Space Shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino haspenned a riveting articlefor Esquire cartridge recounting his torturesome attempt to vivify the Hubble Space Telescope back in 2009 . His account is downright horrifying — the material of spacewalk nightmare .
Back in May 2009 , Massimino was opt to perform a spacewalk during an Atlantis shuttlecock mission .
His labor was to renovate an pawn that had failed — a machine used to notice the atmospheres of far - off planets . But while removing the screws of a front panel , he deprive one of them :
And I realize that that handrail ’s not coming off , which means I ca n’t get to the memory access panel with these 117 screw that I ’ve been worrying about for five years , which intend I ca n’t get to the business leader supply that betray , which mean we ’re not gon na be capable to fix this instrument today , which means all these smart scientists ca n’t find life on other planets .
And I ’m to charge for this .
And I could see what they would be say in the science book of the time to come . This was gon na be my bequest . My minor and my grandchildren would read in their schoolroom : We would know if there was life on other planets , but Gabby and Daniel ’s dada break the Hubble Space Telescope , and we ’ll never know .
And through this incubus that had just lead off , I look at my brother Bueno , next to me in his space causa , and he was there to attend to in the repair but could not take over my role . He had his own responsibilities , and I was the one civilize to do the now broken part of the repair . It was my job to fix this thing . I turned and looked into the cabin where my five crewmates were , and I realized nobody in there had a blank suit on .
They could n’t number out here and aid me . And then I actually face at the Earth ; I looked at our planet , and I thought , There are gazillion of people down there , but there ’s no agency I ’m gon na get a family call on this one . No one can help me .
I felt this rich desolation . And it was n’t just a Saturday - afternoon - with - a - book alone . I experience detach from the Earth . I felt that I was by myself , and everything that I knew and loved and that made me feel comfortable was far away . And then it started getting dark and insensate .
Because we travel 17,500 miles an time of day , ninety minutes is one lick around the world . So it ’s forty - five minutes of sunshine and forty - five minutes of darkness . And when you enter the darkness , it is not just dark . It ’s the coloured black I have ever experienced . It ’s the complete absence of light . It gets cold , and I could find that chilliness , and I could smell out the swarthiness coming . And it just supply to my loneliness .
show the eternal sleep of Massimino’saccountand observe out what he did next .
ScienceSpace
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