♪♪
-It has this direct window to the rest of the universe.
There's nothing in between
the rest of the universe and Hubble.
I mean, there's not a single astronomer in the world
whose life hasn't been touched by Hubble.
-Hubble will be one of the great stories
of all time.
We will remember it with reverence,
with the legacy, with the foundation.
It gave us the optimism and the hope
to reach for bigger things.
-The world's most brilliant astronomers
do miracles with this observatory,
and it just keeps going on and on and on,
and my jaw keeps dropping lower and lower
with each new discovery.
-Scientists around the world
together with science enthusiasts, the public,
science supporters came together to see.
Here is an opportunity where,
if we put our wits together and our support together,
we can build a platform
that opens new eyes to the universe.
Let's go for it.
-Earthbound telescopes, from Galileo's simple instrument
to modern mountaintop observatories,
are all hampered by the Earth's
turbulent atmosphere.
The best place for an observatory
is in the heavens.
Now, the Space Shuttle
created by NASA, America's space agency,
has the ability to put one there.
-The periodic revisit of the shuttle
will allow for the replacement of components
and routine maintenance.
This ability to service the telescope through human care
will extend its life span
up to 20 years.
-Telescopes on brief rocket flights
have brought us hints of entities we never knew existed,
and balloon flights have lifted telescopes
8 miles into the air
to take some of the clearest photographs
of the Sun ever obtained.
-Another group of astronomers told a recent meeting
of the American Rocket Society in San Diego, California,
that they are designing a satellite that will
carry a bank of telescopes into an orbit 500 miles,
or 800 kilometers, high.
By thus sending a telescope up above the Earth's atmosphere,
they hope to pierce a blanketing ocean of air
that has, for the most part,
obscured man's detailed view of the universe.
♪♪
-Well, astronomers have wanted for generations, actually,
to get us a telescope
above the atmosphere.
The first reference I'm aware of is back in 1925,
that it was suggested that we needed a telescope in space.
I've read that one of the astronomers at Princeton --
this was probably in the '30s or '40s --
said that when he died,
he wanted to go to heaven and take a telescope with him,
and so when the possibly
of a telescope in space opened up,
astronomers jumped on the idea.
-[ Operatic singing ]
♪♪
-I certainly remember the very first time
I went into the enormous clean room
where Hubble was being built.
I mean, it's 90 feet tall and 120 feet long
and hyper-clean -- hyper-clean air.
And the telescope just --
I mean, it just looked like something Tiffany's had built.
You sort of...
were gonna look for the label somewhere
that said, "Telescope by Tiffany's,"
just glistening silver,
fabulous, gorgeous piece of work -- huge.
So, that's one real favorite memory.
First sights always leave a deeper impression.
-It was mind-boggling.
I envisioned Hubble being big.
I did not envision Hubble being huge,
and Hubble was huge.
Since I had already flown a shuttle mission,
I knew how big the shuttle was,
and I knew how big the shuttle's payload bay was.
Hubble was too big,
and, I mean, the first impression was,
"How the hell are they gonna fit that in the payload bay?
That is a monstrous payload."
-What was happening in the context of science here?
We were building an Earth-observing system
to study our planet --
very evocative, ozone holes being measured.
Studying the Sun.
We had had a couple of missions to Mars
that showed us it's not the way we thought it was -- tough.
Soviets had landed probes on Venus for about an hour.
Pretty hellish.
We had the Voyagers going out of the solar system,
and that's it.
That was our view --
a few little points of light flying around,
but they were narrow.
Hubble was focused
on the big picture,
and the big picture is always fun.
It has something for everyone.
Some people call these great missions of exploration.
They're kind of like
the cathedrals of the 21st century,
and in the Renaissance,
people built cathedrals that were multigenerational.
They were great architectural renderings
that reached to the heavens.
Now, we go to the heavens,
and we follow the light.
-I remember sitting
around the dinner table the night before,
and we had talked off and on about what was Hubble gonna --
what was going to be the significance of Hubble,
talking about what we thought
Hubble's legacy was going to be and stuff.
I mean, things you can't imagine.
None of us could definitively say
what we thought it was going to be,
but all of us agreed Hubble was going to be
something absolutely spectacular
that was going to revolutionize
the worlds of astronomy and astrophysics.
