Houston: Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis grabbed the high-flying Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday, after a successful rendezvous for an ambitious spacewalking overhaul of the lab.
Astronaut Megan McArthur grappled the 13.2-meter long telescope with the shuttle's robot arm at 2234 hrs IST, after Atlantis commander Scott Altman manoeuvered his spacecraft within 10 metres of the scientific icon.
“Houston, Atlantis, Hubble has arrived on board," Altman radioed Mission Control.
The two spacecraft sailed 560 kilometres above Australia at the time of the capture. After the grapple, McArthur carefully hoisted the observatory toward a rotating work platform in the rear of the shuttle's cargo bay.
The big telescope will remain anchored to the platform for the next six days.
Wednesday's rendezvous operation grew more challenging when a communications problem kept the Atlantis crew from seeing the results of positioning commands they transmitted to the telescope.
Hubble's Maryland command center monitored the commands instead, relaying the results to the astronauts. The astronauts plan a camera survey of the telescope's condition late on Thursday. The telescope could show signs of weathering from its long exposure to corrosive ultraviolet radiation, NASA warned.
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