An astronaut who flew on the space shuttle Columbia 11 months before it disintegrated described in a lecture Friday what it is like to work in space.

The talk by John Grunsfeld, a NASA astronaut who served as payload commander in charge of space walking activities and upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope, revealed some of the new photos of the universe taken by the telescope since a new camera was installed.

Although the veteran of four space flights mostly discussed his 12 days aboard the Columbia in March 2002, Grunsfeld criticized NASA’s response to the Columbia tragedy. He described NASA’s attitude as trying to return to business as usual.

“My perspective is, you can’t get back to normal after you lose a space shuttle like Columbia,” Grunsfeld told an audience of about 50 faculty and students.

Grunsfeld told The Daily he was watching the shuttle land when it lost communication.

“My first reaction was I had to get to work,” he said after the event. “I had to go in and see if we could find the crew.”

Grunsfeld spoke at length about his mission, dubbed STS-109. During his time aboard the Columbia, the seven-member crew aboard replaced the Hubble’s solar arrays and power system, installed a more sensitive digital camera — called the Advanced Camera for Surveys — and repaired an infrared camera.

The total of 37 hours logged during the mission’s five spacewalks was more than any other shuttle mission in history, Grunsfeld said.

Although STS-109 was Grunsfeld’s second mission where he helped repair the telescope, that flight was the fourth service mission to the Hubble, which receives regular upgrades.

Grunsfeld said he replaced the space telescope’s power-control unit. He compared the difficult task of manipulating the space telescope’s electronic wiring in bulky space gloves to wearing two pairs of thick winter gloves.

“I called (the mission) zen and the art of connectors because I just had to focus on one connector at a time,” he said.

The space telescope’s new camera also features a solar-blind camera, a wide-field camera and a high-resolution camera. Comparing images from the Hubble’s older camera with those from the new ones, Grunsfeld said the new camera’s clarity and resolution allow astronomers to identify more features of deep space.

“It’s mind boggling that the deeper you look the more galaxies you see,” Grunsfeld said.

First-year astronomy and astrophysics graduate student Casey Law called the improvements made to the Hubble during Grunsfeld’s mission “a radical leap forward” for the space-telescope program.

Law also said the Columbia disaster should not put prevent future space exploration.

“It’s absolutely necessary to keep the effort up,” he said. “Science always calls us to move on.”

Grunsfeld said revelations of the unknown encourage him to continue exploring space.

“We now understand that we know very little about the universe,” Grunsfeld said.