We just didn't know how, and I think we underestimated
the scientific and technological significance of Hubble,
because it has dwarfed
what any of us imagined
it would ever do.
-T-minus 13 seconds.
-10. -T minus 10.
Go for main engine start.
We are go for main engine start.
T-minus six, five, four, three, two, one,
and lift off of the Space Shuttle Discovery
with the Hubble Space Telescope,
our window on the universe.
-Discovery, Houston just wanted to let us know
that the ground is currently configured
for HST main bus activation.
So, we're ready when you are.
-Houston, Discovery.
The transfer to internal power is complete.
The umbilical is dead-faced, and we'll be standing by
for your go for umbilical release.
-Roger, Discovery.
Discovery, you're go for umbilical disconnect.
♪♪
-The Hubble deploy day did not go well.
You know, in the end,
we successfully deployed Hubble,
and Hubble went on to greater things.
Deploy day was long and arduous
and nothing at all the way it was planned.
From the moment Steve Hawley attached
the RMS mechanical arm,
things went wrong.
Steve was supposed to be able to just pull out
on the translational hand controller
and have the arm lift Hubble straight out of the payload bay.
That's not what happened.
I mean, the Hubble's 25,000 pounds of mass.
Granted, it's weightless in space,
but it's still a 25,000-pound mass,
and as he began to lift,
it began to twist and turn,
and we saw it immediately,
and so I said, "Steve, stop.
That's -- Something is not right."
And so that necessitated Steve now going to a downgraded mode
which was moving joint by joint,
so for the next couple of hours,
Steve Hawley literally had to lift a little bit,
re-adjust a joint,
get it straight again, lift a little bit,
re-adjust a joint or roll it or do whatever was necessary
to keep it as much in its orientation
as it was in the bay as possible,
but that took hours instead of minutes,
the way it was supposed to work.
-The thing about Hubble was, you know,
we launched it cradled in the payload bay
with electrical power umbilicals attached to the back,
and once you pulled the plug on that umbilical,
Hubble was on its batteries,
and there was a fixed period of time,
a maximum period of time
that you could run it on its batteries
without the solar rays being unfolded to sustain
and recharge the batteries.
If you got to the end of that time,
the batteries would reach a point
where they were not recoverable.
So, that set a -- I forget now how long it was --
something on the order of four hours.
Well, if anything needs an EVA backup --
And we could back up all that stuff.
We could crank open the solar arrays.
-And as the crew just confirmed there,
we're seeing both blankets
beginning to unfurl
on the portside solar array.
♪♪
-So far, we see good, smooth motion on both sides.
-So the first solar array...
you know, went out both sides, no problem.
It took a few minutes.
Everything was just like it should be.
Second solar array, sent the command.
It got about, I don't know, 16 inches and quit.
-Houston, Discovery.
It looks like motion's stopped
with just about one panel showing.
-And we see that, too, Loren.
The DCE is off.
-And as it turned out, of course,
the second solar array did not unfurl correctly.
It jammed partway out,
and Bruce and I left the flight deck
and dove down into the mid-deck
with Charlie Bolden and suited up,
and we were all buttoned up.
The air lock was sealed.
In fact, we had dumped half the air out of the air lock.
We were about to get the go for EVA and proceed on outside.
-The other thing I need an answer to is,
if I can go ahead and commit to EVA
with the thought of going out and cranking it out --
if whatever they're about to do fails,
but they want us to just press on to back them up.
We need to get on with it.
-I'll come back with answers.
-I need answers now.
-Planet fail. -Go ahead.
-Yeah, I don't feel comfortable waiting until after 620.
-I don't either. That's why I want the answers now.
-Yeah, 620's my drop-dead time from adding up all the times.
-Okay.
I'm gonna have them press on. Alright.
CAPCOM, tell the crew we want them to press on into EVA,
and we'll stop them whenever we have to.
So, quickly -- We've got four minutes on this pass.
♪♪
-Discovery, Houston.
-Discovery. Go ahead.
-Okay. With the panels that you've got out there right now,
it's not satisfactory to stay overnight,
so we're gonna have to move out on the EVA.
♪♪
-I was scared.
I had never suited anybody who was gonna go out in space,
and I knew that if I missed something --
if I missed a glove, you know,
if I didn't get it fastened right,
or something on the helmet, they were going to die,
and it was going to be my fault.
