side as well, several boxes in that because
of limitations and our ability to cross‑strap the equipment. So this is
a major event for Hubble.

In order to do the switch‑over, we will have to first put the
observatory into PSEA hardware safe mode. The PSEA is our fall‑back
computer that can operate the observatory when the main computer on
Hubble is no longer available. We will have to do that and also turn on
our last remaining gyroscope in order to conduct this, and then we will
do the switch‑over, and then bring the observatory up on Side B. And
when we have done that, we will once again be able to operate the
science instruments and get science data from them.

The Science Data Formatter, very simply, is the device that takes the
science data from the five instruments. There are four axial instruments
and one radial instrument, and it formats the data into packets and puts
a packet header on it and then sends it down to the ground at the rate
of about 1 megabit per second. There is also the ability to store that
data on board in the Solid State Recorders, which is normally what we
do, and then we dump it to ground later.

Currently, the activities that are going on here at Goddard are, number
one, to further explore the failure and definitely prove that there are
no viable work‑arounds other than switching over to Side B and/or
replacing the entire Science Instrument Command and Data Handling
System.

The second activity is preparing to switch over to Side B, which I
mentioned takes a lot of work and a lot of commanding. Fortunately, we
have a Life Extension Initiative, which is an activity here at Goddard
that has been looking at things that we can do here on the ground
operationally to extend Hubble\'s life, and this was an activity that
was identified quite a while ago. So we have a good leg up on getting
the switch‑over done.

Today, we started testing, using the replica that we have on the ground
of Hubble called the VEST, the Vehicle Electrical System Test facility.
We are doing operators acceptance testing of the procedures to do that
switch.

The plan is later in the week to do a Test Readiness Review, and at that
time, we will assess our readiness to switch over to Side B. We will
also do an assessment of the risks to t he observatory associated with
switching over to Side B and try to reassure ourselves that this is the
prudent thing to do.

The third activity that is going on is we are putting together a plan to
take the back‑up spare Science Instrument Command and Data Handling
System that we have here on the ground and put it through a
qualification program to ready it for flight. So what we want to do is
assess its flight worthiness and in addition do the engineering and
other preparations necessary to be able to carry it on board the Space
Shuttle on STS‑125 and change out the SIC&DH during Servicing Mission 4.

The SIC&DH is located in Electronics Bay No. 10, which also houses the
three Electronics Control Units that control the gyroscopes, and the
astronauts typically train for access into that bay on each mission as a
contingency thing in case we have to change out one unexpectedly, and so
they are familiar with that bay.

This box hangs on the door. It is relatively easy to access. It is held
on with 10 bolts and has a single connector, a blind mate connector to
disengage. So we think it is a relatively straightforward activity that
would probably require up to maybe as two hours of EVA time.

So that is where we are. We are proceeding very rapidly to bring all
this together, and we will keep everybody apprised as we go forward.

That is all I have at the moment.

MODERATOR: All right. Thanks, Preston.

John, do you have an opening statement?

MR. SHANNON: Sure. Well, good afternoon to everybody.

I would just say from a Shuttle Program standpoint, the Hubble team has
kept us really well informed of all of their troubleshooting. We have as
a team discussed various options, but I would say it is very early in
the investigation of this anomaly.

HST, we are waiting for them to complete their troubleshooting, and at
the completion of that, I believe they will be able to determine when
they will be ready to go fly.

To that end, we have discussed various flight options that the Shuttle
team can support. I think it is very obvious that October 14th is off
the table. We will not be having our agency Flight Readiness Review that
was planned for this week, and that mainly stems from the fact that the
Hubble team needs to do their troubleshooting and reconfigure the
telescope and understand exactly what they have and then do their
troubleshooting on the ground to understand the viability of their
replacement units, and then we would work to integrate that into the
Shuttle payload.

What I would stress is there is plenty of time to make a decision on
when we do fly the Hubble mission. If HST is significantly delayed for
several months ‑‑ and right now, it sounds like that is the most
probable scenario, although we are, again, still troubleshooting ‑‑ I
believe what we would decide to do is that we would fly STS‑126, the
next ISS mission first, and we would look at flying that around November
14th time frame.

Right now, it is November 16th. There is very little opportunity for us
to accelerate that, but we would look at that, and then we would look at
opportunities to fly Hubble, depending on their readiness level,
sometime maybe next February. We would have another flight opportunity
in April, and we would use just the follow‑on ISS mission as the
launch‑on‑need rescue flight, just like we did for STS‑126.

Right now, 119 is scheduled for February 12th. 127, the next flight
after that is in May, and we will just see where the Hubble team ends
up, and then we will respond appropriately.

And that is as far as we have gotten on our planning right now. We will
not be working towards October 14th, and we will be following along with
the Hubble team to understand their needs, and we will be able to adjust
our flight schedule appropriately.

That\'s all I had, J.D.

MR. WEILER: J.D., this is Ed Weiler. I actually have something to open
with, if I could.

MODERATOR: Go ahead, Ed.

MR. WEILER: Preston gave you a pretty good description of where we are,
but I think one thing needs to be added, and that is the reason why we
are looking at the SIC&DH on the ground, the Science Instrument Command
and Data Handling unit.

