With its aperture door closed and antennas secure, the Hubble Space Telescope is standing by to be plucked from its orbit for servicing by the STS-82 crew. Tonight, Commander Ken Bowersox and Pilot Scott Horowitz will perform the final series of thruster firings to bring the Space Shuttle Discovery within robot arm's reach of the orbiting telescope. Then, as the orbiter approaches, Bowersox will control firing of the steering jets to make sure they do not contaminate the sensitive HST instruments. When Discovery and HST are close enough, Mission Specialist Steve Hawley will use the orbiter's robot arm to gently capture the telescope and pull it to its work platform in the payload bay. The tools and systems needed for the rendezvous operations and the four six-hour spacewalks were checked by crew members during the second day of the mission.
All systems are ready to support the servicing operations.
Lee and Smith will perform the first and third spacewalks while astronauts Greg Harbaugh and Joe Tanner perform the second and fourth.