So, even though these guys come out of combat
and all other kinds of stuff,
I was scared because I had never done this before,
and so, you know, I knew my crew members were dependent on me,
and we were getting ready to let them open the outer hatch
when the ground said, "Hey, stop!"
And we said, "Oh, okay."
They said, "We got an idea."
-We think there may be some problem
with the tension-monitoring software.
We've got the DCE back on.
We're going to disable the tension monitoring
and resend the proc to deploy the minus SDM.
-Okay. Hit it.
-And the irony -- This is the day of irony.
Early in the morning when the solar array first stopped,
Bruce came up with this crazy --
Bruce McCandless said,
"I don't think there's anything mechanically wrong.
I think it's the tension-monitoring module,"
and we all looked at Bruce and went, "The what?!"
Everybody but Kathy.
Kathy had heard of the tension-monitoring module,
and so Bruce said, "Oh, it's this software module
that we put in to protect the solar array.
In case we got a mechanical jam or something,
we didn't want to rip it and destroy the telescope,
so we have this software module that would stop it
until we could diagnose the problem and then correct it
and then let it go out."
This young man down here, at Goddard --
and I say young man because, as I understand it,
he was a very young flight controller on console --
said, "Hey, I don't think we've got a mechanical problem.
I really think it's the tension-monitoring module,
and if you give me permission,
I can no op the tension-monitoring module.
I can turn it off."
You know, "I'll make a one a zero,
and I think everything will be okay."
So, between Houston and Goddard and I think Bristol, England,
and everywhere else in the world
that had anything to do with Hubble,
they meshed on this thing for hours,
and they said, "Okay.
Try to deploy it again,"
and hit the deploy switch
and...
solar array went out.
-It's fully deployed.
The microswitches confirmed it.
-Okay.
-And for Bruce and Kathy, we'd like you to stop
the air lock depress at five, please.
-Rendezvous? -We're go.
-Right-o, go.
Eagle? -Go.
-Decon? -Go.
-Inco? -We're go.
-FAO? -Go.
-Max? -Go.
-Peter S? -Go flight.
-EVA? -We're go.
-Sergeant, you're still go? -Go.
-CAPCOM, we have a go for release.
-Discovery, go for Hubble release.
-Okay. We have a go for release,
and we're gonna be a minute late.
-Okay, Charlie.
-And all Steve had to do was pull a trigger
that opened the grapples
that held the grapple fixture,
and it was...
I mean, it was breathtaking,
and it was beautiful as it got farther and farther away,
but it never went out of sight
because it was so bright and shiny.
-So, the irony of all of this is that after five years
working together on the Hubble telescope --
longer than any other person on the crew had worked
on the Hubble telescope --
the view that Bruce and I had
at the time that Hubble was deployed
was the blank white wall of the inside of the air lock.
Never saw it.
-Kathy has never forgiven me.
She blames me for leaving her in the air lock,
so, I mean, you know,
a couple of hours later, I go down there.
They got a lot of vacuum time
but no space time, no space walk time,
and so I repressurized the air lock, get them out,
put them back on the wall,
get them unsuited and everything,
and they're just...
But we had a lot of images for them.
-Engineering things that have never been done
sometimes have issues.
Designing the preeminent
viewpoint of the heavens,
the Hubble Space Telescope, was not without, you know,
sort of new inventions that were never done before.
-The first images from Hubble
were, frankly, a little disappointing.
They were not as sharp and crisp as we had hoped.
It turns out that the mirrors
had a slightly misshapen form.
-This special mirror,
2.4 meters of specially ground glass
designed to capture the light
of the universe back in time,
you know, billions of years,
had an aberration
the way my eyes have an aberration,
and I wear glasses, and so there was an initial,
"Oh, my goodness.
What can we do?"
This icon of exploration that took 50 years
to think about to fly has a problem.
-And I'm positive that if we all had written down
the 100 most-likely problems with the Hubble Space Telescope,
if everybody involved with Hubble
had written down those top 100,
not one of them --
not one of them would have listed,
"the mirror's the wrong shape."
-We feel that we can characterize the problem,
the spherical aberration problem, well enough
that we can take advantage of an insurance policy
that we haven't talked much about,
and it hasn't been in the press much,
and that is, we started a long time ago
to plan a maintenance program.