One could ask the question. We could bring Side B up, and that would
solve the problem with the Science Data Formatter, and theoretically, we
could go operate and put in the new instruments on the October 14th
mission, and that theoretically is one route we could take, but I think
what we left out was the point that if we go that route, just go to Side
B, we would be left with a system that had several single point
failures, and that would be a risk to the mission for the long duration.

By going ahead and accepting a delay of perhaps several months, we can
actually get our SIC&DH spare units, the full‑up spare, test it and
ready to go, and if we could put that in there sometime in the winter,
we would now have an observatory that was, again, doubly redundant; that
is, it would have back‑up systems. It wouldn\'t have single point
failures in it. So that is the reason we are looking at accepting this
several month delay, to buy back that redundancy that we used to have
with a fully functional Side A.

That is just the one point I wanted to make, J.D.

MODERATOR: Thanks, Ed.

With that, we will start the question‑and‑answer session. A few quick
reminders, if you just joined us, you need to push the Star‑1 key on
your telephone to let us know you have a question. We will call on you
in order.

Finally, please direct your question to a specific panelist, if
possible, to eliminate confusion.

With that, I will hand off the mic to our operator, Melanie.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Thank you, and like J.D. said, that is Star‑1
on your touchtone phone, if you have a question. One moment.

I show Dan Vergano with USA Today as our first question. Your line is
open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Hi. I guess this is for John or Ed.

Do you have any cost estimate for how much this is going to cost if you
have to wait several months until February?

MR. WEILER: This is Ed. I will speak to the Hubble side, the payload
side.

Going beyond October 14th, the servicing program of Hubble runs about
10‑ to \$11 million a month. So you can do the math. If we split three
months, it would be about \$30 million or so out of the Hubble program.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: On the Shuttle side?

MR. SHANNON: On the Shuttle side, there would not be any delta cost we
would anticipate for this. It would be the same number of flights in the
fiscal year. So it would just be covered by our normal costs.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: As STS‑125 rolls back to the shed at this point, you
don\'t leave it out until February?

MR. SHANNON: Well, that is under discussion. I think the leading
candidate, if we are in extended hold time, would be to remove the
payload from the payload bay, put it back in the canister, take it back
and let the Hubble team keep it under totally controlled conditions.

We would not want to leave the stack out on the pad for an extended
period of time. So we would bring it back to the Vertical Assembly
Building and store it in High Bay 3.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: And that doesn\'t have any costs associated with it?

MR. SHANNON: No.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: All right. Very good. Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Marsha Dunn at the
Associated Press. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Yes. Thank you. Probably for Preston Burch.

It sounds like if the back‑up unit is going to be ready to test out
good, you are going to fly it. Is this a done deal that if it tests
well, you are going to fly it whenever the mission does fly, and what
are the early thoughts about whether this component, which I understand
is pretty old, is going to be able to be flight‑ready and still working
appropriately?

MR. BURCH: Okay. This unit, the spare SIC&DH was last used on the ground
in 2001 to support testing of the NICMOS cooling system, which is
controlled on orbit by the SIC&DH.

So it worked fine. It has been stored carefully, and I would also point
out that these older style electronics are pretty robust in the way that
they are built, and the unit, of course, in orbit lasted 18 and a half
years. So that is pretty darn good.

It also shares a lot of components that are used in other NASA
spacecraft. You may recall the Multimission Module Spacecraft series of
satellites. It uses a lot of the same command and data handling
components in that, and an example is Landsat.

The Landsat that was launched in 1983, all those components are still
running just fine. So we have a lot of confidence in this unit, and we
just have to run it through the normal qualification testing of thermal
vacuum and vibration and acoustics and that sort of thing to make sure
that it is ready to fly.

We don\'t anticipate that we will have a lot of problems, but we need to
take this path one bridge at a time.

MR. WEILER: Marsha, if could add something, this is Ed.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Sure.

MR. WEILER: Yeah, it\'s old, but you got to remember the duplicate of
this system has been in orbit for 18 years. It has been exposed to a
high radiation environment. It has been thermally cycled every 90
minutes.

The unit we are talking about replacing that unit with is identical, but
it has been sitting on the ground in a very carefully controlled
environment, no radiation, et cetera.

So accepting the fact we have to test it out, we would fully expect it
to be a pretty solid unit.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

And any idea what happened to the unit in orbit?

MR. WEILER: Preston, I will leave that one for you.

MR. BURCH: We do not really understand the precise location of the
failure inside of the Science Data Formatter and the cause of it.

We do know that that unit does run at a relatively high temperature
compared to other components, and high temperatures tend to accelerate
any kind of degradation process. So it may be thermally related, but
once again, after 18 and a half years of on‑orbit operation
continuously, that is a pretty good performance, but no, we do not know
the precise location and the exact nature of t his failure, and we
probably won\'t know until we bring the unit down to the ground.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Rachel Courtland.
Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Yeah. Hi. This is a question for John, I guess. Do you
have ‑‑ I guess the space walk schedule is already pretty tightly
packed. So are you anticipating you are going to have to make room in
that schedule for this other instrument? What are you anticipating will
happen?

MR. SHANNON: Well, Preston can answer that as well.

My input would be yes, it will be a tarde‑off with something else. All
five EVAs were completely subscribed. Obviously, this will be a very
high‑priority task, and it will fit into the EVAs at the most
appropriate time.

