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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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One of the problems with Hubble
was we predicted

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success before it was launched
and it's easy to do, they’re

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so excited about what
we're going to discover and see,

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that's all they talk about.

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They don't talk about the risks.

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Everybody's telling us what we can't do.

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We got to find out what we can do.

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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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The Challenge, Servicing Mission 1

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There were a lot of people
who were ashamed,

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who did not want to work on Hubble.
People who were generally

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not real proud to be working at NASA
at that stage.

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People were taking NASA
bumper stickers off

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their cars.

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We've got a very clear
and distinct characteristic,

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a textbook characteristic,
if you will, of an optical system

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which had a significant amount
of spherical aberration.

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I wanted to say, how can I help?

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That was my only reaction.

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People measure
you on how you respond to it.

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Not necessarily the problem,

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and history, many times is centered around the response,

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not just the problem.

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So I wanted to be part of the solution
and I wanted to help,

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I just generally wanted to help.

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Servicing Mission One,

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people always fail to recognize
was always planned.

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It was planned to be able to replace the Wide Field Planetary Camera,

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and potentially repair or to do whatever
engineering maintenance was needed.

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When the flawed mirror was found,
the objectives

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became, I need to fix the optics, correct
the optics.

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The second problem
was a jitter of the solar arrays,

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the thermal design and the structural design

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of the solar array deployment
mechanisms would bind up.

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And so in the cold they would bind up

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and as you came into the light,
the heat would hit it, warm up,

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release the tension,
and there'd be the solar rays being large

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floppy structures would flop
and until that settled down

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It was hard to point the telescope
accurately and hold it steady.

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You were losing five
or ten minutes of the observation time.

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One of the things that we did as a team,
the management team,

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we sat down and set out a strategy
because the first thing we had to do

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was also convince our stakeholders,
particularly the scientific community,

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and then the Congress, who was funding us, that we actually had a plan,

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could fix it, could do it on a schedule
that was credible

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and do it within the budget
that we predicted for it.

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The first goal was,
well, we're going to fix Hubble.

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The second goal was very important
to the scientific community.

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We weren't gonna take any money
from the next generation instrument

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development to solve the problem
up front,

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we were going to allow that to proceed.

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And then the third thing
was we were going to ensure

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we did all the maintenance to extend the life that we would have normally done.

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We set those out, very clear objectives,
and we invited the scientific community

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to review us and measure us on every decision we made.

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So that was an important part
to start to build confidence

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that we had a plan in simple enough terms

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that everybody could look at it and judge

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our actions based on that.
The public really supports a risk.

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They support risk takers
and they can even accept failure

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and allow you to try it again.

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But if you surprise them and tell them “I'm going to be successful,”

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then have a failure and then say,
“Oh yeah, this was risky!”

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You lose your credibility,
they lose confidence in you,

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and they’re also not really interested
in being part of your team.

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So my job was to make sure
we had a good team,

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they had the right resources
and run interference for them, being able

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to motivate, being able to read
and trust people and rely on them,

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give them the freedom to do things
and to have faith in them.

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Get rid of outside distractions
as much as you can.

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I mean, we were going to do everything
we could

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to ensure success. We quickly

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were learning
that we needed more than one

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EVA day, which was all we were allotted
when it started.

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They hadn't named the crew.

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We were now going into June
or July of 1991.

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No crew named, one EVA day...

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This isn’t a regular mission!

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They try to name the crew no sooner
than one year before the mission.

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The reason they never named the crew early is because people get sick,

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people have problems,

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and by getting a crew name too early
and starting the training,

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they would like to stay as close
as possible to the launch date

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so it minimized
the retraining and change out of crews.

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We tried to make the case.

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Then we began getting independent reviews.

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The administrator, Dan Goldin, believed that it was very important,

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and he was right, that we assure we’ve done everything

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humanly possible in case

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it does fail, that nobody can point at us
and say we took anything lightly.

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The importance of training
and what we were doing,

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how long it was going to take,
and we’re 22 months

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before launch and made a plea to name
the crew.

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At the end of the two day review we had,
we got the crew named.

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We messed around with that
for probably six or nine months

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trying to get the crew named.
So that was one challenge.

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The second one was the number of EVA days and we used another review

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to point out
that this is what needed to be done for,

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at that point, we're still talking about mission success,

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you know, and there's no way we’re going to do it in one day.

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And so we use the reviews
to get an additional day.

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And we finally got to the five days.

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Those, to me were the bigger challenges was to get

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everybody lined up on the same page,

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believing what was needed
and then committed to executing

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what was needed
for the success of the mission.

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And during that mission,
I slept maybe two hours a night.

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Maybe. We get off and we go have breakfast and I'll go back to the hotel.

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And then I always kind of hang awake
until noon

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and see the briefing
just to see what was going on

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and then go back to sleep
and maybe sleep for an hour or two.

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And it was hard we were on adrenaline,
and I don't think I slept the whole week

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very much. I had full expectation that we did everything that was needed,

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that if nothing mechanically went wrong,
in other words, or nothing operationally

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went wrong, that the outcome was going to be a clear image.

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Right out of the get go,

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there were amazing imagery coming back.

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It wasn't a surprise to me.

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I had no fear that we didn't engineer

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something that was going to be a 99.9 chance,

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I don't think discoveries for Hubble

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or most scientific observatories

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lead to answers. They lead to
the next set of questions,

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especially when there are surprises
because suddenly it challenges

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the fundamental theory.

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I think the imagery
from Hubble to this day

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still is something people
look at and talk about.

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And you know, anybody from the guy

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sitting next to you in the bar, to somebody sitting on an airplane.

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I used to lay on my back on the grass
in the in the local greens

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in New York City, and look up at the sky
and wonder what's out there.

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just look it.

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I mean, at that time I couldn't
spell “Galaxy,”

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I knew nothing.

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But I still used to wonder what was out there.

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And that sense of wonder,
you look at the Hubble imagery,

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and it just magnifies it a million times.

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And you’ll wonder at

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all we don't know.

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We're just a little grain of sand,

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and not even in the universe.

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It may be opening
a lot of young people's minds

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and having them pursue careers in areas
because they now become curious.

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Hopefully history will remember not us by the problem we had with Hubble,

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but how we faced up to the challenge
and did something about it.

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And I think in reality we have and in spades

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we’ll be remembered as stepping up

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to the challenge and knocking it down
and turning it around into a victory.

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And I thank the entire team

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for their support in doing this,
and many people contributed to this.

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Thank you.

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Thanks to the teams in space and on the ground,
Servicing Mission 1 was a resounding success.

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The lessons learned guided future servicing missions
and influenced how we build and maintain structures in space.

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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