Becoming
skilled at any activity, whether it’s playing a sport, making
music, baking a cake, or installing sensitive equipment on the Hubble
Space Telescope, requires practice. Amazingly,
astronauts rehearse their servicing mission tasks in very large
swimming pools. Floating underwater simulates the weightlessness
the astronauts experience in space.
Being weightless and bundled in bulky
space suits during space walks makes even simple tasks very difficult.
So astronauts in training “suit up” and are lowered
into the water to practice every activity over and over again
on a submerged model of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) uses information gathered from these practice sessions
to plan the actual mission and to create a manifest.
