Space Telescope Is Good To Go
Dispatch #4 (Wednesday, December 22)

Johm Grunsfeld is on a foot restraint connected to Discovery's remote manipulator system. Steve Smith is using handrails on the telescope.

Dear Family and Friends,

What a satisfaction to get a successful EVA despite the difficulties encountered in some of the tasks. It was like in the simulation.

From the arm operator perspective was the visual cues. The view out the window is so great, day or night, that I looked out the aft window 99% of the time, sometimes without even checking the numbers on the RMS panel. The arm flies very well. I like the smooth feeling on the translation hand controller compared to any of the flying sticks we use in the simulations.

By sticking my eyes against the aft windows, I had the impression to be outside with my friends Steve and John. To free my hands at all times, I used a Headset Interface Adapter attached to FRED (the space chair we have at the robotic work station) to key the microphone with my right foot. I could fly both rotations and translations and talk on the radio at the same time.

Astronaut Steven L. Smith, payload commander, holds onto a handrail during the first space walk of the STS-103 servicing mission with the Hubble Space Telescope .

The main objective of the mission is now achieved, which means that the space telescope is good to go on its own and resume science with its configuration as of today. But we'll work on it more to make it even more performant.

I had a chance to go eat "shrimp cocktail fajita" and my french food "bacon with lentils" as Claude to the controls for a while and drank herb tea "digerel" to conclude the meal.

I hope you got to see good video of some of the work done today. The inner hatch just opened, so I go down in the middeck to congratulate the space walkers...

Cheers to all.