MR. BURCH: We are actually hopeful that, you know, given the fact that
we think this job can be done in under two hours, there is a possibility
in the payload commander. Dr. John Grunsfeld has been studying this the
last couple of days. If he is allowed to ‑‑ or I should say if he is
able to complete the ACS repair on EVA Day 3, that frees up a
substantial amount of time on EVA Day 5.

So, in theory, this may be a doable thing for us to have our cake and
eat it too, but a lot of things will have to go right, and we certainly
don\'t want to overextend the crew. And we will have to revise our
mission priorities list. That could have an effect on the packaging of
the various EVA tasks.

We really want to minimize the changes to the EVA days because the
astronauts have trained to that, and it is very important not to undo
all the many months of training that have gone on, but clearly, there is
work to be done in assessing that and trying to optimize the mission to
accommodate this.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: And then a follow‑up for Preston.

You mentioned that you are going to be evaluating the start‑up Side B
and conversion to Side B to see whether there are any risks to the
telescope. Do you have a sense of what those risks might be?

MR. BURCH: Well, one can postulate a number of things. Engineers are
great at worrying about one thing or another. You know, there\'s
concerns that throwing a switch or a relay to turn something on, you
might blow a fuse, that sort of thing, and that is why we want to do
this testing on the ground with our Hubble replica, the VEST system
which has all of the electronics boxes that we have on orbit. So we will
check that out and see if we note anything unusual in the way of
high‑current draws or any difficulty in doing switching, and that will
go into our risk assessment.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Bill Harwood with
CBS News. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you. Two quick questions for John Shannon, or I
should say one and a follow‑up, I guess.

John, when do you have to formally decide 126 is, in fact, up next? I
mean how much time do you have to talk about that?

And then the second part of my question is looking downstream, if this
Flight 125 is delayed until next year, can you talk a little bit about
the Soyuz cutout and whether or not it would make more sense to launch
119 first and then launch Hubble versus launching Hubble in February and
perhaps slipping 119 past the Soyuz mission? Can you just give us a
sense of what sort of options are on the table with that discussion?

Thanks.

MR. SHANNON: Bill, it sounds like you were listening to our discussion
earlier today because you\'re right on.

The 126 decision point, Ground Ops, the folks that do all the work at
Kennedy Space Center, they looked at the timeline for removing the
payload, to put it in the canister, bringing it back, rolling the stack,
the 125 stack back to High Bay 3 and then moving the 126 stack that is
currently on Pad B over to Pad A. If we gave them the go tomorrow to do
all that, they could have it done and be ready to launch on November
2nd.

Our crew training would not support that day. It doesn\'t look like the
cargo delivery would support that day either. Both of those are coming
in about November 14th.

So, if you think about that with no contingency, we have 12 days to make
that decision, and then everyone would be able to meet the November 14th
date.

Internally, we set a milestone of next Friday. We would like to discuss
it internally. I think the Hubble team will have enough information at
that point where we can ‑‑ at least if we don\'t know when Hubble would
go, we would know it would not be in the near term, and we would make
that decision for 126. So I expect at the end of next week, we will make
that decision.

Your question on the Soyuz was very good. There is a time starting on
March 13th really, ending May 28th, where we have two Soyuz launches and
a significant beta cutout. Of course, the Hubble mission is not
constrained by any of that. So we will consider that once we know more
about the Hubble need date.

If we could put the Hubble in and fly STS‑119 before that 18 Soyuz, that
would be good. If it looks like Hubble needs a little more time than
that, then it is very possible we could fly 119 first, let Hubble fly
sometime in that Soyuz and beta cutout with the 127 stack as the
launch‑on‑need. So all of that is still to be determined, but you are
thinking exactly like we are.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Tariq Malik.
Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you. This is Tariq Malik, Space.com and Space
News for John.

John, if you could just kind of, I guess, clarify what the targeting is
right now because it seems like you are pretty well on the way to saying
several months to February is kind of doable, but are you preserving the
chance that if they get this spare ready to go and they say yeah, it\'s
okay, that you could fly even, you know, in late October or November? I
mean if you can kind of clarify that for me, so I understand it, that
would be great. Thanks.

MR. SHANNON: Well, the only one we have any clarify on is when we could
fly 126, if Hubble slips significantly.

For Hubble launch dates, I would rather let Preston or Ed give you their
best estimate on that at this point.

MR. BURCH: Okay. Do you want me to respond to that, John?

MR. SHANNON: Yeah. Go ahead, Preston.

MR. BURCH: Okay. Well, in order to fly the spare SIC&DH unit, we have to
complete our check-out of it. We have got some ground equipment that we
need to pull together to do more rigorous testing of it.

We have vibration tests. We have got thermal vacuum testing to do and a
lot more functional testing. We also need to get the run time up on it,
and basically, it won\'t be ready to be delivered to Kennedy until about
the first week in January.

Concurrently with that is the manufacturing and assembly and fit checks
of the hardware and the design of that hardware to accommodate it on the
mule carriers where we are thinking about installing it, and there is
also the analytical integration, you know, the loads analysis that needs
to go on with the Shuttle Program. And we work closely with the Shuttle
engineers at Johnson on that.

