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“After Hubble’s deployment in 1990. Astronomers
quickly realized there was a problem.”

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The conclusion we've come to from
that is that there is a significant

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spherical aberration
appears to be present in the optics.

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...and that we should be able to fix it
in our insurance program.

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Thousands and thousands of
people worked on Hubble.

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And by the way, if you asked all of those
thousands and thousands of people

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before the launch in April of 1990.

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“What’s your ten biggest concerns
about what could go wrong on Hubble?”

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I absolutely guarantee you
that not one of them would have said

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spherical aberration or a bad mirror.

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And we have liftoff.

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Liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavour
on an ambitious mission to service

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the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Spherical aberration is a problem

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in the surface
structure of the mirror.

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The mirror is supposed to be ground
to a perfect parabola.

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Where all parallel

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light coming down
comes to one focus.

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Spherical aberration is when
one part of the mirror

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is slightly higher or lower

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than the other and light
instead of coming to one

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focus from, say,
the edge of the mirror

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will come over here

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and then from the center of the mirror
will come to focus up here.

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So you get, what that does is blur
the focus.

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Can almost think of it
if you've got bad myopia,

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which you can say our telescope has now

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and you put your glasses on, you can
correct totally and get 2020 vision.

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I'll never forget the day
of the fabled

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press conference at Goddard,

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when we had announced to the world
that the Hubble was broken

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and we didn't know if we could fix it.

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We didn't frankly think we could fix it
except just before the press conference.

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Space Telescope Science Working Group,

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a bunch of about 20 astronomers
involved with Hubble.

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We're meeting at Goddard, coincidentally, that day.

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And I ran into John Trauger.

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He was a scientist on the wide field
camera

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one team, the one that was taking
all the fuzzy pictures.

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And he called me over to the hallway and
said, “Ed, I want to tell you something.”

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And I said, “What?” “We can fix this.”

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I said, “Come on, John.

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What do you mean?”

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He said, “now that we know
the prescription of the mirror,

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the shape is perfect,

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but it's got the wrong shape,
just like your nearsighted eye.

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Now that we know the exact prescription
to, you know, five or ten decimal points,

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there are four little mirrors inside our
new camera that we're building.

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Our backup camera called the
the clone the Wiffpick 2 clone

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there are four little called relay mirrors.

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If we reground those

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with the correction that we know
we need in it like glasses for your eyes.

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We could solve the problem
internally right away.

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1993 We go up to fix it.”

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I said, “are you sure, John?

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Because I'm going to tell the press this.”

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He said, “I'm positive.”

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So during my press conference,
I gave all the nasty things, Oh,

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we're not going to take any pictures,

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we’re not going to be able to do this. However.

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We feel that

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we can characterize the problem,
the spherical aberration problem,

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well enough that we can take advantage
of an insurance policy

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that we haven't talked much about
and it hasn't been in the press much.

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And that is we started a long time ago
to plan a maintenance program

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that is every three years
we plan to go up with the space shuttle,

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change our instruments, change out things that broke.

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Before launch

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if you had said what would be success,
I would say 50% and the Wiffpick.

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But the Wiffpick had to be.

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This is the first time NASA ever tried
five EVAs, more than 6 hours each.

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And to do all these different things Wiffpick,

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you know, COSTAR, gyros, solar panels.

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I mean we are doing everything
except putting in a new kitchen sink.

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So we all fly to Houston.

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The first EVA started.

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Of course
all these things happen at night,

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but astronomers are used to that.

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Every night it became like a dream sequence,

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because every night they’d start, they'd
get this done, that done Wiffpick went in,

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next night they got COSTAR in, next night they got Gyros in.

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And by the end of the fifth night,
we're looking at each other like,

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Are we dreaming or did this happen?

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Did we just do five successful EVAs
and fix everything?

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So we came back from Houston
like on top of the world, but it was like,

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you know, it's like
you had major eye surgery

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and the operation was a success,
but you still the bandages on

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and we had to take the bandages off
some time.

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We're all looking at this monitor

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when the picture was taken and it was just a real rich starfield.

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And what we're hoping not to see
is a bunch of fuzzy stars

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with all kinds of weird rays
coming out of them

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like they used to be
in spherical aberration.

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So the image started coming up.

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And this is an old Cathode-ray tube

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So yeah,

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I know this is technology that some of the young people in the audience

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don’t even know what I'm talking about,

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but it took a while for the image to build up.

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And we first saw

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a little bright star in the center,
and then some fainter stars came up.

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More and more stars came up.

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You could hear a pin drop.

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You you could have heard an atom
drop on the floor.

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It was so quiet.

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And slowly, more and more stars came up and they were sharp.

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And there were lots of them.

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Lots of them.

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Because when you're out of focus,
you don't see very faint things.

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When you're in focus, you really see deep.

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And then the picture was there
and it was perfect, absolutely perfect.

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And there's still a moment of silence.

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And then everybody just went crazy.

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Hey, hey, hey.

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Right, right. Yeah.

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Oh, did it.

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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Bring it down, bring it more.

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Oh, come on.

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Okay. Not bad.

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And I can't describe
everybody just hugging each other,

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crying tears, you know,

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somebody came in
with champagne, you know, It was.

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It was just a moment
I'll never forget as long as I live.

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Hubble was fixed.

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Total success.

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You couldn't have

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you couldn't have had had a bigger success in that first servicing mission

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when Hubble was launched.

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I always thought that,

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you know, it would die

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and I’d have another ten or 20 years in my career.

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And here I retired ten years
and it’s still going.

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It made me the butt of jokes, it made me

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a collector of arrows, slings and arrows
from my neighbors.

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and the press thought I was a joke.

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And seeing where Hubble is now

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making those early promises
look like nothing.

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I mean, piece of cake.

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I mean, it’s iconic.

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It's the greatest American
scientific achievement ever.

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It's the great American comeback story.

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We should be able to fix it
in our insurance program.

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I think we're all committed.

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Nobody's walking away.

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I think we're all committed to
work on it and do it right.

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Servicing Mission 1 allowed Hubble
to continue forward with its mission.

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With more than 1.5 million observations, Hubble is
one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.

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Thirty years later, Hubble continues making discoveries
that change our understanding of the universe.

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Follow us on social media @NASAHubble