All language subtitles for Americas Secret Space Heroes Series 1 5of6 Hubble Telescope 1080p

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In 1977 NASA is
given an enormous challenge --

build a space telescope
with the potential to unlock

the secrets of our universe.

MIKE: It’s an
engineering wonder.

It really is an
engineering miracle.

NARRATOR: The project
pushes engineers, scientists

and astronauts into
uncharted territory.

ARCHIVE: Liftoff of the
Space Shuttle Discovery

with the Hubble Space Telescope.

ED: We put our careers and
lives in that shuttle bay.

NARRATOR: From
construction to release.

STORY: The solar panels wouldn’t
go out. They were stuck.

MISSION CONTROL:
I need answers now.

NARRATOR: From ridicule...

JIM GUNN: I thought that
there was no conceivable way

that they could fix this.

NARRATOR: To redemption.

JEFF: Man, that
was a neat moment.

ED: It’s a classic
story of human ingenuity

and human perseverance.

NARRATOR: This is the
story of the unsung heroes

who built the
Hubble Space Telescope.

ARCHIVE: Discovery,
Hubble is open for business.

[♪ theme music ♪]

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: December 7th, 1993.

In the lethal environment
of space, astronauts risk

their lives trying to save the
$1.5 billion Hubble Telescope.

ED: We had to do it. The
future of Hubble was at stake.

Perhaps even the
future of our agency.

JEFF: The servicing mission
was a technical challenge

like none anybody had ever seen.

NARRATOR: Delicate new
hardware must be installed.

Without it the
telescope’s performance

is critically impaired.

ED:
You’ve got this huge spacesuit
on with big thick gloves.

How in the world are you gonna
do very fine electronic work?

MISSION CONTROL:
Have you checked your
mechanism’s cocked, Story?

STORY: People consider that to
be the most critical maneuver.

If I tap that thing, it’s over.

ASTRONAUT: Okay, are
you ready for me to let go?

ASTRONAUT: Yes I am.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
For over two decades, the Hubble
Space Telescope has provided

humanity with unparalleled
views of the universe.

ASTRONAUT: Hubble
isn’t just a satellite.

It’s about
humanity’s quest for knowledge.

NARRATOR:
Before it, images of this
clarity simply didn’t exist.

MIKE: Hubble shows us
the beauty of the universe.

We all can look up at
the sky at night and wonder

what’s going on out there, where
did we come from, who are we?

Is there anyone else out there?

CHARLIE:
The great fun of science
is that it answers questions

and that it creates questions,
and Hubble’s done both.

NARRATOR: Named after American
cosmologist Edwin Hubble,

this school-bus-sized
observatory circles our planet

at over 17,000 miles
per hour, capturing light

6 billion times fainter
than the human eye can see.

ED: Your eye can see
more or less a flashlight,

a two-cell flashlight
maybe a couple miles.

Hubble could see that
flashlight on the moon,

240,000 miles away.

NARRATOR: The
incredible journey to build

this revolutionary machine
begins over 70 years ago.

♪ ♪

September 1946.

American astrophysicist Lyman
Spitzer writes a short paper

that changes the
course of history.

He’s frustrated with
trying to observe space

from the Earth’s surface --
because our atmosphere blurs

the view of the heavens.

DAVID: You know that, "Twinkle,
twinkle, little star"?

Well, everybody loves that song.

Astronomers hate it,

because they wanna
get rid of that twinkle.

NARRATOR: Earth’s atmosphere
also filters out wavelengths

of light such as
ultraviolet that are critical

for unraveling the
evolution of our cosmos.

Inspired by advances
in rocket technology,

Spitzer makes a
revolutionary proposal --

an orbiting observatory
above our atmosphere.

ED: The idea of
putting a telescope in space,

I mean, give me a break; we
didn’t even have satellites

when Dr. Spitzer
wrote that paper.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Spitzer
devotes the next three decades

to promoting
cutting-edge research

which will make
his dream possible.

CHARLIE: What
Lyman Spitzer did is

move the space telescope
idea from pure science fiction

to, you might
actually be able to do this.

NARRATOR: In 1977 his
efforts are finally rewarded

when Congress approves
funding for a space telescope.

NASA must now
deliver Spitzer’s dream.

But building this telescope is
an immense technical challenge.

