“After Hubble’s deployment in 1990, astronomers quickly realized there was a problem.”
The conclusion we've come to from that is that there is a significant
spherical aberration appears to be present in the optics.
...and that we should be able to fix it in our insurance program.
I was not cynical enough yet to have an item
that says we put the wrong mirror in the telescope.
“Ten nine... And we have a go for main engine start. Five, four...”
That was not part of my equation.
And that. That hurt.
“Liftoff! Liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavor on an ambitious mission servicing
the Hubble Space Telescope.”
A spacewalk is an athletic event.
Okay, I got to fix this thing.
What are the tools?
Come up with the tools.
And what is the motion of the tools?
And so I look at the tools and me as a dance like an athletic event,
and I trained with prime athletes.
Well, you know, the people at Goddard, and Cepollina,
and everyone else with the right kind of spirit.
It's just it's teamwork.
It's teamwork, that's what it is.
All the components that we might change out,
they were designed to be changed with a spacewalk.
So that's flexibility,
that's looking for the future,
that's designing for failures.
A perfect spacewalk is one that
you pull off just as accurate as an Olympic high jumper,
here's what you do.
And so I envision here's the problem, and I of course,
do not have the right solution right away that involves the final motions.
I'm going to do.
“Got your right hand.”
“I have you.”
“Okay, pull me away.”
There's no doubt there's public pressure.
There's no doubt the results...
People are waiting to get it fixed.
And a lot of it should not have happened.
The mirror flaw was inexcusable,
but the world is not perfect.
There is public pressure,
It's important to people to get that thing fixed,
and so that's the consequence.
You feel the consequences.
“You have practiced every one of these maneuvers, literally hundreds
of times, and you've gone into those water tanks to practice it.
What was different about it when you were shoving that piano-sized
camera down to the Hubble yesterday?”
“We practiced for hundreds and hundreds of hours.
We tried to identify every kind of surprise
we might run into.
I’ve been running scared, really, ever since I got assigned to this mission,
and the key thing was surprise.
But I think even way beyond that, I certainly will not relax
until six weeks or two months
from now when we see how the solar arrays perform, we see how the gyros perform,
we start getting optical images back from all the instruments and see
the aberration is corrected. And only at that time
Will I kind of relax, and think that we have got the job done.
The relationship with the crew was perfect all the way around.
It was marvelous.
We had a great crew.
We landed the shuttle, Covey’s coming downstairs.
I had gone down to the mid-deck.
He's coming down.
He looked me in the eyes and said, “Story,
I am proud of you.”
Enough to bring me to tears
“Story, I'm proud of you.”
That was very nice.
“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.”
Yeah, that was impressive.
My first view
of the repaired telescope.
But of course, there were moments earlier than that,
you know, when Claude picked it up and let it go.
And that's my sweetie. And we're leaving,
we think we got it all done,
we think she's.
You know, that was a big moment, too, when we're leaving.
There she goes.
We're leaving.
But it was Galaxy M100.
Oh, my God.
It was an outrageous picture.
I don't know if it brought me to tears or not.
“Before this flight and during the flight,
Actually, it's been billed
as very important for fixing Hubble, for demonstrating orbital servicing,
in some sense for showing NASA
can still do really difficult missions and do them well.
To you, what was the most important reason to go do this mission?”
“I describe it as NASA had the courage to go for it all
all, to do absolutely everything on Hubble that it needed doing.
They did.
They had the courage to go for the whole thing.
In a nutshell, I think.
What was it all about?
It was that NASA had the courage to go for it all.”
It was just a massive part of my life.
Incredibly fortunate that I got to participate in
in that machine.
And I got to be part of it.
Music Plays
Hello, Story.
Wind Sound Effects
“Servicing Mission 1 had five spacewalks. Story Musgrave participated in three of them.”
“Installing the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and COSTAR gave Hubble a clear view of the cosmos.”
“Thirty years later, Hubble’s clear view of the cosmos continues making discoveries that change our understanding of the universe. ”
“Follow us on social media @NASAHubble