That is, every three years,
we plan to go up with the Space Shuttle,
change out instruments, change out things that broke --
the the gyros or something might break.
We have gyros in stock.
In fact, we have, in stock, in storage,
most of the critical components on space telescope.
So we promised that we had a way to fix it,
and we put a new camera in with corrective optics in it
that would cure the optical problem.
Right, as we talk now, we are building a second
Wide Field Camera,
and it's not too late to put a corrective optic --
You can almost think of it, if you've got bad myopia,
which you can say our telescope has now,
and you put your glasses on,
you can correct totally and get 20-20 vision.
That's what we would do on the Wide Field Camera,
the second Wide Field Camera.
We would change one little mirror,
relay mirror, in there,
take out the aberration
that the primary mirror causes --
That is, if it's a positive aberration,
we put in a negative aberration and basically cancel it out.
We feel -- The analysis is only preliminary,
but we're pretty optimistic that we can take out
all the aberration
with the second Wide Field Camera
and get us back to the original specification.
Nobody believed us, but we promised that we'd do it
and would do it by December of '93.
Let me conclude by saying,
HST was and is a difficult challenge
for a tremendous payoff.
Hubble became...
It was in the press all the time with the problems.
It was a billion-dollar mistake.
People in the press called it a technological disaster,
a national disgrace.
The late-night comedy hosts were making jokes about Hubble.
-Well, have you been reading about the problems
of the Hubble Telescope.
The Hubble Space Telescope?
-The Hubble Telescope... -The Hubble Telescope...
The Hubble Telescope.
-See, since there's no longer a Soviet threat,
a lot of people feel we don't need the "Star Wars"
defense system anymore.
Hey, I think we should keep it, you know,
if only they shoot down that Hubble spacecraft
and put this thing out of its misery, huh?
[ Laughter ]
Boy, that's what I say.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-The teams at NASA,
combinations with Johnson Space Center,
Goddard Space Flight Center,
great astronauts, the will of the people,
great members of Congress who supported it,
said, "Let's fix it.
We fixed other things, you know, and they still work.
Old cars still run.
Let's make Hubble the better version."
-We were all disappointed
but all hopeful that something might be done
to save this spectacular space observatory,
and, in fact, something was done.
We had already planned to be doing servicing missions
on Hubble over the years,
and so the first servicing mission
to send astronauts back to Hubble
was designed to repair
this problem with Hubble.
-And this big mirror really
was the dominant driver.
We worked very, very hard to develop,
first of all, you know, how distorted was it?
How mispolished was it?
And then to find a company
in the United States, preferably,
that could polish corrective lenses
that would take care of the problem.
Those two challenges were really immense,
and those challenges, when they finally got solved,
led to something that was
an extremely important payoff
to the US and world citizenry.
-To fly what you test
and test what you fly would be easier
if the telescope were back on Earth,
but landing and relaunching
could contaminate the telescope
or damage it through vibration.
NASA couldn't test the new corrective optics
in the actual telescope,
so to make sure the optics will work,
the team had to determine the condition of Hubble in space
and replicate that on the ground.
One independent review panel used Hubble images
to determine the precise shape of the flawed primary mirror
and the prescription to fix it.
Another team had to verify that the corrective optics will work.
Teams had to test two optical packages,
the replacement Wide Field Planetary Camera
and the corrective optics
for the other instruments, called COSTAR.
Engineers built several independent analyzers
to test that they had replicated
what the Hubble Telescope does to light.
For mechanical testing, engineers built a simulator
at Goddard Space Flight Center
using the same precision equipment
that built Hubble originally.
To replicate Hubble during electrical tests
of the corrective-optics package and the new camera,
an electrical test facility
was built with the same schematics
as the original telescope.
Hardware has been thoroughly tested on the ground.
The Hubble servicing team is preparing for contingencies,
but this mission is a first,
so no one can predict everything that could happen.
The real test will be in space.
-Five, four, three, two, one.
-To zero. -And we have liftoff.
Liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavour
on an ambitious mission to service
the Hubble Space Telescope.
-Houston, Endeavor has a firm handshake
with Mr. Hubble's Telescope.
-We copy that, Covey, and there are smiles galore down here.
-They got it. -Alright!
