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My first mission to the Hubble space
telescope was in 1999.

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I'd been training for years for that
mission but

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more personally i felt like I'd been
training for that mission from birth.

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Because I loved taking things apart
putting them back together as a kid,

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I liked to work on cars, and then fell in
love with science.

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Studied to be an astronomer and
astrophysicist and my job

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in training to be an astronomer was to
build new scientific instruments

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to explore the universe.

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"Veteran spacewalker John Grunsfeld out
of the

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airlock recognizable by the red stripes
around his pant legs and up on the

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backpack of his suit the
backpack housing all of his life support..."

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It was an amazing time growing up on the south
side of Chicago

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and there was kind of a serendipity that
I think set me on the path

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that I eventually followed which is I
remember seeing the Gemini

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astronauts, I remember seeing the Apollo
astronauts and Neil Armstrong and Buzz

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Aldrin landing on the moon.
my ability to experience that

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space race going on and our success on
the moon

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inspired me to tell my mom I want to be
an astronaut.

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"Enhance the vision of Hubble into the
deepest grandeur of our universe..."

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I was also very interested in science
though and it was the science that

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propelled me through my young career
going to high school getting involved

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with the science teachers and math
teachers and then going on to college

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to study physics. And as a college
student

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I approached a group that was doing
research in astrophysics and said hey

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I'd like to work in astrophysics
and so I started working with NASA

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missions, Small Astronomy Satellite 3
and then building instruments that went

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on high altitude balloons
to look at neutron stars and black holes

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and so I was absolutely driven by
learning about the universe.

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When I got my doctorate in physics at
the university of Chicago

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I thought you know maybe having a
doctorate in physics doing astronomy

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building instruments for
astrophysics would be the kind of thing

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that might interest NASA
in me as a potential astronaut. I filled

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out an application and sent it in to
Houston

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and about six months later I got a call
from Houston saying...

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"Would you be interested in an astronaut
interview?" and I said "Of course!"

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That was 1989, I was not selected in that
application process but I kept doing

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science, I worked with the Compton
Gamma Ray Observatory looking at

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neutron stars and applied again
and in 1992 was selected as an astronaut

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in the 14th group of astronauts.

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I got assigned to the Hubble mission, got
to orbit

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in my space suit with Steve Smith, my
space walking partner,

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and we went out of the hatch into a
vacuum and I looked up and there was

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Hubble for real!
I was on the robotic arm on the space

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shuttle
and moving back towards the Hubble I got

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about three feet away from the Hubble
and just had one of these surreal

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moments
where I thought I just can't believe

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this is happening this is too cool!
And I reached out with a finger and

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touched the Hubble just to prove
you know that it was all real now of

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course I believed it was real but it was
one of those moments where I felt

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like I had to go you know knock knock
knock and say yeah

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yep we're really here and then went went
off to work

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the space walk and we upgraded the
Hubble.

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"This is a really tremendous adventure
that we've been on a very challenging

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mission. Hubble isn't just a satellite
it's about humanity's quest for

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knowledge. As Arthur C Clark says... "The only way of

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finding the limits of the possible
is by going beyond them into the

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impossible."
And on this mission we tried some things

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that many people said was impossible:
Fixing STIS,

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repairing ACS, achieving all the content
that we have in this mission but we've

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achieved that."