Transcripts For CSPAN2 Kathryn Sullivan Handprints On Hubble 20240713

Officials, and the spread throughout the u. S. And world with interactive maps. Track it. Whats on demand any time unfiltered . Org coronavirus. Host welcome, i am dorian. We are happy to be back here. Welcome to all of our regulars. If anybody is a first timer, this is an event series and we cover aller disciplines out of their labs and onto the public stages. Heres part of the cultural life of new york city people like unique income and be informed and engaged by scientific ideas and discoveries. And interact directly also with some of the scientists. Secret science club, a regular hangout, in brooklyn but secret science club are back here tonight in manhattan as far as our fifth miniseries here. So we would really like to think all of the people, the staff, particular kathy, darren and rebecca, marion, james, and zach and ricky for helping us to expand our university here. [applause]. Give them a big hand. [applause]. Very big special thank you, to the bar to the back and left if you have not visited yet. They concocted our cocktail su sure. Just however you say it read is called the atlantis. It is fabulous bluebu glowing drink. His name for the Space Shuttle on which our speaker was a crewmember. It is very tasty. We highly recommend it. And to expand your universe further. Also thanks to be sent was cspas covering us tonight. If you would like to find out more about this club, please visit our charmingly retro website and theres blogspot. Youd also assignable on our mailing list. We would love having new members. You can sign up and you will know about all that is going on. Tonight, we are thrilled to present astronaut scientist and author Kathryn Sullivan as a nasa astronaut she spent over 500 hours in space. But before that, she trained as a scientist receiving a phd in geology, and she actually went from studying the ocean floor onto nasa to train more and become the First American woman to walk in space. Shes a veteran of three Nasa Space Missions and she was on the crew of the discovery shuttle that launched in the Hubble Space Telescope which has revolutionized our views of the universe but she did not stop when she left the astronaut corps. Afterwards and after she served as the administrator of the u. S. National oceanic administration, noaa overseeing networks of satellites and ships and airplanes look back at earth monitoring the health of our oceans, and now after 2017, she has written the book, and it is called handprints on hubble and astronaut story and invention and thatt is the subject of her talk tonight. The books on call in our booksellers tonight and Kathryn Sullivan will be signing after our talk so we will have or she will come and talk. Followed by q a with our wonderful audience, you create ine they will have a book signing. Please welcome doctor Kathryn Sullivan. [applause]. Kathryn april 24th, 1990 found us right where we had been 14 days earlier. Strapped in and readydy to go wh the countdown clocks stopped in t minus 31 seconds. Again. This time, the Launch Control center computers had halted because of an indication that the valve on one of the pipes used to fill the fuel tanks had failed to close. If the indicator was correct, then only one valve was left to prevent fuel from the tank from leaking overboard and instead of feeding into the Space Shuttles three main engines, and if that happened we could end up and abort landing site on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean or splashed into the ocean. Lunch would be struck. If the indicator was wrong however, think about the flaky tire Pressure Sensor on your part, then could be fine. Cothere is no reason to scratch. So which was it. Serious problem or faulty indicator. Go for lunch, or scrub. This highstakes called filled the launch team responsible for the shuttles main propulsion system. Someone i still dont know by his call sign is mps, time was not on the sky side. Thee shuttle auxiliary power ut and a strict limit on how much longer we can all at this point. Just 12 minutes more. In the cockpit, we listened as the Launch Controller worked out the problems. Mps, what is your status the launch director asked. Engineer talk calmly through the data, the temperature and pressure readings in the lines surrounding the valve were notnt consistent with it being open. From the mental physics that it said it was closed. He proposed to send the manual command hoping this would make indicator read correctly. That worked. The control center computers still had a lock on the countdown clock. Mps, what your call. I am prepared to manually override this. With the crisp and rapid change, the soldier would envy, launch director gave him thehe go to do that it told the other punch controllers get ready to resume the countdown. Then he advised the technical director at the launching woods again ago. Kobe had been waiting for came in his pocket set it later. Alll controllers, the countdown clock will resume on my mark three two one mark. The entire episode and taken less than three minutes. Thirtyone seconds later, the discovery roared off of the launchpad. That is the moment in which my Hubble Telescope adventure really launched into the face the matters. But the early stages of the story go back several years before that. Instructor in 1978, in february of 1978 when nasa introduced to thehe world, a new class of astronauts specifically to fly above the Space Shuttle. A about 35 people, quickly became is that tiffin geez, 35 new guys. But if you come from the military would also know theres another phrase where the f does not stand for five. But for Something Else so that was a double entendre that. In the military phrase pretty but the other interesting