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Fantastic. -I forgot my glove!
[ Laughter ]
-We're going to do WFPC on day two, now.
Sudden change of plans. -That's it, change of plan.
-No, I think if -- -...deploy the EVA.
-I think if the arrays are straight,
we also have an equal chance
that there is no such thing as further aberration.
-That's it. -The universe is aberrated,
and we're going to be correcting for it.
-Actually, also...
-Okay, and then, you're seeing
what would be the upper outboard bistem
on the plus V2 array.
There's a definite kink
right at the upper edge
of the second panel there, as you can see,
in the max part of the bend,
and it looks like as the bistems --
Of course, one is inside the other.
It looks like the outer bistem has a kink in it,
and it is also twisted
approximately 90-plus degrees clockwise
there at the kink.
Then, it looks like it all comes back together
within a few feet there of the kink.
There's also -- probably hard for you all to see.
We have to look at it with binoculars --
a second kink couple of feet below the obvious one that
is on the back side there of that section of the bistem.
It's not quite as bad,
but it does have a little crease in it.
-Foot restraint will be occupied
by mission specialist Kathy Thornton.
She will be working from the end of the mechanical arm.
This television shows Thornton at the array,
the array to be jettisoned.
-Okay, KT.
You ready? -Yeah, I'm ready.
-Okay. They say you got a go for release.
[ Indistinct talking ]
-Okay. No hands.
[ Indistinct radio chatter ]
-Okay.
-It looks like a bird. Tom, look at it.
-Look how stable you left that.
There it goes.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Laughter ]
[ Conversations continue ]
-We identified this preflight,
in case something like this happened.
We could go grab blankets and covers.
-If we can have another EVA day like we did the first --
and it looks like we're halfway there --
we'll be well on our way
to having a very, very successfully completed mission.
In fact, I remember after the first day saying,
"If we could just have two more like today,
we'd be sure of great science."
-Yeah.
-So, it looks great.
-This is the mirror.
This is like the mirror
in the Wide Field Camera
that's used to correct
for the spherical aberration in the Hubble,
and it's done by putting the same mirror on this mirror
that exists on the Hubble mirror,
only with the opposite size,
so the result is that after having the optical image
distorted by the primary mirror,
the distortion is removed by this secondary mirror,
and the result is that you get a good, clear image at the end.
-I am on it.
Okay. Alright.
Stop the arm.
Stop the arm. -Stopped.
-Is the bay clear? -Yes.
We're totally clear. We're ready to start in.
-Okay.
Right. Let's come on in.
-Okay.
-Nobody really believed they could do all of this work,
and they did it and did it in fine fashion, you know,
even with some problems along the way,
so that was --
that brought Hubble back to life,
and it kind of took away some of the criticism of NASA,
because they had now demonstrated
that they could do something that had never been done before.
We had never serviced a telescope,
so when people talk about the legacy of Hubble,
I think among its greatest legacies
will be helping humanity understand that, yeah,
when things go to space, we can, in fact --
It's not hopeless, if there's something wrong.
We can service them, in many cases,
if we make some preparation to do that.
-Drop.
Drop.
Okay. Here we come.
Get it on. The light comes on.
-With the camera now installed,
Claude Nicollier will reposition Jeff Hoffman
so that he can now completely latch
the new instrument into the telescope.
-Right now, it's looking very, very good
that we've accomplished all we needed to accomplish
for the optical correction of HST,
and that's good news for astronomy,
and it's good news for NASA
to get over this little episode in our history.
-And after five EVAs,
space walks,
the astronauts came home,
and about two weeks later,
we took off the bandages from our eyes,
and, suddenly, Hubble was fixed.
It was totally fixed.
-Is this it?
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Right there! -Oh!
[ Laughs ] -Boom!
-They did it! -Hey!
-Wait, wait, wait, wait. -No, no, no. Go.
-Yeah, let's get a see. -Bring it up.
-Yeah. Bring it up. -Bring it up more.
-Come on. Come on. -Bring it up more.
-Oh! -Come on!
-Not bad. -That's not bad.
-Well, can we get
a sense for which is the brightest pixel?
-Yeah. Could you just move the cursor around in there?
-Yeah. The -- Oh, there!
There! There! -Oh!
-It's many pixels!
-Whoa! -Not bad at all.
