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.
So when we were on the first service mission,
that was like make it or break it, you know, if we didn't
get it going, get it fixed, it was not good for NASA.
There was talk about it being make or break it
for the International Space Station.
If you can't fix a telescope, you can't build a space station.
You know, vitally important that we do what had to be done and get it done.
Liftoff.
Liftoff of the Space
Shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
The hard part of getting ready to launch is saying goodbye to your family.
So we went in quarantine a week before flight.
Couldn't see our children after that point.
Could see our spouses up until the day before.
Once you said goodbye for me, it was like being on autopilot.
You know, I trained to do this. I'm going to do this.
And I remember standing out on the launch tower
and looking around at the ocean and the beach and all that,
trying to soak it up and thinking, I wonder if this is my last day on Earth.
Just kind of matter of factly because
somebody's going to get hurt, but probably not me and probably not today.
Liftoff is is not like somebody kicks you in the back.
It's more like this firm unrelenting push.
It starts up.
It's a lot of vibrations in the first stage when the solids
were still burning, and then after they separated,
it gets really smooth like an electric cart ride.
Acceleration builds up to like three Gs toward
the end of ascent to feel heavy smashed into your seat.
And then when the main engines cut off, you go from like having a gorilla
sitting on your chest. Everything floats, like in a heartbeat.
That’s kind of a magical moment.
You go, wow, we're here!
I think most people, when they first stick
their head out to do a spacewalk, the overwhelming
feeling or thought is, please, God, don't let me screw this up,
because the whole world is watching.
Everything you say is on air to ground.
“And I've got to go.
It's slewing KT. You're doing that?”
“I’m not touching it.”
“Okay, let me get stabilized.”
You have to mind language and not say things you don't want your mother to hear.
“You got a handle in it?”
“I got a handle in it.”
It's not that you're going to get hurt.
It's that you mess up something because it's
just so important to get it right, but the time goes by so fast.
Even though we're moving excruciatingly slowly.
And if you're watching this on video, you fall asleep in the middle of it.
But to us, the time just went by really, really fast.
I think we melded really well.
I mean, everybody had their job to do
and they knew that everybody was cross-trained.
We went out into the cargo bay to do a spacewalk.
We had all the tools we needed to do any task assigned
to the whole mission, not just the one for our day.
So if we got in trouble with something,
we could drop that and we'd go do something else and still be productive.
So we did an enormous amount across training and everything.
On the day that you go out
to roll up the solar panels, the old ones, they don't roll up.
You said you got several people.
You said you’ve got several options of things you can do. What what can you do
if those pesky solar panels don't work again, as you try to retract them?
If they don't retract,
then our plan is to put a grapple fixture on them.
Let the arm grab them and hold them overboard out of our way
and we'll install the new solar arrays when they are checked out.
Then we'll jettison the old ones.
The way the solar arrays are supposed to roll up.
And they had to for us to bring them home because we had a place for them
to be stowed.
And if they didn't fit there, we couldn't bring them home.
And so the way they operate is that the bi-stems,
the support on the side that extends it and pulls it back is like
two pieces of metal that curl up on itself.
When you extend it out of the canister like a metal tape measure.
So one is one way and the other curls around it.
So that was the bi-stem.
So when we went to retract the one that didn't roll up,
we could see that one piece of that bi-stem was longer than the other.
Somehow it had slipped.
“There is a definite kink
right at the
upper edge of the second panel
there, as you can see in the max part of the bend.”
We knew by looking at it at that point it was not going to roll up.
So we knew the night before that we were going to do a jettison
the next day. I was holding it and I just took my hands off of it.
And at some point the jet plumes hit it
and it started flapping like this giant bird.
And we were over the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the deserts.
And it was like this pterodactyl cruising out there over the deserts.
And I had the best view in the universe.
It just it just riveted my attention to it, just watching it.
And I remember saying, Tom, that looks like a bird.
Of the four spacewalkers, we all knew what everybody was doing.
We knew how to do what the guy out there is doing.
And so we could maybe see things.
Claude Nicollier was incredible on the arm.
He would move it and sort of relieve stresses and strains
that we don't even mention to him.
He would just see, you know what that looks like.
It's a little uncomfortable.
And he just tweaked the arm a little bit and get you to the right place.
And when I was installing COSTAR, I was holding it.
But the only thing I could see in front of my face was silver.
I mean, I had no notion of anything going on around me.
So my job was to be a rigid body, and he's the one who actually drove that
In for the most part,
Tom would give me some clues about pitch up, you know, roll a little bit.
But mostly it was Claude that, as long as I stayed rigid,
he could put it in there, he could drive it in.
And we had clearances that were really small getting in the two guide rails.
Every time we stuck in an instrument or did something
the ground would command it and we'd see the power was on
and that it was sending data.
So before we landed, in fact, by the time we finished the fifth spacewalk,
we knew that everything that we could do had been done correctly.
But, you know, unless it worked, then nobody was successful.
It doesn't matter that what we could do had been done right.
If it didn't work, then the whole team was not a success.
And so it wasn't quite the let your hair down
celebrate when we got home, that that didn't happen
until after we saw the images in January coming back.
The images are incredibly gorgeous.
They're just, they're art. They're just beauty.
And I just sort of revel in that every time I get to see one.
Even now. Oh, they're just amazing.
Hubble, I think, was the most incredible invention since Galileo
and the telescope as far as astronomy and astrophysics.
Hubble has generated data that generations of scientists
are going to be still looking at, still analyzing.
It's just generated tons and tons of stuff.
More discoveries will be made after Hubble is done
because the data will still be there.
I feel personally connected to the Hubble because my oldest daughter
was 11 years old when we launched on that and she got her PhD.
in astrophysics using Hubble data.
Her dissertation director got his PhD.
using Hubble data
and dedicated his dissertation to the astronauts who fixed Hubble.
So I feel like it's partly mine.
“Okay, KT you ready?”
“Yeah I’m ready!”
“They say you got to go for release.”
“Ok, no hands!”
“Look how stable you left that.
There it goes!
Pretty neat job KT!”
“Almost like a bird Tom, look at it!”
[ MUSIC ]
Servicing Mission 1 had five spacewalks. Kathy Thornton participated in two of them.
After installing corrective optics, Hubble had a clear view of the cosmos.
Thirty years later, Hubble continues making discoveries that change our understanding of the universe.
“Follow us on social media @NASAHubble”