Chief engineer Jean Olivier
shoulders much of the burden.

JEAN: Hubble was an
extremely ambitious program.

The further we got into it,

the more ambitious we
realized it really was.

NARRATOR: Before construction of
the telescope can even begin,

NASA must decide how
to launch it into orbit.

As it happens, the agency’s
crown jewel, the space shuttle,

is in the final
stages of testing.

DAVID: As NASA put all of its
dimes into the space shuttle,

many scientific
missions had to be redefined

in terms of being
carried by the shuttle.

ARCHIVE: Fitting into
the shuttle’s cargo bay,

the telescope will be latched
to a tilting mechanism...

NARRATOR: Putting Hubble into
orbit with a reusable vehicle

offers engineers a
fantastic new opportunity.

JOHN: The space
shuttle was going to be there

to service the Hubble
and upgrade its instruments

every three years or so.

NARRATOR: To ensure Hubble
can be improved over time,

engineers design
it to be modular.

Each of its five
scientific instruments,

tasked with unlocking the
mysteries of the universe,

must be packaged in its
own easy-to-replace box.

MIKE: And so everything
had to be done such that

it could be removed, but removed
by spacewalking astronauts.

NARRATOR: But while the shuttle
extends Hubble’s shelf life,

it has one major drawback.

ED: Basically Hubble was built
as large as it could be built

to fit in the shuttle bay.

I’m sure many of the engineers
wished they had more room,

as it turned out.

NARRATOR: Hubble needs
to be smaller and lighter

than Earth-based telescopes

but also have more advanced
scientific capabilities.

And no part is more important
to the taxpaying public,

whose dollars fund the project,

than the one that
will provide the pictures.

JEFF: If you’d have asked
what’s the one thing that

you have to have, the answer
is you had to have a camera.

But at the time
nobody had built a camera

that had to be this good.

NARRATOR: Unlike most telescopes
on Earth at the time,

it’s not practical
for Hubble’s camera

to use photographic film.

BOB: We had to have a camera
that would work very remotely

and sent its signal back.

NARRATOR: Restricted by size,
the camera must be lightweight,

robust and sensitive to
a wide spectrum of light.

The battle comes down to
two very different devices.

DAVID: You had a
choice that had been tested,

the television-type camera tube.

But then you had something new.

Something untested
but really promising.

And that is solid-state,
silicon technologies

that we call, today,
charge-coupled devices.

NARRATOR: These nifty
electronic "eyes" convert light

into electricity,
building up a picture made

of tiny individual
squares called pixels.

Smaller and more sensitive to
light, the charge-coupled device

or CCD, appears to
be the better bet.

But there are
serious drawbacks --

they’re untested,
can’t detect UV light,

and they have a
field of view much smaller

than the television-type tubes.

ED: It was pushing the state of
the art a little bit too far,

a lot of people thought.

NARRATOR: With no clear
winner, NASA puts out a request

for proposals.

Bob O’Dell is a prominent member
of the selection committee.

BOB: I cannot say I
made the selection,

but I wouldn’t have been
in the room without having

a strong opinion
and expressing it.

NARRATOR: At the California
Institute of Technology, the

challenge attracts the attention
of two maverick professors

-- Jim Westphal and Jim Gunn.

BOB: Jim Westphal was
wonderfully hands-on;

he was absolutely a
Thomas Edison type person.

Jim Gunn was the scientist,
well-acknowledged to be one of

the smartest guys in our field.

NARRATOR: Since 1975,
they’ve been experimenting

with ground-based
telescopes fitted with CCDs.

JIM GUNN:
They were clearly the magic
bullet. So we had to do this.

NARRATOR: But Jim
Westphal isn’t convinced.

JIM GUNN: Jim was as allergic
as I was to bureaucracy,

so I knew that it was
going to be an uphill battle.

NARRATOR: October 1976.

DAVID: One day
Jim got a phone call

and it was from Jim Gunn,

and a phone call from Jim
Gunn usually means something.

Jim simply said, "Can
I come over and talk?"

JIM GUNN: I think I just
wandered over there and said,

"We have to build a CCD
camera for space telescope,"

and the reaction as I remember
was exactly as I expected.

"No bloody way."

NARRATOR: But Gunn
won’t take no for an answer.