-I chair the subcommittee that financed the manufacture
of the most significant contact lens
in American history,
the fix on the Hubble Space Telescope
and then bankrolled
this extraordinary space HMO that went out
and gave Hubble Telescope
a new contact lens,
and I'm happy to announce today
that after its launch now in 1990,
some of its earlier disappointments,
the trouble with Hubble is over!
We have here a picture taken of the image of a star
with the new Faint Object Camera.
Here, we have the picture taken prior
to the servicing mission without the COSTAR.
Over here, on my left, is the new picture taken
of the same star configuration
after COSTAR.
This is the picture of the same galaxy,
and then here is the picture taken of the same galaxy
through the new Wide Field/Planetary Camera
that was installed by our gallant and brave astronauts.
The pictures are remarkable.
The science that will come from the pictures
are of historical significance.
We will now, because of the Hubble fix,
be able to do 21st-century science
that will enable us to look back on the universe.
and this is only the beginning!
-Three, two, one.
Ignition and liftoff,
Discovery now on its way to service
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
-The Hubble Space Telescope is a magnificent achievement,
because it involves so many aspects
of expertise and support,
everything from engineering,
technology, cultural support,
scientific motivation,
political support.
It's also very innovative
because it involved building on the technology
developed through the Apollo program of NASA
and then advancing that
to the point of having the Space Shuttle
being able to carry satellites,
like Hubble, into low Earth orbit
and then creating an infrastructure
where you can bring astronauts
repeatedly back up to an orbiting satellite,
connecting with that satellite, and having those astronauts
go out in extravehicular activity
to repair, service, upgrade that telescope,
that satellite
and then let it go again to continue doing its science,
inspiring future missions and future ways
that astronauts and science
and engineering can all work together
to produce new advances
in human space exploration.
Hubble was pretty much
the pioneer in this kind of sustained effort,
and we should be grateful for it.
-We have booster ignition
and liftoff of the Space Shuttle Discovery
on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope
as we venture into the 21st century.
-I hope that it helps us understand
what humans are capable of, period.
I mean, we --
You know, Hubble represents
so many different pieces of this planet
working together in harmony.
You know, we've got the European Space Agency,
NASA,
all the universities and science organizations
all around this planet that have a vested interest
and have reaped the benefit of Hubble.
Yeah, I certainly hope it's shown us
what we are capable of.
-Liftoff of Space Shuttle Columbia
to broaden our view of the universe
through the Hubble Space Telescope.
-It took about three years of training
before we were ready to go fly.
The Hubble missions are some
of the most complicated space missions
we've ever attempted,
and the repairs were difficult,
involved developing new tools and procedures,
and so that's why it takes longer
for a Hubble Space Telescope mission than it did, say,
for a International Space Station assembly mission.
Those you could turn around much more quickly.
♪♪
-The loss of this valiant crew
is something we will never...
be able to get over, and, certainly,
the families of all of them,
we have assured we will do everything --
everything we can possibly do
to guarantee that they work their way
through this horrific tragedy.
-The final Hubble servicing mission that left Hubble
as the observatory that it is today
almost didn't happen because,
after Columbia, Sean O'Keefe was the NASA administrator,
and he made the decision that Hubble was too risky.
-I think we all respected
the administrator at the time
who actually came out in person to tell us.
We didn't like what he was telling us,
but at least he didn't just send an e-mail.
He came out and tried to explain his rationale,
which was simply that he thought
it was too dangerous for the astronauts
since there was no safety net
if something went wrong.
-Hubble was in an orbit that the crew couldn't use
the International Space Station as a safe haven
if something went wrong.
For all of the station missions, our plan was,
if we could just get the crew somewhere to orbit,
we could get them to the International Space Station
and put them aboard station until we could get
another flight to come up and rescue them.
-But...
So, we fortunately were able to keep people occupied
while this was churning through the system,
and we did some very good work
on the possibility of robotic servicing of Hubble,
and after a year's worth of work,
we actually decided that it would be possible in the future,
but we didn't think we could develop it in time
to actually be useful for Hubble before it lost control
or, you know, wasn't able to observe,
and fortunately, about the time we had decided that
is when the new administrator
came in and said, "Let's find a way to make
the final servicing mission happen."