thing about a group is that we had strange people amongstst us. When he five military test pilots as other groups that had. But we also had six women using six of us here. In three africanamerican men and one asianamerican man and by the end of our first day right after we had been introduced to the public, it became clear to all of us that the simple away describe a group was ten interesting people and 25 standard white guys. [laughter]. The 25 standard white guys were out of the building and off to the gym for the beach or whatever theyy wanted to do, about a half an hour after the introduction ceremony ended in a six of us and for other strange people were barraged with interviews all of the way through these because news hour and beyond. It was kind of like a new phase of life that none of us had ever expected in two of us in this picture here, in the middle left the far right, we had only just kind of turned 26 and we are straight out of graduate school had just finished our phds. Astronaut interview was our first ever serious Job Interview and is our first ever fulltime job. And if you think about it is just beyond crazy. [laughter]. [applause]. So what happens when your baby astronaut. If you go back to school. Start learning for things. We spent about a year going through highly compressed graduate school for astronauts. Think about any aspect of Earth Science space physics systemog design, anything that might failing tension space flight. We got a crash course on it from some of the best experts. When that was done, we were t actually entitled to wear the insignia, the astronaut called silver because you havent flown yet but still when we start getting plugged into support roles of helping other flights coming into being. Helping the progression in the filing for the operation of Shuttle Missions dont happen before our turn in line to come along. So what is it like starting your career and a company in the mailroom and learning by rotating around from one part of the company to the other morning all parts and pieces of how that enterprise works. We did that for a number of years before wee started getting our group on the frontline. And we got and started into the fight opportunities. My first opportunity came in october of 1984. Mike coley classmate sally had earned the distinction of flying in space the year before and in late 83, announcing this new person, inmate schoolwork. So you need to know and announcing that sally would be on the crew again for a second space flight and kathy would be a abort for her first spaceflight. And i would tell you there was absolutely delightful wave of excitement that swept across the space center. And collins came up to us and said this is simple, you will be the first woman ever to fly twice. To me, you are the first woman to have new spacewalk. And these guys have not been paying attention to history. Our flight was announced in late 83 for october 84 launch date predict we have been paying attention to the soviet Space Program. We knew that ten months was plenty of time for the soviet program to on another mission, do a spacewalk. So if you ask selling kathy, regarding the second walk i flit and second walk. We think is happening here. This is on the launchpad. October 5th, 1984, getting ready to board Space Shuttle challenger for a fancier mission i told you about and shouted out this was happening here. Let me tell you what is really happening here. The seating arrangements in the cabin dictated the cellulite would board the shuttle blast. We waited our turn the Small Chamber just outside of the hatch is a white room. We were keenly aware of the cameras above our heads and removed is being monitored by the control center and perhaps broadcast on National Television as well. After a few minutes of idle chitchat, we decided that we probably should be doing something more important than just waiting around. Watches are always synchronized in the movies. So wed decided to pretend we are synchronizing hours. There were no microphones to hear saying, so you think the news anchors are saying about us right now. Mark to think we have stretch this out plenty of time now im delighted to say that when we landed, there was press from all over and they saw this photo prominently and the caption said they are synchronizing their watches on the launchpad. That was stupid is a great eight dave mission. We stuck outside, on the last day for several hours on the shuttles in an area. Its a Pretty Simple engineering demonstration to prove some specialized tools would actually allow nasa could actually refuel satellite in orbit. It has never been done. We landed, so there is a slight schizophrenic thing that happens when youre flying in space, you go through several weeks of Meeting Center of the universe. And next in line every single thing you need, is at your disposal poll as soon as you need a premium airplane as soon as you need it. You got it. You need another hour and a similar interview god, you can cut in line it absolutely in front of everybody else for absolutely any resource. They have this magical crazy indescribable experience but the thing you dont know is the moment your Space Shuttle clears this launch are underweight out of the orbits living there, the first four seconds of your mission, theres this other thing in his in the stands up and says, we are now first in line. And then you land, youre nobody. You are at the back of long line of people waiting to get back in the cycle and go fly again. And its a really disappointing lonely sort of wonder around with a deer in headlights look and remind yourself that you actually this is the stuff youre trying to remember thatt you actually did this. This period did not last too long for me after the first flight. By early