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No.293 SIM音読用英文

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Astronauts Declare Hubble Mission a NASA Victory
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The astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis

were all smiling Wednesday

as they held their first news conference from space

since equipping the Hubble telescope

with a new camera and other enhancements this week.


They had a reason for smiling.


They successfully made unprecedented repairs

to a telescope the size of a school bus

while orbiting 560 kilometers above Earth.


Astronaut John Grunsfeld says

the complexity of the Hubble mission demonstrated

the importance of having humans,

not just machines, in space.


"We showed

that you can push that technology even further.


That people can creatively solve problems in real time,

as was more than aptly demonstrated

by Mike Massimino pulling that handrail off

that was you know something

that I don't think anybody ever anticipated."


Grunsfeld was referring to a challenge

the astronauts faced

on the fourth of their five spacewalks,

when astronauts Mike Massimino and Michael Good spent hours

struggling to remove a stuck bolt

from a handrail on the telescope.


Massimino explains.


"You know, I was out there,

and just couldn't believe

that we weren't able to, I wasn't able to get that last bolt on the
handle off.


When we trained,

it was actually the easiest."


A support team on the ground

at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland

scrambled to figure out an alternative plan.


It eventually advised Massimino

to rip the handrail off

with brute force.


Despite the challenges,

the astronauts say

they left the 19-year-old telescope stronger than ever.


They expect it to continue working

for another five to ten years.


The Hubble is the first major optical telescope

to float

high above Earth's distorting atmosphere, rain clouds and light
pollution.


That unobstructed view has produced spectacular images

of far-away galaxies

and billowing towers of gas and dust

rising from clusters of stars.


Data gathered by the Hubble

has enabled astronomers to determine

the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.


The U.S. space agency considers the Hubble's work

the most significant advance in astronomy

since the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei turned his telescope

toward the stars 400 years ago.


Kate Woodsome, VOA News, Washington
by danueno | 2009-05-27 14:25 | SIM音読用英文


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