[no sound]
>>KATRINA: NASA Goddard's Space Telescope Operations Control Center
has seen a lot of activity over the past 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope.
It looks calm now, but 13 years ago, it was a
very different story. [tense music]
[music] >>JOHN: Engineers at the Goddard
Space Flight Center discovered that there was a very small fault
in the Power Control Unit. >>CHRISTINE: You know, it's the heart of Hubble. All the power
runs through that box. >>MIKE: To change out the PCU, you actually have to turn off the
telescope. This is something we've never ever done, is turn the telescope completely
off. >>JOHN: When we turn all the power off of Hubble, it starts
getting cold. >>AL: You know, space is a cruel environment, and so
the temperature control of the telescope is very important. >>MIKE: I was brought on
to develop a command procedure which we called the super proc, which would turn the telescope off
as quickly as we possibly could. >>CHRISTINE: For months, we analyzed different scenarios.
>>ART: We thought through everything that could possibly go wrong.
>>CHRISTINE: We felt confident, we had a ream of analysis. [electronic beeps]
>>MIKE: I arrived late at night for the start of the orbit
shift. >>AL: So the team was very prepared and very focused on what we had
to do that night. >>CHRISTINE: You know everything was pretty calm, everything was,
you know, you're nervous, but everything was going according to plan. >>MIKE: John was getting into
his suit, he's getting into the airlock, they're going through all their checklists, and we're sending commands
and commands. It's like we were starting down a roller coaster ride. >>ART: The goal was
always to have the work site ready to go with whatever power needed to be
removed for safety considerations, just when the crew got to the work
site. [electronic beeps] >>MIKE: All of a sudden, we hear,
over the loops we hear John say, "I have a leak." >>CHRISTINE: What does that mean?!
A water leak in a suit, you know that's, that's not good.
>>MIKE: Then Al comes on the loops and tells us, "Stop doing the commanding.
We need to figure out what we're going to do from this point." >>AL: What we immediately did was
started to assess what components we had already powered off.
>>CHRISTINE: Then I said, "You know, these things don't have a large margin, you know we're
up to the line." >>AL: Our thermal engineers would tell us, "Well given the condition
and the current temperatures, we've got a certain amount of time."
>>CHRISTINE: I said, "Okay, turn on this, turn on these, you know, general bus
heaters." >>MIKE: At the same time, the astronauts are frantically working to change out
John's suit to get him back ready. >>ART: The next thing we hear is, "Okay,
we've got it fixed." >>CHRISTINE: You know, he got into a different suit, and things were
working well. We turned right back around and starting shutting things back off. >>ART: And so
we were right back on that roller coaster of powering down again. >>CHRISTINE: It was a relief to me, we're
back on track, you know we're back to the original plan. >>MIKE: Luckily we had everything
reconfigured in time, so that by the time John got to the door
and was ready to start working on the PCU, we were able to send the super proc.
>>VOICE OVER HEADSET: The telescope is powered down. John, tell those
super proc people they're geniuses.
>>MIKE: The telescope was completely off.
>>CHRISTINE: It's an engineer's life blood to sit there and watch the telemetry, watch the temperatures, watch
the voltages, watch the power, make sure everything is safe while they're working on the telescope.
But we had none of that. >>MIKE: All we could do was sit back and watch John perform what was
one of the most amazing EVAs of all times, it was like watching poetry in motion.
[quiet driving music]
[music fades out] [electronic beeps] >>ART: Before we knew it,
it was time to power things back on. >>MIKE: They gave us the call
down to say, "Go for the PCU aliveness test." This is where we actually
can send the commands to turn the telescope back on.
>>ART: All of a sudden, this flood of telemetry starts
coming in from the telescope. >>CHRISTINE: Power was running through it, the batteries were
charging, and for me the temperatures were
looking in a safe, you know, range. >>ART: Everyone's looking at their screens and
it was pretty much just green across the board. >>MIKE: Hubble was back alive.
>>AL: We were very pleased, of course. >>CHRISTINE: It was a lot of work, it was years of work, so
it wasn't wasted, everything worked out according to plan. >>MIKE: Hubble
is a great project with amazing people, and we were able to prove it that day.
[music]
>>KATRINA: The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most important scientific instruments
in all of human history, so to think about possibly messing something up
on the telescope is terrifying. This was not the first or last time
that NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center took action to keep Hubble up and running.
So stay tuned for more memorable moments from Hubble's 25 years.
[music fades out] [satellite beeping]
[satellite beeping]