So there is a lot of work to get us to the point in early January where
we are then ready to ship all this hardware down to Kennedy, and then we
need to install it on the mule and get the payload back into the cargo
bay of the orbiter and get ready to fly.

So mid February is looking to be a reasonable time frame to do that. I
think we would be hard‑pressed to be ready any earlier than say January.
I mean I think mid January is out of the question, and so it is looking
more like a mid‑February time frame is the right time for us.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Todd Halvorson
from Florida Today. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thanks very much. I guess I have one for John Shannon
and one for Ed Weiler.

John, I am wondering if you can give us an idea of what the crew\'s
reaction was to the news of this delay. I mean they have had the
hurricane to deal with, and now, you know, they were gearing up for
mission, and now it is off.

And for Ed, I am wondering if you could just philosophically talk about
the ups and downs of the Hubble program. I mean, this just seems to be
another big knuckleball that you guys have been tossed, and I am
wondering if you could talk about that.

MR. WEILER: Go ahead, John.

MR. SHANNON: Okay. Well, Bill, let\'s see. The crew right now is in an
integrated sim ‑‑ I\'m sorry. I mean Todd, but you know, this is just
one of those things that comes with spaceflight, and I think the crew is
very stoic. They will be ready to go fly when the hardware is ready to
go fly.

MR. WEILER: Yeah. Todd, I don\'t want to get into too much of a
philosophical discussion. Yeah, there\'s been lots of ups and downs on
Hubble, but you know, one way to look at this is not necessarily a
knuckleball. It was a high hard one that we maybe could get over the
fence.

I mean think about the other option. Think about if this failure had
occurred 2 weeks after the servicing mission. We had just put two
brand‑new instruments in and thought we had extended the life for 5 to
10 years, and this thing failed after the last Shuttle mission to
Hubble. We\'d have been singly redundant on the SIC&DH, would have
several single point failures. We could have lost the mission in 6, 12,
18 months.

So, in some sense, if this had to happen, it couldn\'t have happened at
a better time, and on the other hand, we are very lucky that were
foresighted people back in the late \'80s to decide to make an SIC&DH, a
fully redundant and replaceable unit. This isn\'t the kind of operation
where you have to take out 111 screws and rewire something. This
instrument was designed to be taken out and put in by astronauts.

So I am trying to look at the glass is half full today, and I think it
is half full for us.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thanks, Ed.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from John Johnson
with the Los Angeles Times. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you. I am not sure who to direct this to, and
this is maybe in the category of wild speculation, but I mean can we
just assume that this mission is going to happen, or is there any talk,
any possibility that things could go badly enough in trying to get ready
for this that the Hubble may have to be abandoned?

MR. BURCH: Don\'t all jump at once on that one.

\[Laughter.\]

MR. WEILER: Why don\'t you start, Preston?

MR. BURCH: Okay. I get paid to think about all the possible things that
can go wrong. Certainly, that thought has crossed my mind, but I\'ll
tell you, we have been here before. I think just about every servicing
mission has had some kind of a hardware failure in the immediate period
prior to the launch.

We had this happen on, let\'s see, Servicing Mission 2 and Servicing
Mission 3B where we had reaction wheels that failed. We had gyros that
failed just prior to Servicing Mission 3 that caused us to split the
mission in half to Mission 3A and 3B.

We had a SADE, Solar Array Drive Electronics, I think failed shortly
before Servicing Mission 1. I am not sure exactly the time frame there.

But anyhow, I don\'t see this failure as putting us over the fence and
causing NASA to want to throw up its hands and say, \"Hey, all the
hundred millions of dollars we have spent on the hardware and readiness
for this mission, we are just going to chuck it because, you know, this
is just a little too much for us.\" We have got a lot of options here,
and even if we are a little over‑subscribed on the EVA activities, the
space walking, and we had to give up, let\'s say, one of the instrument
repairs, that is far from the end of the world to get two premier
instruments operating again.

So I don\'t see Ed Weiler and Mike Griffin or myself throwing in the
towel because we have got to spend a few more tens of millions to pull
this mission off. You know, I think we are definitely going after this.

MR. WEILER: One of the advantages of having worked on this program for
three or four decades is the fact that, you know, this is nothing
compared to collaboration. I mean this whole program was declared dead
in 1990, that we would never survive it. Not only did we survive it, but
we came out, the great American comeback story.

Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity, and the Hubble team,
which includes the Shuttle team, works miracles, and you know, I am not
too concerned about this. We will find a way to get this fixed.

Luckily, we have got a spare. I mean many times we have to come up with
ways to fix things on Hubble that weren\'t designed to be fixed. This
particular failure was anticipated, and we have a spare car. We are
ready to go. We have to test it out and do due diligence to make sure it
is still working fine and all that, but we do have a spare on the
ground. We anticipated this kind of problem 20 years ago.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Nell
Greenfield Boyce with National Public Radio. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Yes. Hi.

Did I understand you correctly that the Hubble folks absolutely,
definitely want to send this spare up, and there will be no Hubble
Servicing Mission before that spare is all qualified and checked out and
made ready to go, as was said sometime after mid January?

And I guess my other question was what is happening with the Hubble now.
I mean can any observations be made, and they are just being stored on
board, or scientists do nothing? I am just wondering what the current
status is.

Thank you.