JIM GUNN: I think I
finally twisted his arm by

figuratively reading
Lyman’s paper to him.

And saying, "Look,
this is an opportunity

we simply cannot pass up."

NARRATOR: Westphal
agrees to lead the project

and recruits an elite team.

Together they
must create a camera

that will help unlock
the secrets of the universe.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In the fall
of 1976 James Westphal

and his newly assembled Caltech
team begin fresh experiments

with the technology
they hope will form the core

of their camera --
charge-coupled devices.

JIM GUNN: You have a thing
that’s very, very close to this

in your smart phone.

The problem was that at the time
this technology was very new.

And though it was
incredibly promising,

it was also very risky.

NARRATOR:
Convincing NASA that CCDs
are the technology to go for

means overcoming some critical
engineering challenges.

First up -- field of view.

In the mid-1970s CCDs
are relatively small.

This limits the size of
image they can produce.

But scientists
demand that Hubble’s camera

has a wide field of view
to record larger portions

of the cosmos.

To compete with
television-style cameras,

Westphal must increase
the CCD’s field of view

by at least a factor of 4.

As it happens, Bob
O’Dell has a radical solution

that he chooses to
share with Westphal.

Instead of building
a single larger CCD,

he suggests using
four smaller ones.

As light from the telescope
enters the camera, a specially

designed pyramid-shaped
mirror splits the beam

and redirects it
onto four separate CCDs.

BOB: So the final image is a
mosaic of the four components.

NARRATOR: Now just one
daunting engineering roadblock

stands in Westphal’s way --
capturing ultraviolet light.

JIM GUNN:
People were very interested
in what stars are made out of.

They were very
interested in what the gas

and the galaxy is made out of.

To understand that
you really need to look

into the ultraviolet.

NARRATOR: The
trouble is CCDs can’t see

in the
ultraviolet spectrum because

the silicon they’re
housed in absorbs it.

Westphal must
overcome this crucial problem.

JIM GUNN: Problems were
something that Jim solved.

So naturally he was
the guy who was going to,

who was going to do this.

NARRATOR: For inspiration,
Westphal turns to nature.

He studies chemical reactions
that occur in living organisms

which create light.

Through his
research, Westphal unearths

some potentially
game-changing chemicals

that can convert UV
light into visible light

through a process
called fluorescence.

To test if fluorescence
can be recorded by CCDs,

Westphal carries out
top-secret experiments

with two different chemicals.

Each is given a codename
to ward off competition.

JEFF: They’d talk about it
as bug juice or mouse milk.

This kind of magical stuff
that you put on the surface

of the CCD.

NARRATOR: Westphal coats
the CCDs in either bug juice --

the chemical lumigen --

or mouse milk -- the
chemical coronene --

by evaporating them in a vacuum.

JEFF: Nobody had
done that kind of thing

before with these devices.

NARRATOR: Next, the detectors
are inserted into a camera,

exposed to a UV light pattern,
and a picture is taken.

If the tests fail,
Westphal and Gunn’s dream

to build the
Hubble camera is over.

♪ ♪

The results with
coronene are a breakthrough.

The two main barriers
to using CCD technology

have now been overcome.

Westphal’s team have increased
the detector’s field of view

and discovered how to
record ultraviolet light.

JIM GUNN: We were
able to convince NASA

that this was a
technology that worked.

But mouse milk won
over bug juice in the end.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: NASA
green-lights construction of

Westphal’s Wide Field/Planetary
Camera, known as Wiffpic,

with its core
technology of CCD detectors.

For the public, the camera
will define Hubble’s success.

ED: We had to do great science

but also get that
science to the public.

So pictures were critical,

and what instrument
produced the neatest pictures?

The Wide Field/Planetary Camera.

NARRATOR: NASA’s chief
scientist, Ed Weiler, pushes for

the construction of a duplicate
camera to keep in reserve.

ED: Having an insurance
policy that would only cost

maybe $50 million was worth it.

NARRATOR: After some cajoling

the NASA hierarchy
approves the idea,

and the following year work
starts on a replica camera --

Wiffpic 2.

♪ ♪

Crucial to the success
of all Hubble’s instruments

is the design of
the telescope itself.

Telescopes capture light
using lenses and mirrors.

