Spacewalking astronauts spent their second day outside the space shuttle Columbia on Tuesday, adding a second new solar array to the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 7-hour, 16-minute spacewalk, astronauts James Newman and Michael Massimino also replaced one of the telescope’s stabilizing gyroscopes. The newly installed solar arrays are smaller than the telescope’s previous arrays, but they actually provide 20% more power. Three more spacewalks are still planned.
Hubble Reveals Backwards Galaxy
The latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a spiral galaxy that seems to be rotating in the wrong direction. Astronomers expected that galaxy NGC 4622, located 111 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, should rotate counter-clockwise but it actually goes clockwise. It’s believed that the galaxy consumed a smaller companion galaxy recently which helped reverse its spin.