the next year, my bosses boss called me into his office and said that it was going to fly mission coming up soon with this thing here. The Hubble Space Telescope. What he said to me was, you know the big march space a love thats in the manifest. I said yeah i seen that. It supposed to be maintainable in space by astronauts. This post last 15 years. I heard that. But we need tools equipment that would take to do that. So go get in the middle of all of that now. Make sure that by the time you take it into orbit, we actually have all of the stuff that we need to fulfill the promise of maintaining it is based a 17500 miles an hour for 15 years. So by the time i was assigned to that flight, this is all i had ever seen of the Hubble Space Telescope. To sort of capture the prospect of the future in that report. Our boss, a guy named tom paine, went back to an illustration that had been made many, many years earlier. This illustration appeared in it issue of colliers magazine in 1952. I encountered it in middle of 1985. At the age of 33. I looked at it, and i read the little paragraph in the article, this is of course described as a space station. People living there there are tours this, sciences as a jumping off point for destinations into orbit. This is a i craft that takes people back and forth from the earth to the station. It is specialized comments tailored for just that 200mile hop back and forth. Its the hardest step off our planet is that first 200mile step. This is a purpose built vehicle that will do that repeatedly. This is described as the telescope that has been put into orbit above the atmosphere, is never bothered by clouds, never bothered by turbulence. That guy there, obviously is an astronaut who is attending it, fixing it, upgrading it. Chesley bosco sketch this out and made this illustration in the year i wasra born. In my early 30s i looked at this picture and i have flown on this thing, it turned out to be white and had a different shape of waiting. But there is one, it is a shuttle, and it really does just what his vision was when the illustration was created. Im assigned to put this thing into orbit. When it exists it doesnt look like that the details came out different. But the ideas, the vision that went back to the mid 40s and 1950s to a time when engineers almost didnt yet have the skills to do it, has become a reality. I am going to take it orbit in a year or two. The space station, it also did not end up looking like Arthur C Clarke hub and spoke wheel of a space station it looks more like a tinker toy or erector set. Thats who was on the drawing boards with the engineering was beginning to turn it from a conceptual sketch into entering reality and into the four room house larger than the football field space station that is over our heads rightie now. And that has had People Living out continually for almost 20 years. I was just stunned by this picture and how rapidly both with how long it takes to make the engineering match up with the vision but how vivid and powerful division was in the year i was born, when i had no inkling, nor did my parents of where my life would go. So this is where hubble really started and really came from. As i did the research for this book, the timelines between my life and hobbles really started to jump out at me. It almost became we were born at essentially the same time. Five years is my older brother few want to look at that way. If different junctures were i matured in the high school, often to a college or grad school, those were interesting lined up with when hubble h began to win enough political support, and the financial, engineering definition it took the next leap and became a reality. In 1978 when nasa welcomed me into the astronaut corps, it set me on the road to space. That was the Year Congress finally supported a budget that lets hubble start to be built and put hubble on the road to space as well. Not many months after being assigned to that mission and sing the illustration, i found myself out in sunnydale california meeting the real Hubble Telescope there is on the left. That is shown in its cradle just as its being taken out to package up and ship down to florida for its launch. These are human beings are nearly sold. You can sort of see. The size of a school bus roughly about 15 feet diameter something that fits very snugly into the payload bait of the Space Shuttle. If you went to hubble when it was a built in the payload bay and try to put your fist between the telescope and the side of this shuttle, it was not a whole lot more room than the size of your fist. Thats how tightly squeeze in the bay it was. One of the really remarkable things to me about hubbles i dug into the history, is it hinted at the sketch on the right, thats an exploded diagram that shows you all of the equipment bays, all the little doors that are open that give you access to the scientific instruments. These big boxes on the bottom into the operating electronics that are in the middle. All of the stuff that makes hubble work. That makes electricity, that routes it around, runs the data, process the onboard observation observations, the science instruments, the cameras and spectrometers. The architecture that hubble eas given, again back in the late 60s early 70s, back in the infancy of the space age, hubbles engineers had the foresight drawn largely from their experience on cars to think about how to give hubble an architecture that would let t state space suited astronauts work on hundreds of miles above the earth at 17005 hunter miles per hour. Spacesuited astronaut, what does that mean . Imagine putting on two fullbody snowmobile suit, bolting a bucket onfu your head, hefty gloves, under mittens and then go change spark plugs in your car. By the way if you put