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hubble is all about imagery

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it's all about taking clear sharp

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beautiful pictures of the sky and doing

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the story of the hubble space telescope

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launch is best uh the way i like to

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describe it is uh

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climbing to the top of mount everest and

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then suddenly within a couple months of

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sinking to the bottom of the dead sea

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we were having trouble focusing the

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telescope and uh

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we noticed that wide field camera

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pictures that were coming down were

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fuzzy fuzzy blobs instead of nice sharp

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points and over the course of early june

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we started to get worried maybe maybe

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there's something wrong with the mirror

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itself you can't believe how down every

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astronomer on the hubble team was that

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day because we're about to announce to

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the world

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we messed up we don't have the telescope

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we thought the conclusion we've come to

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from that is that there's a significant

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spherical aberration appears to be

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present in the optics and the simplest

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way of understanding it is that when you

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have a mirror that's focusing the light

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all comes together at a single point is

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the objective of the exercise you want

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the light to come together and focus at

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a single point when you have spherical

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aberration it says that there's some

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disfigurement of that mirror that causes

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a light instead of focusing at a single

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point to be spread across a region in

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space

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and suddenly in the press was born the

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term hubble trouble

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i remember giving a talk to some young

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kids they were kindergarten kids really

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young kids

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about the wonders you know hubble and

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i said the word hubble telescope

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it was like i was jay leno everybody

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laughed

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it was a very sad very difficult time

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and some people left the program and

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john gave me this one ray of hope it was

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that one little ray of hope that i

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glommed onto we played with it we played

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with the model

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and we realized that if the error were

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in the primary mirror

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we could make our correction with a

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little mirror about the size of a nickel

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inside our camera so we purposely made

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the mirror in our instrument and

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therefore our whole camera out of focus

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with a minus sign

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it was as profoundly out of focus as the

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hubble telescope was exactly

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and that was not easy

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we were finishing up the final optical

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alignment and the nasa administrator dan

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golden visited jpl we went to the clean

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room and he said

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what's going on here

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larry simmons the project manager says

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well we're here to fix the hubble

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telescope

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and his response was no you're here to

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save the agency

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that was a clear message to us that it

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was important we shall not fail

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okay are you ready to let go shortly

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after the mission was over

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we brought with pictu online

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we'd done everything that we thought we

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had to do but there's no substitute for

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the first image came and it looked

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really good i mean it looked just the

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we did like nine press conferences in a

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row with primarily with pick pictures

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every single one made front page news

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it took this camera

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being put in the hubble in 1993 to

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really start the career of hubble to

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turn hubble from a national disgrace

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almost to the great american comeback

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story

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and here it is still our workhorse

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camera going on 15 years

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it's going to be a tough moment when

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it comes out of the hubble because i

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remember exactly the moment it was

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emplaced in the hubble but i really look

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forward to be able to walk up to it and