The bigger they are the
more light they can gather,

and the more
detail they can see.

The further the light
travels inside the telescope

before it’s focused, the
greater the magnification.

But because Hubble
must squeeze into the bay

of the space
shuttle, it can’t be as big

as engineers would like.

To extend Hubble’s
view into the universe,

they boost its
magnifying powers using

a 300-year-old optical trick
-- hyperbolic curved mirrors.

Reflecting light back and
forth inside the telescope

increases the
distance it travels,

making the
instrument more powerful.

It’s the perfect
solution to engineering

a lightweight
high-performance telescope.

But the success of this
design hangs on the quality

of the telescope’s
light-gathering primary mirror.

ED: It’s the brain or
the heart of the telescope.

That’s where it all starts.

NARRATOR: NASA contracts
the PerkinElmer company

to undertake much of
the complex technical work.

This includes
engineering the mirror.

JEAN: The most challenging thing
first was to build a mirror

precisely enough to
meet the resolution needs.

ED: It had to be accurate
over that 2.4-meter surface

to a millionth of an inch.

JEAN: If you were to
take the diameter of Hubble

and blow it up to
the size of the Earth,

then any deviation of
more than about six inches

would be unacceptable.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: To achieve this
level of precision, Hubble’s

primary mirror is carved
from a one-ton block of glass

and meticulously polished
with a spinning abrasive pad

controlled by computers.

After polishing sessions
lasting up to 70 hours,

the mirror’s shape is
analyzed in this chamber.

JOHN: The task of the optician
to make the Hubble mirror

is first to create a
device that allows him

to measure the surface.

NARRATOR: But creating equipment
that can measure accurately

enough is a challenge in itself.

CHARLIE: With Hubble we wanted
to make a perfect mirror,

and so the
PerkinElmer, really smart guys,

conceived of a thing called
a reflective null corrector.

NARRATOR: A null corrector is a
precision optical test device.

By shining a beam of light

through this carefully
calibrated instrument,

engineers can create
a light-wave pattern

in the exact shape
of the desired mirror.

This light is then
reflected back by the mirror

and the
interference pattern recorded.

Straight strips mean the
mirror’s curvature is perfect.

A distorted pattern
indicates it’s the wrong shape.

By studying these
images, optical engineers

know where to
continue polishing the mirror

to create the perfect curvature.

But it’s a painstakingly slow
process that puts PerkinElmer

badly behind schedule.

CHARLIE: I think originally it
was supposed to take nine months

and probably took twice that.

NARRATOR: As
preparations for launch begin,

PerkinElmer
deliver the mirror to NASA.

What they don’t
realize is that a tiny flaw

in the test
equipment has gone unnoticed.

DAVID: It was an oversight, and
it had enormous ramifications

in the life of the
Hubble Space Telescope.

MISSION CONTROL: 3, 2,
1 and liftoff, liftoff,

of the 25th
space shuttle mission.

And it has cleared the tower.

NARRATOR:
January 1986, just months
before Hubble is due to launch.

MISSION CONTROL: Challenger,
go with throttle up.

ASTRONAUT: Roger,
go with throttle up.

[Explosion]

MISSION CONTROL: Oh, God -- no!

NARRATOR: The
Challenger disaster plunges

the space shuttle
program into turmoil.

MISSION CONTROL:
Obviously a major malfunction.

MISSION CONTROL: Okay everybody,
stay off the telephones.

Make sure you
maintain all your data;

start pulling it together.

NARRATOR: As America comes
to terms with the tragedy,

NASA grounds the shuttle fleet,

and Hubble’s launch is
postponed indefinitely.

For four years it
sits in hibernation.

MISSION CONTROL: Liftoff
of Space Shuttle Discovery

with the Hubble Space Telescope,
our window on the universe.

NARRATOR: Finally, on April
24th, 1990, after 13 years

of blood, sweat and tears,
Hubble is ready to leave Earth.

ED: By the time we
launched, about 10,000 people

had spent some part of
their lives working on Hubble.

ASTRONAUT:
Roger. Roll Discovery.

JEFF: And you realize
that sitting up there

on the very top of
that pillar of fire

is this thing that you
have attached your life to.

This thing that is carrying
the hopes of a whole science.

MISSION CONTROL:
Discovery’s velocity now
23,000 feet per second.