a tool down it will floatge away. It is incredibly difficult working environment to do things like taking out flying screws you really have to think about how to i make a wrench that someone with that big klutzy hand can hold onto . This stuff is not found on aisle for home depot. A few things are found on aisle four that you can modify. You can get a ratchetng wrench on aisle four and modify it so that a fat glove can hold it. And then a big mushroom at the pivot point of its you dont have to make a fine grip. Its very hard to close your hand this type in a spacesuit glove. A lotot of other stuff just doesnt exist in the universe and needed to be invented. The choreography at getting all this repair work done also had to be invented. That we worked out largely underwater. You see two different water tanks here in two different simulation sessions. This water tank is not deep enough to let the whole tells goats stand up altogether. We would break the model and have the back and overhear as if it was mounted in the shuttle in the front end of it off to the side. That is me on the left. Thats me again moving around a locked entrance mocked up rough model when the scientific instruments. For this kind of core graphing of the spacewalk you want this box to be as close as exact the right dimension, the right shape, the right size. But you dont want to have to move a real box through the water. Think about how hard it is to pull your hand through the water. If you look carefully you can see through this box. It is just a mess on it like screen door mesh to give you a sense of the shape, remind you you wont be able to see around this thing. To learn, can i hold it . Do i have a place to grab . Can i see around it . Do i need a partner helping me to it spot to precisely inserted back into its slot . That choreography took dozens and dozens of long tests like this with the bruce and me and a dozen other astronauts. We wanted to be sure is more than just the two of us had good familiarity with the telescope. We had a good bench strength and being able to work on hubble. Heres another discovery i made working on the book, i thought because of what my i boss had said to me, i thought it had always been the plan that anything that would be needed to be repairedbe on hubble will be done by lkacewalking astronauts. I learned as i was researching this book, that that was not true. The original idea was these big boxes, the big scientific instruments and batteries, short list of things you knew you wanted to keep abreast of technology or you knew they would tend to fail earlier that short list of things was designed for space walking asked ross to walk on. All the other were done with that in mind at all because the first idea was we bring it back to earth every five years or so. Well design these jobs to be sort of easy. Definitely doable in a spacesuit. The other stuff, the really hard stuff we will just bring it home. We will let folks in short sleeves and a specialized Maintenance Facility do it. That idea did not die until late 1984. And when it died, the engineers went through a whole other list of Electronics Box and realize, holy cow that stuff can fail to. We actually have to find a way to modify that stuff. The telescope is built, it exists, you cant take it apart and redo this. Somehow we have to make those pieces maintainable in space as well. That drove another wave of innovation. The first thing you have to deal with that youre going to repair something in orbit is how do i holde my feet still . Its easy here, ive got gravity, im held down to the stage i can move this podium because of gravity creating friction between my feet and the stage. You dont have that in outer space. You need one of these call the portable foot restraint pretty slip your toaster here he slipped the back of a heel through here and she might infer if you touch t her to this little petal you can pitch forward and back touch this petal you can pivot left to right. All these other little places you can tweak this thing around so i can stick you to be just where you need to be to do some work. This did not exist and we started on hubble. Wewe had to created through some of that choreography in the water tank and then clever engineers figuring out what happens inside this gizmo here thaten makes it possible for this little petal to tilt and pivot the foot restraint. It works brilliantly and is still in use on the International Space station. We have particular problem for the flight we are going to do a 1990. This thing, one all that said and done came in at 35 pounds. It is a chunk. It is almost 3 feet from overhear would plug into the telescope out to hear. Whats the problem with that . If bruce or i had to go outside and fix the telescope on the deployment mission, the robotic arm was sometime uses a cherry picker to use an astronaut around, it would be busy holding the telescope above our heads. So we were going to have to move hand over hand like we were moving across a jungle gym. We have to move hand over hand up to whatever point on the telescope he wanted to work on and somehow drag this thing along with us. Just tether you would say. Sure, every time i move my body this 35pound would drift around and bangs into the telescope. The skin of the telescope is thinner than a beer can. 35pound widget banging around issue assure way to end your career by destroying the Hubble Space Telescope. [laughter] we realize that we need to tether we had to attach it to ourselves. We have to get out behind me because i need all of the space here to use my hands to maneuver. I needed at tether that stiff and rigid. But i could also make bendable so i get this thing off. We created again i guess youd call the semite rigid tether anybody work with those monkey