-Just under three years ago,
NASA had to announce
a very troubling decision --
that decision being to cancel Shuttle Service Mission 4
for the Hubble Space Telescope,
and today, I'm here to announce a much more pleasant decision
on behalf of the agency.
We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission
to the Hubble Space Telescope
to the shuttle's manifest to be flown before it retires.
We antici--
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-The public response was
probably as important, if not more so,
than the professional
astronomical community's response.
They both wanted to see Hubble serviced,
both wanted to continue,
but the public, in some ways, was our savior.
I mean, they went,
and they talked to their Congresspeople.
They, you know, wrote editorials
for newspapers and everything,
and there are a lot of people on the Earth --
The youngsters have never known a time
without Hubble in the sky...
[Voice breaking] ...and they -- they just...
didn't want to see it go away.
So, I think their investment in it,
their connection to it
coupled with the way
they were able to describe that
to the media,
to Congress, whatever,
it really got through to people
and to the administrator and said,
"You know, this is important
for more than the science.
So, let's find a way to make it work,"
and we did.
♪♪
-Seven, six, five, four, three,
two, one and liftoff
of Space Shuttle Atlantis,
final visit to enhance the vision of Hubble
into the deepest grandeur of our universe.
♪♪
[ Indistinct radio chatter ]
♪♪
[ Radio chatter continues ]
-Increase rate, Megan. -Copy.
Increasing the rate.
[ Indistinct radio chatter ]
-...is just outside of the telescope.
...is one foot outside of the telescope.
Okay. Increase rate, Megan.
-Copy. -Clear for maneuver.
-You're clear for the maneuver. -Go for maneuver, Megan.
-Copy. Going to the fixture.
♪♪
-I'm the witness on this.
You actually were the last guy to pat it goodbye.
What were you thinking when you patted Hubble goodbye?
What was going through your mind?
-Happy voyages.
I hope everything that we did worked.
-[ Chuckles ]
-It's hard not to think of Hubble as something alive,
but, you know, I really was thinking of Hubble as a friend.
-This is a really tremendous adventure that we've been on,
a very challenging mission.
Hubble isn't just a satellite.
It's about humanity's quest for knowledge.
As Arthur C. Clarke said,
"The only way of finding the limits of the possible
is by going beyond them, into the impossible,"
and on this mission, we tried some things
that many people said was impossible --
fixing STIS, repairing ACS,
achieving all the content that we have in this mission.
But we've achieved that,
and we wish Hubble the very best.
I want to wish Hubble its own set of adventures
and with the new instruments we've installed
that it may unlock further mysteries of the universe.
-Repaired the two failing instruments,
put in two new ones, replaced gyros,
a whole bunch of things -- a really massive mission
and did such an excellent job
that we're here more than 10 years later now,
and we're as capable as we've ever been.
Things are still working.
We've lost a few gyros,
but we still have enough to operate on.
All four of the instruments that were alive
after the servicing mission are still going strong.
We are supremely grateful
for getting that last servicing mission in,
because we would not still be operating at this point
if we hadn't done that.
That allowed us to get the telescope
in a configuration for maximum following lifetime.
-It's about newness.
It's about challenge.
It's about going out there in the forefront of technology
and breaking through,
and Hubble represents that
to the greatest degree that I could think of,
because it allows us to do it in a big way and in a small way.
It allows us to do it in detectors.
It allows us to do it in computer technology
and optical fabrication and optical polishing,
but it also gives us this big picture.
It also gives us this great challenge
of making things better.
♪♪
-A lot of people say they feel very insignificant
when they look at these images of --
that show thousands of galaxies
and tell us that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies
beyond the Milky Way,
and that's a certain understandable response,
but I also feel a sense of gratitude
and even significance myself.
Now, these are philosophical issues,
not science issues, right?
But I feel a sense of significance
that we, as humans,
have developed or been granted the ability
to develop instruments
that enable us to see far beyond
what the human eye alone could ever see
and to think about what it means,
to think about how we, on this planet,
relate to star systems
far beyond our own.
I think that's wonderful.
It should make us all feel
a sense of gratitude and humility
and also connectedness.
You know, we're on different sides of a planet,
but we're all connected as human beings on planet Earth
as part of this magnificent universe.
I think it should and does
have a unifying effect for humanity,
and I'm grateful for that.