JEFF: It kind of
takes your breath away.

NARRATOR: Discovery
soars to nearly 380 miles,

higher than any
shuttle has flown before,

to place Hubble above
the Earth’s atmosphere.

Now it’s time to
set the telescope free.

STORY: Discovery,
you’re go to transfer Hubble

to internal power on time.

ASTRONAUT: Roger
that, understand.

Go transfer of
internal power on time.

NARRATOR:
Story Musgrave is capsule
communicator at mission control.

STORY: I knew the
importance of that mission.

I knew what
Hubble meant to people.

NARRATOR:
To generate power, Hubble
relies on two solar arrays

absorbing energy from the sun.

But to unfurl the arrays
there is a critical stage

where Hubble must run
on internal batteries.

NASA must deploy
the solar panels

before the batteries run down.

STORY:
Once you’ve taken the power
off of Hubble it’s gonna die.

So we’re time-constrained.

NARRATOR: The first
panel unrolls perfectly.

Now time for the second.

ASTRONAUT: Houston, Discovery.
It looks like the motion

has stopped with just
about one panel showing.

STORY: They’re supposed to motor
out, and it wouldn’t go out.

JEFF: It’s like you’re
watching the birth of your baby

and it’s stuck. It’s a big deal.

STORY:
Okay, with the panels that
you’ve got out there right now,

that’s not
satisfactory to stay overnight.

NARRATOR:
Years of work and billions
of dollars are at stake.

Engineers must find a way
to release the stuck panel

before time runs out.

MISSION CONTROL:
I need answers now.

NARRATOR: The problem
is quickly diagnosed.

ASTRONAUT: Discovery, go ahead.

MISSION CONTROL: We think
there may be some problem

with the tension
monitoring software.

NARRATOR:
A sensor is saying tension
in the panel is too high.

One solution is to override it.

But this could snap the
solar array’s stem booms,

rendering them useless. It’s
risky, and engineers are split.

MISSION CONTROL: We
need to get on with it.

NARRATOR: Under
pressure from flight control,

Jean Olivier is in the hot seat.

JEAN: Finally it became
clear we were at deadlock,

so I just had to say,
"No, we’re gonna do it.

We’re gonna override it."

STORY: We are
disabling the tension check.

ASTRONAUT: Okay
Houston, we see motion.

ASTRONAUT: It’s fully deployed.

STORY: You let the breath
go out, you let the air --

"Okay, we got through that one."

NARRATOR: Now receiving
the full power of the sun,

Hubble can finally
fulfill its primary purpose.

To capture the universe
in unprecedented detail.

STORY: And Discovery,
Hubble is open for business.

MISSION CONTROL: We got our
telescope. We got our telescope.

MISSION CONTROL: That’s it.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: May 20th, 1990.

Scientists and
engineers eagerly await

the telescope’s first image.

JEFF: The first
image comes down,

and it doesn’t look at all
like what we expected it to.

♪ ♪

Not these sharp little images,

but instead were
kind of these big blobs

that frankly
didn’t look any better

than the ground-based image.

NARRATOR: Something
has gone drastically wrong

with the $1.5-billion-dollar
space telescope. But what?

♪ ♪

June 1990.

Over the next month
every effort is made

to understand what’s causing
Hubble’s blurred vision.

DAVID: It was a
puzzle, a very dark puzzle.

NARRATOR: Part of
the Wiffpic camera team,

Jon Holtzman and Sandy Faber
analyze six further images

taken by the telescope.

They hint at a catastrophic
problem -- spherical aberration.

Spherical aberration is
caused when the primary mirror

is built the wrong shape so
that it fails to focus light

into a single point.

Instead light is smeared out,
and the object appears blurred.

It’s such an
unlikely mistake that

many engineers and scientists
can’t believe it’s true.

JEFF: We’re sure
that spherical aberration

isn’t going to be
a problem, you know.

Nobody’s going to
screw it up that badly.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: But Holtzman and
Faber have compelling evidence

that supports the theory.

Holtzman shows
the NASA hierarchy

a comparison of six photographs
taken by the telescope

with a series of six
computer-simulated images

with spherical
aberration built in.

JON HOLTZMAN: And the
match was nearly perfect,

and I think that kind
of proved to everyone

that that was the
problem that we had.