MR. WEILER: I will take that question. This is Ed.

Barring some unforeseen circumstance that, you know, the SIC&DH that we
have got on the ground for some reason doesn\'t, you know, check out, I
really don\'t see any scenario where that is going to happen.

One can say that our plan right now is to take the delay and put up the
new hardware, the fully redundant hardware, so that we can keep Hubble
going for as long as possible.

If we are going to spend the money and take all the risk involved in the
Shuttle mission, we want to be sure that we leave Hubble as healthy as
we possibly can and potentially lasting for 5 or 10 more years.

On the science side, if we successfully get Side B up and there is no
reason to believe that we can\'t, that would enable us to use the Wide
Field Planetary Camera 2 that is still operating and use the Advanced
Camera for surveys, the ultraviolet channel of that system to do
science, and of course, we can continue to use the Fine Guidance Sensors
to do astrometry.

So we could continue to do science for the next three or four months,
however long before the next Servicing Mission. That is assuming we can
bring Side B up, and again, we anticipate that shouldn\'t be a problem,
but we are going to do due diligence to be sure that we do it carefully.

MR. BURCH: Yeah. Just one minor point to add to what Ed has said, and
that is we do astrometry science using the Fine Guidance Sensors. Those
are not controlled, and the data from them is not handled by the Science
Instrument Command and Data Handling system, the SIC&DH.

So, in fact, we are doing astrometry right now, and we can move up some
of these astrometry observations that have been planned for some number
of months down the road. We can conceivably move some of those up and
doing more astrometry in the near term while we are completing the
troubleshooting and getting ready to switch over to Side B.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Mark Kaufman
with The Washington Post. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: My question has been answered.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes form Robert Zimmerman.
Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Yes. You are saying that the two‑hour space walk
doesn\'t seem like ‑‑ you might be able to squeeze that walk in without
sacrificing any other action. The unit, the spare unit on the ground
does weigh something. Is there something else going to have to come out
of the cargo bay to fit it into the Shuttle? Will you have to sacrifice
something else in that context?

MR. BURCH: No. This is Preston Burch from Goddard.

We have sufficient reserve space on two carriers. So we have a choice of
places where we could potentially carry it.

Our initial thinking is the mule carrier, which is the small carrier all
the way at the back of the cargo bay, is the most desirable place to
locate it. So there is plenty of capacity, and we have enough lift
capacity with the orbiter that this is not going to be an issue.

As a matter of fact, by putting it on the mule, we are locating this
hardware behind the center of gravity of the orbiter, and so we can
offload some of the tail ballast that we have in there. So, really, the
net impact to the orbiter\'s uplift weight capability is not adversely
impacted at all. So we don\'t see that as an issue.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Rushmore
DeNooyer with PBS NOVA. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Yes, thanks. This would be for Preston, I think.

Are your CATS engineers going to have to design any new tools to put
that box on? You said it is just 10 bolts on a door. It sounds like
maybe they won\'t.

MR. BURCH: No new tools. There should be no need for any new tools on
this.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Mark Kirkman with
Interspace News. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Yes, thank you. This question is probably for either
Preston or Ed.

I just want to know is there any constraint to being in this
configuration that you are currently in with regards to the science
packages or Hubble itself, and in particular, if you can\'t bring up the
other channel, do you have a time constraint to stay in this
configuration?

Thank you.

MR. WEILER: Go ahead, Preston.

MR. BURCH: Yeah. No. There is no time constraint for staying in this
configuration.

We do have very limited telemetry on the instruments, and so we are
rather keen to want to switch over to the B side, so that we can get the
NSSC 1 computer, which is the payload computer that operates, supervises
the five science instruments and whatnot. We would like to get that up
and running, so we can have more insight into the condition of the
instruments and how they are performing, but right now, we could stay in
this condition indefinitely.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Anne Minard from
National Geographic News. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

I just want to make sure I understand, first of all. Just to clarify,
your immediate plan is to switch to Side B as you prepare the Side A
replacement, so that you will be getting data back all the while. Is
that accurate?

MR. BURCH: Let me clarify. The Side A and Side B are all mounted
together on a single tray. So you are right. We will switch over to Side
B, and that should work, and we will be getting science data down, but
once we go up to replace the failed equipment, we will change out both A
and B. They are all mounted together as a single integrated set of
electronics on a single tray. So we will be getting a brand‑new Science
Data Formatter A and a brand‑new Science Data Formatter B. We will be
getting a brand‑new NSSC 1 computer, new power supplies, the whole nine
yards. So it is a pretty big package, but it will all be new hardware.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Okay. And a follow‑up to that, do you anticipate the
recovery of the data that you have not been able to get because of the
failure, and if so, when, and what other data is at risk? What other
experiments are at risk while you have these delays?

MR. BURCH: This is really a science question. Maybe Ed can answer it
better than I can, but you know, the data that we have taken so far,
obviously, on the Solid State Recovers has been dumped to the ground,
but in terms of future observations or lost observations, generally
there are opportunities to conduct those observations at a future time.

So we would anticipate that most of the observations that had been
planned will simply be rescheduled once we have our Side B capability
implemented, and I think there will be very little in the way of lost
science ultimately.

