Space shuttle Endeavour astronaut Andrew Feustel works to lubricate the snares on the end effector of the International Space Station's DEXTRE robotic arm during his spacewalk in this image from NASA TV May 22, 2011.NASA TV/Reuters
The fans and pumps hummed and a crane groaned as Andrew Feustel, encased in a stiff, heavy, pressurized spacesuit, was carefully lowered into the giant indoor pool.
Under the shimmering turquoise surface, scuba divers pulled Dr. Feustel toward what looked like a labyrinthine, underwater city, where he practised for a future spacewalk on mock-ups of the space shuttle and Hubble telescope.
Dr. Feustel is the Canadian astronaut nearly no one in this country knows about. He is officially listed as a U.S.-born staffer of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Only friends and relatives know that he has dual nationality, having acquired Canadian citizenship after marrying a Canadian woman and studying at Queen's University in Kingston.
"We obviously are currently residing in the U.S., and I was hired as a U.S. astronaut, but we have close ties to Canada," Dr. Feustel said in an interview.
"We really love spending time up there and being with the family. So it's an important part of our identity to be associated with Canada."
While Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dave Williams is these days putting the finishing touches on his training for an Aug. 9 flight to the International Space Station, Dr. Feustel is gearing up for his own mission next year.
He has been picked for a crucial shuttle flight:STS-125 is scheduled to lift off in September, 2008 to repair and upgrade the Hubble telescope.
Dr. Feustel grew up in Michigan. He was doing his master's in geophysics at Purdue University in Indiana when he met a fellow student and residence-hall monitor, Indira Bhatnagar, a McGill psychology graduate from Cornwall, Ont.
After earning their degrees and getting married, they moved to Kingston and had two children."We didn't really know what our long-term plans were, and my kids were both born there, so they had dual citizenships."
For that reason, he said, his wife encouraged him to apply for Canadian citizenship.
Dr. Feustel completed his doctorate at Queen's, then the family moved to Houston, where he became a NASA astronaut. They visit Canada every year.
For his first trip to space, Dr. Feustel will be part of a seven-astronaut crew that will go on a fourth and final repair of the Hubble telescope.
"It's all new for me and it's exciting," Dr. Feustel said.
Since it went into orbit 17 years ago, Hubble has revolutionized astronomy. Dr. Feustel's fellow spacewalking astronaut, the astronomer John Grunsfeld, has done two previous Hubble repair flights and is unabashed about its importance.
"I feel like a mission to Hubble is worth risking my life for," Dr. Grunsfeld said when STS-125 was announced.
The 11-day flight will cram in five spacewalks in five days, with Dr. Feustel doing three of them in a team with Dr. Grunsfeld.
Since the Columbia tragedy, the shuttle program has lived with the spectre of another spacecraft damaging its heat shield and burning on re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Should a shuttle lose heat tiles, protocol would be for the crew to take shelter in the space station, which can sustain them for two months until they can return to Earth.
Dr. Feustel's mission, however, would be orbiting too far away to make it to the space station. The crew has to pack supplies for 25 days, and would wait for another shuttle to rescue them. But the likelihood of such scenarios are remote. These days, Dr. Feustel's mind is devoted to the challenges of his three spacewalks.
He recalled a conversation with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. "We both agreed that, really, you are afforded rights you have no right to even have," Dr. Feustel said.
"We think of ourselves as, and we really are, just normal individuals that have very exciting jobs and great opportunities."
Coming missions
The training that Canadian astronauts Dave Williams and Andrew Feustel are undergoing is part of a flurry of coming flights, as the United States, Canada and others hasten to finish the 16-country International Space Station and gear up for the next phase of space travel - lunar and Martian exploration.
STS-117 Set to lift off on Friday, this next mission will supply and expand the space station, where humans have permanently lived for nearly seven consecutive years.
STS-118 On Aug. 9, Dr. Williams will take off on this shuttle flight, where he will perform three spacewalks to add components to the space station.
STS-125 In September, 2008, Dr. Feustel will fly with six other astronauts to repair and upgrade the Hubble space telescope.
CEV The aging shuttle fleet is to be retired in 2010, to be replaced by the new Crew Exploration Vehicle - which resembles the Apollo-era lunar spacecraft.
Repairing the Hubble
In September, 2008, Canadian astronaut Andrew Feustel and six others will fly in space shuttle Atlantis to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, which has extended the frontier of knowledge about the universe.
Servicing mission:
Robot arm used to grab Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and place it in the shuttle payload bay.
Day 1: Astronauts replace Hubble's three rate sensor units and some of the telescope's batteries.
Day 2: Crew inserts a new Cosmic Origins Spectograph, which will study faint stars and galaxies to learn about the universe's beginnings.
Day 3: An updated camera and new thermal protection are installed.
Day 4: The spacewalkers repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectograph, used to hunt down black holes.
Day 5: Crew replaces one of Hubble's fine guidance sensors, which locks the telescope on to a star.
GRAPHIC NEWS, CARRIE COCKBURN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Tu Thanh Ha