tripods for your camera pro you can bendpo around . That sort of principle but larger. We created one cues with his foot restraint. Like the foot restraint itself, it is still in use. The senior seen here is from the opening moments that Christina Cook and jessica dig is a couple of weeks ago. Going to draw your attention, this is jessica here, going to draw your attention to this right here, she also had to transport repair this new unit. Also needed to stay out of her way but be controllable. Er this connecting package to her, is that same seven rigid tether still in use on the International Space stationnd today. Those boxes that suddenly we realized we would have to be able to work on, they were a problem in their own right you can see the electrical connectors, no one put those on the box thinking a fat spacesuit hand whatever haptic get after them they were imagining nice nimble fingers my ground technician. This is an odd set of pliers that actually have jobs that go this way so you can reach down around these connectors and undo them. Without damaging the cable or the box they are attached to. Here you see me and this is bruce with one of our british engineers with that crazy modify it ratchet we had to create. For testing it on the actual telescope on the actual solar array. This is a solar array that jammed on the date we were deploying hubble. That it almost ended up, i was in the airlock comes in the spacesuit half of the air is dumped out of the airlock, i was going to have to go out and actually crank it open until sadly some snarky software on the ground. Out a way to solve that without us going outside. I was conflicted i was really ready for this and you know you know your stuff. Suddenly the life of the Hubble Space Telescope is in your hands before ever starts. No pressure. Otherwise its a spacewalk just create a little tension there. So we come finally to her hubbles in the payload bay, we are all trained up we have the entire toolkit with taken every single tool, every single one of over 100 tools weve taken weve proven it fits on every fitting it works in the settings it needs to work on, there is no way everyone is going to get to the mission and that the call home and said thehe ranch doesnt fit. Thats never going to happen the got that nailed. We go down to the cape for our countdown dress rehearsal. It always happens in that shuttle whirled about three weeks before liftoff. This is the emblem we created to signify our mission and the tradition is you get a badges really nicely done enamel fullcolor tied tax with the crew emblem. They go around and visit the engineers who spent months getting the Space Shuttle and its cargo ready for the next flight. You take pockets full of these with you and you think these folks. They have been working just as long as you have they have been working with the same skill and professionalism as you have been bringing to the work. Dont get the flight suit, they dont get the right, they dont get the view, they dont get any of the cool things that come with being an astronaut. But they are doing justifying of a jobon with just as much commitment. So we got bags we got the better part of 1000 lovely pins to give to guys and someone had the good idea of putting a little extra bar down here that says launch team so they can wear with great pride and points out the crew gave it the this it found that we were on the launch team. Theres just one small problem. [laughter] these are now the most coveted Collector Items at thehe Kennedy Space center. They attempted to recall, you guys give those back. Not a a chance. How do you do spellcheck on a lapel pin. Spell correctly just the wrong word. Autocorrect fails again. So here we are on april 24, 1990. This is april 24, april 23 be launched. This is the day after we launched, we are in orbit, steve halley in charlie goldens help we were up out of the debate team on the ground had tennis unfold solar rays unfold. This is the one i almost had to crank out. Look at this little gap right here. Really cool picture. All of the stuff done here, thisll soda straw that comes up like that, that is a 200,000pound multibilliondollar craft called a Space Shuttle. It is currently doing 17500 miles per hour. This thingng here, is a 55000 panic multibilliondollar telescope. It is doing 17005 at her miles an hour. You have two multibilliondollar spacecrafts flying 10 inches apart in very, very close formation. A moment after this picture was taken, Lauren Shriver would fire the engines on the shuttle and back the special away from the telescope and let it go off to do its remarkable mission. Kathy sullivan and Bruce Mccandless i who worked for five years of the telescope you would imagine were up here gazing out and taking pictures. No. Were locked inside entrance something the size of a linen closet right but how that little round circle there is a sin we are in the airlock, where nurses wear pressurized, we dumped half of the air out of the airlock so now we cant go out or in without the whole next series of steps. We are trapped in the airlock. Hubbles batteries are draining. Er init quickly became more important to get hubble off on its own and get the solar rays charging the battery then skip kathy and bruce of the airlocks they can watch the deployment. We understood that, but five years, guys we dont get to watch this . So, what happened next . Are high hopes for a spectacular first image from hummel came crashing to earth a few weeks later. With the world learn the multibilliondollar space telescopell we just put into orbit had blurry vision. Charlie and steve spent many long weeks wearing they may have caused us by bumping the telescope as they lifted gingerly out of the shuttles cargo bay. They mustve been the only two