I mean, certainly, a target of opportunity that comes and goes and
cannot be seen again would be something that would not be recoverable,
but those are pretty rare, and I am not aware of any that we have missed
so far or that are anticipated.

So it is a rescheduling thing. I think we can reschedule all the
observations that we\'re playing.

MR. WEILER: Right. This is not an unusual circumstance. Over the 18
years of Hubble, luckily Hubble has safe modes. That is, when something
is wrong, the system protects itself, and that has happened many times
over 18 years, and during those periods, you lose a few days of science
or perhaps even a week, but for the critical observations you lost, they
get rescheduled, and they get done eventually.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Whose science got lost?

MR. WEILER: There are thousands of users of Hubble, and believe me, in
the last 24 hours, I don\'t think we have done that particular piece of
information up, but if they were critical observations, high priority,
they would be rescheduled later, you know, in a week or two or whenever.

MR. BURCH: There is a Hubble daily report that comes out in the morning,
and it lists all of the scheduled observations each day, and if you have
been following those, you will see that there are a lot of observations
per day that Hubble does. So we do have a list of things, but we would
have to go back to the Space Telescope Science Institute to get a
comprehensive list of all that.

MR. WEILER: Right.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Okay. Thank you.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Andrew Lawler with
Science Magazine. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: I guess this question is for Preston.

Obviously, the failure comes as a surprise, but I am curious. Was there
any discussion in the past couple of years as to whether or not this
spare should be included in the upcoming mission, or was it assumed that
this would continue operating?

MR. BURCH: Well, we never talked seriously about changing it out.
However, we were concerned about the lack of the ability to cross‑strap
the two sides, the A and the B sides of the SIC&DH with the A and the B
sides of the Data Management System, which is the other electronics on
board the observatory that handles all the various subsystems and
whatnot, and so we did some extensive engineering on building a
cross‑strap kit which would further enhance the redundancy we thought of
the observatory.

Actually, this was looked into when the observatory was originally being
designed, and it was tossed out because it started making the
electronics far too complicated, and in fact, that is where we wound up
about a year or so ago after doing a lot of engineering on this. It
became very complicated, very expensive, and we thought we might be
doing as much harm as good in trying to cross‑strap the units, but there
is still the fundamental problem that when you lose one of the Science
Data Formatters, you now only have one left, which you are hanging the
whole science future of Hubble on, and that is not the position we want
to be in.

But you know, there are other components on the observatory. I mean I
don\'t want to go into, you know, a discussion here to try to scare
everybody, but you can postulate a lot of things that could fail that
would seriously impact the program.

Hubble does have a lot of redundancy, and as Ed has pointed out, what we
are trying to do here is restore redundancy. We are trying to make
Hubble at least one fault tolerant and not have it be zero fault
tolerant as we leave Servicing Mission 4.

MR. WEILER: Yeah. I think to add to Preston, Preston actually alluded to
this earlier, but there is kind of an old saying in the Space Program,
especially for electronic components. If the unit survives infant
mortality, that is, you turn it on and it doesn\'t fail in the first
month or two, it is going to probably last for a long, long time, and in
this case, if your radio has been running consistently for 18 years, do
you really want to unplug it to try a new one?

So things like Voyager lasted 40 years. Landsats have lasted 20 years.
So this is not the kind of thing that you would replace just for the
sake of replacing it.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Well, to follow up on that, obviously it is a gamble
to postpone a mission to Hubble given that the telescope is aging and
given, as you point out, there are a lot of systems that could go wrong.
So are you weighing that, or is the decision that if this spare works,
that we are going to delay the mission and fly it? I mean is that a
pretty set decision? Have you already done the analysis of that
essentially?

MR. WEILER: Well, you know, we more or less made that decision, but it
is based on what Preston has alluded to and I have also alluded to.

You have got an option. If you go to Side B and Side B works, okay, then
you can do the Servicing Mission, and you can operate your new
instrument, but at that point, you have several single point failures
that there is no redundancy for versus a two‑ or three‑ or four‑month
delay to get a brand‑new instrument that has been sitting on the ground
in a pristine environment which has full redundancy.

So, if we are going do to this final Servicing Mission and spend the
money involved and launch seven astronauts, we thought it would be
proper due diligence if we ensure that this mission would leave Hubble
with a good solid five‑ or six‑ or seven‑year future.

MR. BURCH: Just to amplify on what Ed is saying, when we switch over to
the B side Science Data Formatter, as I mentioned earlier, we have to
switch over several components on the DMS. There is about five
electronics boxes over there that need to be switched over as well.
Those now become additionally single points of failure to the science
mission. Okay. So, if we lose those, then the game is over. So we have
now introduced five more potential single points of failure into the
system. That is why we are looking at the cross‑strapping kit was to try
to avoid bringing in those additional single points of failure.

But at this point, we feel the prudent thing is buy a little extra
insurance for ourselves and do everything we can to make SM‑4 productive
for the next five years.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Irene Klotz
with Reuters. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thanks very much.

I just wanted to know if you had an idea of how long the telescope
operations will be suspended while the changeover to the other side of
the equipment, of the computer is done, and then I have a follow‑up.

MR. BURCH: Okay. We originally plan to be in a position to switch over
the observatory to the B side around the end of this week. That is
probably going to be delayed a day or two, something on that order,
while we complete the engineering and risk assessments and review the
ground test data, et cetera.