NARRATOR: The most accurate
mirror ever made is flawed.

JOHN: It was made very
accurately, very beautifully,

to the wrong prescription.

NARRATOR: In July 1990
an inquiry into the cause

of Hubble’s faulty
mirror reveals a mistake

with the test equipment
-- the null corrector.

JOHN: It wasn’t
quite aligned correctly,

and that built into the
whole operation an aberration.

NARRATOR:
Mis-spacing the null corrector
by just a fraction of an inch,

the outer edge of the
mirror was polished incorrectly

by 1/50th the
diameter of a human hair.

JEAN: We very
precisely did the wrong thing.

DAVID: The management
error was that there was

not enough checks and balances.

NASA CONFERENCE: Now we will
go to the floor for questions.

NARRATOR: Of Hubble’s
five scientific instruments,

the Wide Field/Planetary
Camera is the worst affected.

It’s a major blow for everyone
involved with the telescope.

ED [Archive]: It would
be dishonest of me to say

the mood of the scientists
is very happy right now.

We’re all very
frustrated, obviously.

♪ ♪

JEFF: If you ever want a picture
of a person just in anguish,

you want to find a
picture of Ed Weiler

at the end of
that press conference.

ED [Archive]: We feel
right now that there’s

probably no real
science that we can do

with the wide field camera at
this time, and I’ll stop there.

ED: It was very
depressing because a lot of us

had put our lives into
this, our entire careers.

Clearly Hubble’s
future was in doubt.

Perhaps the space
shuttle’s future was in doubt.

Perhaps NASA’s
future was in doubt.

NARRATOR: Some of the founding
fathers are so disillusioned

they leave the
project altogether.

JIM GUNN:
About this time, I didn’t
have enough faith in NASA.

I thought that there
was no conceivable way

that they could fix this.

NARRATOR: The press have a
field day at NASA’s expense.

JEFF: God, they were vicious.

One that I remember; Jay
Leno was, he just hit it again

and again and again, and one
of the jokes that I remember,

it was around
Thanksgiving, and he said,

"What is, what sound
does a space turkey make?

Hubble, Hubble, Hubble."

NARRATOR: As public
support for Hubble dwindles,

it appears the dream for
this space telescope is over.

But Charlie Pellerin, the man in
charge of the Hubble program,

refuses to give up hope.

CHARLIE: This was a,
a horrible, deep pain,

and only one way
to get rid of it,

and that’s to find a
way to fix the telescope.

There was no, no other way.

NARRATOR: The burning question
is how to correct the flaw.

Pellerin risks his
career by secretly bankrolling

a mission to find an
engineering solution.

CHARLIE: So, I
brought in my budget analyst,

and I said, "I wanna
find $60 million for --

and by the way, you can’t
tell anybody we’re doing this."

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The fact Hubble
can be serviced by astronauts

offers a glimmer of hope.

ED: If there were no
way to service the Hubble,

Hubble would’ve
rapidly become in 1990

a very expensive piece
of floating space garbage.

NARRATOR: It’s only now
that Ed Weiler’s decision

to build a backup
camera becomes a masterstroke.

ED: And thank goodness we had
that clone going ready to go,

because it was a
simple -- a simple fix

to change out four
little nickel-sized mirrors.

NARRATOR: These mirrors divert
the light from the telescope

to multiple electronic
detectors within the camera.

JOHN: It was like going
to the optician and saying,

"Well, your eyes
aren’t quite right.

You need this corrective lens."

We put that correction
on those little mirrors.

NARRATOR:
It’s an internal fix that can
be done by engineers on Earth.

When it’s installed, the
new modified backup camera

will go some way to
fixing Hubble’s vision.

But saving the four other
instruments that scientists hope

will unravel the
mysteries of our universe

proves much more challenging.

ED: The other
instruments didn’t have clones

being built of them.
There were no second copies.

NARRATOR: These instruments
require an external fix

that can only be done
by astronauts in space.

The goal is to place corrective
mirrors deep inside Hubble,

in front of the
remaining instruments,

to correct their vision.

But squeezing them into
a very restricted space

proves a technical nightmare.

Jim Crocker is part
of a multinational team

tasked with finding a solution.