-Imagination is great, but execution's everything,
so okay, we can imagine being able to see the cosmos,
and that's great, and great astronomers,
great thinkers wrote the governing equations.
They imagined it, but what did it take
to be able to do it in a way
that responds to what we learn
in a way that allows us to go beyond
just the framing questions, you know?
And so the Hubble Space Telescope
is the consummation of a masterpiece of engineering
because many of the things Hubble did and continues to do
were miracles of engineering
that did not exist before.
Hubble expanded our horizons of thinking
with an engineering solution to something
that changed the way we viewed space.
Space, all of a sudden, is beautiful.
It wasn't just equations to say,
"Well, there's an event horizon, like a black hole.
Look, it's Hawkings' work, you know,
and Einstein's, and, you know, others."
It's more than that.
It's beautiful.
It's elegant. It's populated.
It's not just lights and stars.
It's connecting glow. It's the --
You know, it's grand challenges.
It connects other galaxies
to suns,
to planetary systems that we can indirectly sense.
All that took a space telescope to do,
and it had to be a good one.
Hubble discovered things that are now fundamental
in the astrophysics of our universe.
Oh, my God.
But the millions of engineering solutions
that let it work, it's --
You know, they're beyond words.
They're magic.
I think that's why
it was so transformative in space science.
It brought space science to the people
because it talked about all space,
and it stared at key places in all space
to tell us what could be,
and that is brilliant, you know?
Space is a tapestry.
It's a mosaicism of stuff,
some of which we can't see.
Hubble saw a lot of it
and showed us how to look at it differently,
and that, I think,
is its legacy.
-Humans are very good
at kind of putting our hearts and souls
into things that are made of just metal and wiring.
I mean, think about, perhaps,
the connection you might have to your car.
You know, your car is something
that is used by you every day, is touched by you.
It may have a personality to you.
It may feel very secure,
or it may be very contentious.
It's always breaking down.
It's natural for us
to sort of put ourselves out into the world
in things that might not really be conscious,
that are just machines,
and when you hear the Hubble Space Telescope,
you think of something.
Well, okay. It's a telescope.
It's a big metal tube.
We launched it up into space.
It's very far away.
They're seeing things that are very esoteric
that I wouldn't understand.
The thing I would ask you to do is just take a little time
and look at some of these pictures because if --
The artistic merit of what a giant cloud
forming hundreds of stars looks like,
even if you don't really understand what that is,
start by just looking at these beautiful pictures
and then start reading.
We go through a lot of trouble --
Our wonderful science writers are trying to describe
what you're really seeing, the drama of it, scale of it,
and also the connection.
You know, you're looking at a place where our Sun,
our solar system, and your body
literally come from these places
that Hubble is taking a picture of --
these giant clouds
making every chemical element
that there is in the universe.
You are part of the story,
and I know that can seem hard.
Scientists can seem like very distant people,
very different from the rest of the world,
and we're completely not.
You know, scientists are you.
Scientists are your neighbors and your friends,
and if you've ever asked a question, you know,
or if you ever looked up into the night sky
with wonder, you know, you're one of us.
You know, you get to be included along with the scientists.
Hubble is, to us,
a piece of machinery
that we have put our hopes and our dreams
and our PhD dissertations and our arguments
and our frustrations into,
and 30 years on, you know,
this one metal cylinder up in space carries the souls
of tens of thousands of people,
and, you know,
that's something that just --
It's a wonderful part of being human.
What we touch begins to carry
part of our humanity with it.
♪♪
-Congress wasn't at all sure
that it wanted to pay for the Hubble,
and it took, really, a major effort
on the part of the astronomical community
to lobby Congress to get it --
the final funding approved.
Proxmire, who was a --
You may not want to use this story,
but I think it's a good story.
-I'd love to hear it.
-Proxmire was noted
for the fact that --
of laughing at the ways
government wasted money,
and he sent a question to NASA headquarters saying,
"Why should the American taxpayer pay
for something like the Hubble?"
And I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation,
and my answer was that,
for the cost of a night at the movies,
every American taxpayer
would have 15 years of exciting discoveries,
and I may have been off by a factor of three or four,
depending on how you figure launch costs
and the servicing missions and some other things,
but even if it ended up being one night
at the movies every year,
I think Hubble has been worth it.
♪♪