The actual switch‑over takes approximately a full day to accomplish.
Once that is done, then we need to bring up the instruments again, and
we will be back doing science within ‑‑ I don\'t know ‑‑ a couple of
days of having accomplished the switch‑over. So it is on that order.

So, hopefully, I would say within two weeks from today, we will be back
like we were on the A side, producing as much science as we were.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thanks.

And the second question is if for some reason, the spare doesn\'t check
out properly, would flying the Hubble mission then kind of move up again
in priority to kind of get it serviced as soon as possible if it looked
like flying the spare wasn\'t going to be an option?

MR. BURCH: If flying the spare turns out not to be a viable option, then
yeah, we would want to go ahead and fly as soon as we can, but that is
really a question for John Shannon.

I think one of the options that John and his team were considering was
possibly a one‑month delay to launching our Servicing Mission, but we
can\'t obviously keep them hanging.

So, John, that is really a question for you, I think.

MR. SHANNON: Well, again, for Irene, there is more to come in the
troubleshooting, and if it turns out that they are unable to
flight‑qualify the spare, then we would just adjust our schedules.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Peter King with
CBS News Radio. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you, and this is for Preston.

I think you told us that the replacement box weighs in the neighborhood
of 135 pounds. I am just wondering about the sheer size of this and if
you can compare it to an everyday object. Like is it as big as a
refrigerator, as big as two refrigerators, anything like that, that
would help?

MR. BURCH: Okay. Well, it is 21‑1/2 inches by 32‑1/2 inches by 9‑1/2
inches. So it is a little less than 3‑feet long, a little less than
2‑feet wide, and about three‑quarters of a foot or less than a foot
thick, and it is a relatively easy box to manipulate in space.

Of course, that is easy for me to say. I don\'t have to do that job, but
certainly compared to things like science instruments and FGS\'s and
batteries, the battery modules are pretty heavy. They weigh almost 500
pounds, and so there is much more mass to manipulate there.

So this is one of the more easier boxes for the astronauts to
manipulate, in my view.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: So it is like a small, small ice box. Thanks a lot.
That is all I have got.

MR. WEILER: Very small.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Clara Moskowitz
with Space.com. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Hi. I am just wondering. After you replace this box,
if you do go ahead and do that, and after all of the servicing missions
that have come before, how many elements of the original 18‑year‑old
Hubble will be left, or is it almost a brand‑new telescope at this
point?

MR. WEILER: Preston, did you keep track of that?

MR. BURCH: Yeah. Well, now, that\'s a great question.

MR. WEILER: That is.

MR. BURCH: You know, the power system, the electrical power system has
been almost totally replaced. We are on our third generation of solar
arrays. We have a new power control unit which is really Hubble\'s heart
that was changed out on the last Servicing Mission, and we will have six
brand‑new batteries. So the only thing that remains are the power
distribution units, and knock on wood, they seem to be doing fine. We
have changed a few fuses here and there.

There are an awful lot of components. Hubble is very big, and there\'s a
lot of components on board, and there is a tremendous amount of stuff
that hasn\'t been changed out, but you know, we have changed out the
tape recorders. We originally launched with reel‑to‑reel tape recorders.
We had three of those for recording science and engineering data. We
have got one left, but they were replaced with Solid State recorders
that have 12 times the storage capacity of the original mechanical
devices.

Hubble got a brain transplant on Servicing Mission 3A. So the main
computer, although it is old by desktop computer standards, it is still
very advanced, very capable for our application.

I am trying to think here what else.

MR. WEILER: Gyros.

MR. BURCH: Yeah, the gyros. Well, we have replaced those just about
every other Servicing Mission, and we have got some enhancements that we
have made to these that will make them even longer‑lived. You know, the
trend has been for increasing life because we have improved the
manufacturing processes with that, which have helped a lot. This time
around, we are using silver‑plated flex leads to resist the corrosion
and brittlement problem in the suspension fluid. So the gyros are much
better. We have got a couple of reaction wheels that we changed out, two
out of the four.

So, yeah, Hubble in many respects, you know, because it has been renewed
and upgraded and its capabilities improved, it is a far better, a far
more robust observatory than when it was launched, and as a matter of
fact, in the early days, we had hardware hooping out left and right.

This gets back to Ed\'s comment about infant mortality. I mean at one
point, we were beginning to wonder if there was ever going to be an end
to this, but things settled out, and over the years, with all the
various upgrades, it has been remarkable.

Of course, I haven\'t even touched on the science instruments. The
capabilities of the new instruments is just astounding.

So a lot of stuff has been changed out.

MR. WEILER: All of the original instruments have been changed out.

MR. BURCH: More than once.

MR. WEILER: More than once.

One thing we still have though is the primary mirror.

MR. BURCH: And the secondary.

\[Laughter.\]

MR. BURCH: But yeah, there is the DMS. There are the gimbals on the
High‑Gain Antennas. Those are electromechanical devices. We do have a
spare for that. We worry about that.