JIM CROCKER: There were
literally hundreds of ideas,

but all of these
were either impractical

because an astronaut couldn’t
do them in gloved hands

or because it was too dangerous,

such as going down the
barrel of the telescope,

where an
astronaut might be trapped.

NARRATOR: A
mechanical fix is needed

that won’t put the
astronauts at risk.

But the team struggles to
come up with a viable design.

♪ ♪

After a conference in Germany,
Crocker returns to his hotel.

JIM CROCKER: I
went to take a shower,

and when the maid
was cleaning the room,

she had folded the arm down

and slid it all the
way down to the bottom.

So to take a shower I had to
slide it up and raise the arm,

and when I did that
I had this epiphany.

The shower head got me into
a different way of thinking.

So it was the idea
of raising something up

above the other instruments

and flipping it out
to do the correction

that we hadn’t
thought of before.

NARRATOR: In this moment a
corrective optics device --

COSTAR -- is born.

It will be prepackaged in
an astronaut-friendly box

with mirrors
that deploy remotely.

The only downside --

one of the existing
scientific instruments

will have to be
sacrificed to make room for it.

Crocker’s
shower-head-inspired invention

is now displayed
here at the Smithsonian’s

National Air and Space Museum.

DAVID: This is the
elegant engineering solution to

what was a daunting
technical challenge.

The little mirrors
that you see were deformed

precisely to counteract
the flaw in the main mirror,

and only once the
entire box was inserted

with everything protected
inside did the column extend,

and then as it
extended it deployed

these little
stalks with the mirrors

into the optical beam
of the other instruments.

NARRATOR: To repair Hubble,
both Wiffpic 2 and COSTAR

must be installed by astronauts

on a series of
grueling spacewalks.

This takes three years
of meticulous planning.

STORY: Stop. Stop. Up. Up.

NARRATOR: Story Musgrave,
who’s been working with Hubble

for 15 years, is the first
astronaut to be recruited.

To prepare his body for the
spacewalking ordeal ahead,

Musgrave goes to
extraordinary lengths,

enlisting the help
of Olympic athletes

like figure
skater Dorothy Hamill.

STORY: I brought athleticism
into the spacewalking world.

If you look at a spacewalk,
it is the choreography,

the dance of this
body and the tools,

that’s gonna get to the
finish line, and that’s it.

There’s nothing else. That’s it.

NARRATOR: As expectations
of rescuing Hubble grow,

the mission becomes more than
just repairing a telescope.

JEFF: It wasn’t just space
telescope that was on the line.

It wasn’t even NASA
that was on the line.

It was the broader question
of, do we still do big science?

♪ ♪

If the servicing mission had
failed that may well have been

the end of trying to do things
like this, and we knew it.

STORY: We just had to
do it and do it right.

ARCHIVE: Three
zero. We have ignition.

NARRATOR: December 2nd,
1993. Kennedy space center.

ARCHIVE: Roger, roll Endeavor.

NARRATOR: Space Shuttle
Endeavor thunders skyward

on a mission to rescue Hubble.

ED: We put our careers and
lives in that shuttle bay.

♪ ♪

ASTRONAUT: It’s quite a sight.

NARRATOR: As Endeavor approaches
Hubble, the crew reaches out

with the robotic arm
to capture the telescope.

ASTRONAUT: Houston,
Endeavor has a firm handshake

with Mr. Hubble’s telescope.

MISSION CONTROL:
Copy that Covey, and there
are smiles galore down here.

NARRATOR: With Hubble
tethered, the astronauts embark

on a series of
perilous spacewalks.

CHARLIE: The people that
are willing to put that suit on

and go out there and try
and fix a science instrument

is, is heroism at a level
that’s almost unparalleled.

NARRATOR: After two
days of intricate repairs,

Story Musgrave and Jeff Hoffman

remove the original
Wide Field/Planetary Camera

in order to install
the backup -- Wiffpic 2.

MISSION CONTROL: Okay.

Have you checked your
mechanism’s cocked, Story?

STORY: I’ve just cocked
them, yes. I’ve just done them.

NARRATOR: At the front of the
unit is a delicate instrument

that diverts light from the
telescope into the camera --

the pick-off mirror.

STORY: This was
the most critical part

of 40 hours of spacewalking. If
I touch that mirror, it’s over.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: As the world
watches, Musgrave and Hoffman

slowly maneuver the
Wiffpic 2 camera into position.

