So this week I'm going to be talking about STS-125. It was the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. So this was the fifth one. It was Space Shuttle Atlantis. And so it launched in May 2009 and it was a little bit of a controversial mission. So 2009 was not too long after the loss of Columbia back in 2003. And after they lost Columbia, they had initiated a new policy, the idea of the ISS as safe harbor. So the idea was, you know, we're not going to launch any more shuttles except the ISS. Because that way if you arrive on orbit with a big gaping hole in your wing, well, no problem. You can set up camp at ISS and we'll come get you eventually. But due to the way that the orbits work out with Hubble versus ISS, there was no way to do that. So it's like if you're going in Hubble, you're going in the Hubble and there's no way you can get to the ISS if you're in trouble despite what Sandra Bullock thinks. So they originally decided, okay, no more Hubble servicing missions, you know, if the Hubble breaks, that's going to be it. And there was kind of an uproar. And in fact, you know, a lot of people attribute that to why the current NASA Administrator stepped down. Because it seemed like the Hubble Space Telescopes, like the single most important scientific, you know, individual scientific instrument probably in history. You know, we can't just let it go for no reason. And you know, the astronauts know the risks and they want to go. So, you know, once a new administrator came in surprise surprise, we've got STS 425. So it was also really interesting though, because despite not having safe harbor at ISS, they did prepare an emergency rescue mission. It was kind of like, it was almost like the what if scenario of like if they had known that Columbia had an issue, what they have done. But this time they had planned out ahead of time, they called it STS 400. So they had endeavor pretty much ready to go because it was launching in about a month or so anyway. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And they had been doing this for other missions as well. So they'd have like a shuttle, you know, mostly ready to go that could go up and help rescue the astronauts and something came up. But it wasn't quite as urgent because they'd be at the space station which could support them for a while. Whereas this was like, all right, we got to go fast. So the idea was if something went wrong, they would be able to get going within a week or so. And the astronauts and Atlantis would just kind of hunker down and wait for that. So the idea was a four person crew, they would launch up there and do this completely ridiculous maneuver where they kind of have two shuttles like back to back, flying forward with like, well, once pointing down, once pointing up, endeavor is grabbing onto Atlantis with a robot arm that transfer all the astronauts back and forth and then ditch Atlantis remotely in the ocean. Sounds easy. Yeah, exactly. No big deal, especially considering, you know, not everyone on board is, you know, trained for EVAs and all that other stuff. But yeah, so like I just thought that was really felt like there's a whole, I should talk about this in other times, this whole like shadow missions. Like shuttle missions that never quite happened. Yeah. So that was SDS 400, which luckily we didn't meet because they arrived and captured it on May 13th. No problems a couple of days later. They had a whole bunch of spacewalks with, you know, varying interesting problems and, you know, very complicated stuff that they had to coordinate for years. But one I think is really interesting is Mike Massimino's spacewalk on day seven. So this one got a little bit of fame because they were replacing the spectrograph on Hubble. But to do that, they'd have to do this incredibly complicated procedure where, you know, it was never really meant to be replaced on orbit. So they, they'd have to remove like dozens and dozens of those screws. They can't just let the screws float away because then you have to make a client a test next month. So they designed this like plastic thing they put on top and you put a screwdriver through the hole, unscrew it, and it would come out in a little area and side work it float around freely, but be captured. And they'd have to just do this for hundreds of, I think there's a couple of hundreds of screws, you know, and you know, they'd practice and practice for this. So they get up there all ready to do this crazy thing. And first things first, they got to go ahead and take off this hand rail that's, uh, prevents up from opening the door. And hand rail doesn't open. It's got to, they can't take it off. They can't get it out. There's a sheared bolt in it. They can't get rid of it. Ooh. And it's like, all right, well, we got one part of it off. Like, what are we going to do about this? So they start talking through the alternatives and they eventually thinking, can we just like rip it off? Because like they know, they know how strong it is and they know, you know, what's capable of, you know, a human. So they're like, all right, all right, Mike, like hang tight. We're going to try something real quick. So the astronauts are just hanging out. And real quick on the ground, they get some guys together, they get a replica of the handle, they hook it up to a replica of the Hubble. They get a force meter to pull as hard as they can to the brakes. And they'll know how much force to break it. And there's actually a cell phone video of this. And since no one was actually holding onto it, it's a force meter. When it did break, it went flying across the room and it made a big clatter. And they're like, all right, well, obviously that won't be the same. But yeah, look, you can do it. So Michigan Control sees the cell phone video and they go, okay, Mike, here's what you're going to do. They end up being a little more on the ball, but they wrapped it all up in tapes. So they break off and they're like, all right, you know, Mike, don't smash your face plate. Don't go, hold on to this thing. All sorts of nasty scenarios that could have happened. But Mike grabs hold of it and pops it right off. Wow, nice. And then they get off with the highly successful space walk on this highly successful mission. What do they do with it? They toss it off into somewhere. They hold onto it. They tape it to their bind it to some so it doesn't or is it still attached somewhere? It's just not attached there. You know, I've tried to find this out because in my ideal world, it's mounted on Mike Massiminos. Right, exactly. The victory. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't know what happened to it, but likely since the Russians are all about throwing stuff overboard during EVAs, I think what happened is they have, usually have like a bag that they can just kind of carry stuff around and they probably just brought it back in. You know, I think with so much stuff going on up there, the last thing you want to do is give the guys on the ground a new object to track. Especially because like, you know, that high up, the atmospheric drag isn't as high, so it would be up there for a while. So I'm almost certain that they stowed it somewhere, I probably brought it back with them. But yeah, it's just kind of like, you know, stuff like that is why space flight is so fast. You know, you've got this incredibly complicated mission, you train for years, you've got this $10 billion space vehicle. You've got this, you know, I forget how much Hubble cost, billions of dollars in telescope, super ultra sensitive. And you got these guys who are like the best in the world at this. And it comes down to like, dude, can you just like tear this off my hand? And like, I like it a lot too, because it's also in my mind a great argument for why humans belong in space. You know, originally, they was talking about developing a robot that would do all this. And it would have cost on its own billions of dollars. It would have been completely, it would have been a really cool project. But it would have been, you know, really, really, really difficult, really expensive. And it almost certainly would have failed because it wouldn't have been able to tear the handle off. You know, like there was another space walk earlier on where they had a bolt that was stuck and they had to keep ratcheting up the attention of the torque rider to like, finally get it off. And it was way past specifications. So, you know, but if you got a guy up there, you know, hey man, just do it. Yeah. And that's the other amazing thing about it too, is that, you know, not only are people training for all this, but you know, they're also training for something that they never expected to have to do in the first place. Yeah. You're planning for things that are kind of, you know, rebuilding something that wasn't meant to be rebuilt. And that's just a whole another, you know, side of the coin. Yeah, I mean, that's why when they're looking at it for astronaut candidates, they really want people that have displayed that kind of adaptability, that kind of on the fly intelligence, because you never quite know what you're going to have to handle. You know, no one taught the Apollo 13 guys how to build a carbon dioxide scrubber. They have to learn that fly using over like audio instructions over the radio, like, you know, it's just stuff like that. And then stuff like that crops up all the time. And so, you know, it's one of the, like that story in particular is one I definitely like to go to for when people talk about, you know, why are we sending people up there when we can just send the robots? Like, because robots are great at some things and not so great at other things. Exactly. Yeah. And being able to have folks on the ground emulate your scenario with the stuff that you have at hand is great also. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. To be fair, this is probably another topic as well, but they do simulate that kind of stuff with the rovers as well. For instance, they have a vehicle called Scarecrow, which looks, it's kind of like the bottom of curiosity without the top. It's all gangly looking at the name. And if they got something really tricky, they'll scramble together and make like a simulated version of that Martian landscape and try different technical systems to work. Interesting. Yeah. But, you know, that'll take place over the course of weeks, and not while Mike Messimino is hanging around the robot arm. That's an interesting question. I mean, you know, if you're on a spacewalk like that, and they say, okay, wait. Are you literally just hanging out in space or do they give you something else to do? Go have a latte. Right. You know, this is another thing that I'll qualify that I don't know for sure exactly, but I think a lot of times what you'll see on like ISS Spacewalks at least are kind of like, you know, other stuff they could be doing. Yeah. And so, I would imagine that if they were like, look, this is going to take us like an hour and a half, you know, they might have enough time to go start on another task. Because I do, I do know that one of the rarest things for Spacewalkers is actually having time to look at and enjoy it. You know, they talk about like, you know, it's hard to believe, but you're out there for eight hours, but it's like, no, every single one of those seconds is correct. Workwork, workwork, workwork. And you've been training for years and you don't want to biff this up. So, you're going to be totally focused. But, you know, there is at least one case of that. I think it was, it was a, it was a Apollo 7, I want to say, or Apollo 9. There was a Spacewalk in Low Earth orbit where one of the Spacewalkers is having an issue, but the other one was already halfway out the door. And he got to just hang out there with literally nothing to do for an hour. Wow. Just like, looking around and he said it was amazing. I don't want to say a name because that's wrong. It was just like, that is like probably one of the most enviable moments in all Spacewalk. I feel like, you know, even like the Lunar Guy is probably thinking like, oh man, really? Unstructured time.