We did replace one S‑Band Single Access Transmitter. The other one is
the original. We do have the two MA transponders, which provide the
engineering data. So we have worried about losing an S‑Band Single
Access Transmitter, but we could lose both of those and still get
science data down through the MA transponder, believe it or not,
admittedly a much reduced rate, but we still have a number of tricks up
our sleeves to cope with failures in other areas.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: And our next question comes from Ben Moraski
with Madill News Service. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Hi. I had one question. How confident are you guys
that the Side B packaging is actually going to be able to run when you
switch over, and that it hasn\'t been caught in whatever failure has
plagued Side A?

MR. BURCH: Well, Side B, the Side B Science Data Formatter and the
associated electronics have been off. So, really, it has been in the
world\'s best storehouse or warehouse that you could imagine because we
haven\'t had engineers and technicians that could doodle around with it,
drop it on the floor and stuff like that. So it has been powered off,
and although as Ed pointed out, it has been in the radiation
environment, with all the discrete components, et cetera, they are
fairly robust to that kind of degradation.

It was checked out extensively on the ground. We did the switching to
Side B and back to Side A and back to Side B on the observatory prior to
launch, and so it was all checked out.

So we are pretty confident. I hope I am not jinxing us by saying all
that, but it should work.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you. That\'s all I had.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: The next question comes from Robert Pearlman.
Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Hi. For John.

If you decide to fly Endeavour first, are there any constraints or any
particular challenges defying the launch‑on‑need mission for STS‑125
with Discovery?

MR. SHANNON: Robert, it would take a rebuild of the flight software
specific to Discovery to fly that mission. We did kick off that work
today just to protect that option.

If the rescue mission were 127, that would also be on Endeavour, just
like the current launch‑on‑need rescue mission is, and we would already
have the software built for that. So that is all it would take is just a
new software build.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Okay. And also just quickly, if you have talked about
it at all, it is going to be holding Pad B longer than what was
originally expected. So it probably will have an effect on Ares 1‑X. Can
you allow for additional changes to be as you wait for this mission to
launch?

MR. SHANNON: We have been in discussions with the Constellation Program
all day today about that very question. If we delay using Pad B, I think
there are some things we could do, like continuing to build the
lightning towers out there.

The bigger concern really is the Mobile Launch Platform that STS‑125 is
sitting on. That is the same Mobile Launch Platform that we expect to
use for Ares 1‑X. We are discussing if we delay Hubble, how we can work
around that constraint.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you.

MODERATOR: Hi. This is J.D. We are coming up on the one‑hour block. We
have still got two people in queue that haven\'t asked questions. We are
going to extend it just a moment or two to let their questions come in.
Then we are going to wrap up.

Melanie?

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: Yes. Our next question is going to come from
Phil Berardelli with Science Now. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thanks. My question has been answered.

TELECONFERENCE OPERATOR: That would make our final question coming from
Matt Phillips from the Orion Review. Your line is open.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Thank you. This is for Ed or Preston.

First of all, did you notice any signs of malfunction prior to this past
weekend?

MR. BURCH: No, we did not. There was no indication of an impending
failure, and even, you know ,we have looked back over the telemetry that
is available to us to see if perhaps we missed something, and again,
there was no trend information that pointed to anything that was about
to happen.

MEDIA QUESTIONER: Okay. And then kind of a follow‑up to questions that
were asked earlier, since we knew this was going to be the last
Servicing Mission for Hubble, I am surprised that steps weren\'t taken
for the back‑ups. You had mentioned the back‑up data, you knew that it
could be replaced, why it wasn\'t already in stability or tested for
these things, and I think you mentioned also some of the other
components that you know you have back‑ups for. Why wasn\'t this stuff
studied or tested and prepared for launch, just in case of the back‑up
plan?

MR. BURCH: That would take a tremendous amount of money and time to do t
hat. We would have to add a substantial number of engineers to do all
that, and you know, if you did that on every mission, the total cost of
the program would have been substantially higher, and of course, you
have to weigh that off against the risks that you are taking of a delay,
but there is a huge inventory of hardware that potentially could be
changed out on any mission.

So it just becomes really unaffordable. Well, it is basically a question
I think of resources to be able to do something like that.

Ed, you might want to add to that.

MR. WEILER: And priorities. I mean, you know, if you wanted to replace
everything that is working now on Hubble with spares that we have on the
ground ‑‑ I am just taking a crazy guess ‑‑ you would probably need
another three, four, five EVAs, which is another Shuttle mission.

So each time we go up there, we have to evaluate what problems we have
and that we know we can fix, what new science instruments we want to put
on, and it is all put in a priority.

If we had only filled up three EVAs on this mission and had two left,
then maybe we would have done some of that stuff, but just to do what we
had to do with the highest priority, we filed all five EVAs, chock‑full,
six hours each.

MODERATOR: All right. Well, thanks, Ed and the panel.

That is going to do it for today\'s media telecon. I would like to thank
the panelists for their time. If you have still questions, if you could
e‑mail Don Savage or myself, J.D. Harrington, we will see about getting
the answers to you as soon as we can.

Don\'t forget that this telecon was recorded. You can dial in at
1‑866‑415‑2342, or toll free, 1‑203‑369‑0687, any time day or night in
the next 30 days to replay the telecon. Those numbers again,
1‑866‑415‑2342, or toll free, 1‑203‑369‑0687.

Finally, for more information about any of NASA\'s various projects,
visit us on the Web at www.nasa.gov.

Again, thanks for joining us, and have a great night.

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