JEFF: These astronauts
have to take this thing

and somehow manage to
slide it into this bay.

ASTRONAUT: Looks
like it’s in there.

ASTRONAUT: Yes.

ASTRONAUT: Okay are you
ready for me to let go?

ASTRONAUT: Yes I am.

NARRATOR: The camera is
installed without a hitch.

Now for the
corrective optics device.

ASTRONAUT: Keep coming
up, coming up, coming up.

NARRATOR: Packaged in a module
the size of a telephone booth,

the device is key to every
other instrument on Hubble

working perfectly.

STORY: The booth
just went in, bang,

put the power
tool on, it’s done.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The crew
of Endeavor complete

one of the most
ambitious repair missions

in the history of
space exploration.

MISSION CONTROL:
Through your superb
efforts, you have really shown

that NASA can do all we
promised to do and more.

ED [Archive]: Good job.

NARRATOR: But has Hubble’s
eye surgery been successful?

Four days after Endeavor’s
triumphant return to Earth,

Hubble’s new camera
transmits its first image.

It’s the moment
of truth for those

who’ve dedicated their
lives to the telescope.

JEFF: And the image
comes down and here,

it is coming up
on the display...

[All cheering]

And it was right.

I mean, how do you
describe that? How do you...?

How do you capture the emotions

when you’ve been a part of
something that was built up

with such incredible high hopes?

Man, that was a neat moment.
God, that was a neat moment.

ED: Having the first
picture come down and prove,

and absolutely
prove that we had fixed

the Hubble Space Telescope --
that was a moment of redemption.

I said "Holy [expletive],"
and I wasn’t fired for it.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Over the
next quarter-century

Hubble observes
more than 30,000 objects

and beams back over
half a million images.

Its discoveries
transform modern astronomy.

JIM GUNN: And you think about it

and you’re looking
10 billion years back,

and you’re seeing history
in front of your eyes as,

as the light comes.
It’s an amazing thing.

NARRATOR: Witnessing the
birth and death of stars,

confirming the existence
of supermassive black holes

and thousands of
unknown galaxies

and measuring the
age of the universe --

Hubble’s science and
images transfix the world.

Between 1993 and 2009,
four further shuttle missions

return to upgrade Hubble.

Aboard two of those is
astronaut Mike Massimino.

ASTRONAUT: Okay
Mass, you have a go.

MIKE: I think it’s the
greatest scientific instrument

ever built, not only because
of the science it produces

but because of the
engineering that went into it.

MIKE [Archive]: Oh,
what a beautiful view.

MIKE: It’s an
engineering wonder.

It really is an
engineering miracle.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: But after a
quarter-century in orbit

and with no more
servicing missions planned,

Hubble’s days are numbered.

MISSION CONTROL: And we
wish Hubble the very best.

NARRATOR: Now there’s
a new kid on the block.

Set for launch in 2018,
the James Webb Space Telescope

will extend our
window into the universe.

JON ARENBERG: We’re
gonna see unprecedented views

of the birth of stars and
planets, the origins of life.

NARRATOR:
As with Hubble, engineers work
tirelessly behind the scenes

to ensure the mission’s success.

JON ARENBERG: The thing
that keeps me up at night

is the problem
we didn’t think of.

So-called
failure of imagination.

NARRATOR: While the James
Webb Telescope is the future,

Hubble’s
engineering tribulations

and eventual triumph ensure it
a prominent place in history.

JEFF: Hubble originally
was sold as this instrument

that was going to revolutionize
our understanding of

the universe, and it delivered
on that promise, I think,

more than anybody
could have dreamed.

NARRATOR: And all
this has been possible

because of the
scientists and engineers

who turned humanity’s dream of
a space telescope into reality.

CHARLIE: Commitment
to find a way to fix it

is one of the, the great things
I’ve ever done in my life.

NARRATOR:
The lessons learned transcend
engineering and science.

ED:
We tried something hard, it’s
important, and we screwed up.

And it was such a screw-up that
the whole world laughed at us.

But the important thing of
that story is perseverance.

We kept trying, and
we eventually succeeded.

JIM CROCKER: And that’s a
story that we humans love,

and it’s certainly one that
I loved having been a part of.