people on earth who were relieved to learnd that hubbles 94inch diameter primary mirror was the wrong shape. It was two flats at the perimeter by. 0001inch which is aboutt one 50th 50 the diameter of a human hair or one 40th of a typical hardcoverou book page. This was unbelievable news. An unthinkable error, tidal wave of shock and anguish swept over nasa and the hubble science community. Congress and the media corrupted and outrage. It was if an eagle had turned into a bat wrote Arthur Fisher the october issue of popular science. This pain was clearly written on the ashen faces of the nasa officials who broke the news to the public. The crippled telescope quickly became the newest metaphor for incompetence and technological hubris. Ridiculed imprints by virtually every latenight talkshow and on the silver screen. Some pendants linked the hubble foul up to the mistakes that cause the loss of challenger and casted it as a death mill for nasa that has long since lost its way. Congress followed hot on the heels of the comedians and pundits convening public hearings at which they grilled senior nasa leaders mercilessly. Welcome as you all know, because it really becomes a part of the hubble story that is more familiar, the hubble team pulled itself together discovered one really helpful fact and then had aad clever idea. The helpful fact was you did screw up, but you screwed up very precisely. Whats meant just like it i dr. Can precisely calculate what optical formula will make your eyes see more clearly, it was possible to calculate very precisely what adjustment would restore eyesight the hubble. The clever idea was, thats really cool, now i know what optics i need, but how do i get those into the light path of a telescope thats already in orbit . The inspiration for that, believe it or not came from a shower in holland. Lockheed engineer named jim crocker, got his head rolling about all these problems and issues and trying to come up with some way to cleverly at these smears, calls corrective mirrors into the telescope goes into the shower one morning at his hotel room in holland and he is a really tall guy, so he loosens the shower head and moves it up the pole to its nice height and adjust the tilt and it dawns on him that a mechanism that could extend up out of science interest instrument was small arms that would spring out and put these smears and just the right place could be exactly the way to get the corrective topic and jet optics into hubble. That became a device called costar corrective optical device press the right button, kathy. They go. That was carried aloft by the crew in 1993. They installed that corrective device and while law, heres galaxy m100 away hubble sought its first phase of life. Heres the way that galaxy looked immediately after that correction and hubble this image this galaxy today with hubble because of all the upgrades to the instruments that had been made over the five servicing flights that ran through 2009 got to be hundreds of times better because new technology, new optics were put into place each time a shuttle crew went back in service the hubble. That is why hubble has been able to bring us images like this. This is what you get a few points hubble in a very fine focused mode at a patch of the sky that based on ground telescopes you are positive was empty. Andnd then stare at it for a while. All of these dots of light, that one might be a star, but all the other. To see, every one of them is a galaxy. Likeke our galaxy. Hundreds and hundreds of galaxies in a small quadrant of the sky that if we looked at it with a telescope we would say was blank is empty. Of course exquisite detail galaxy swirling together, black holes in a way weve never seen them before. Those are really a revolution and how we understand our universe. And hubble has done another think thats pretty remarkable. Thanks to its comingofage in going into service, just as the internet era and the personal computer area really blossom, hubble has entered our consciousness, our pop culture, the popular imagination in a way that no scientific instrument has everd done. From cats, to socks to cell phone covers to tshirts to have to you name it, uhaul trucks. It is remarkable how far this has spread in part because we now can each propagate it further anytime we are intrigued with an image. Or we can make a scan, please dont go to more tattoos we can scan anything hubbles son and put it right there on your arm. It is the first and only scientific spacecraft that has evolved and improved in orbit to the course of itssc lifetime. And has entered the popular imagination globally, i would add, not just in the United States its really quite extraordinary in that way as well. And then scientifically it has radically transformed our understanding of the universe make the universe we live in. Back to that crew that went up in 1993 and installed the unit that fixed hubble, the first of many honors but the Servicing Mission bridging was awarded in the middle of the night on december 13, 1993. Endeavor touched down on the Kennedy Space Center Runway just before 2 30 a. M. , eastern standard time. About an houran later, the crew of seven astronauts was disembarking, Shuttle Missions control in houston past responsibility for the spacecraft back to the ground operations in kennedy. Everyone crowded into the main control room to witness the traditional ceremony that marks the end of a Successful Mission at johnson. Hanging the plaque, adding the emblem of the just completed flight to the array of mission plaques lining the walls of control is the highlight of the celebration. The flight director awards the honor of climbing the ladder to do this to the team whose work was most essential to the mission success. Theres often some suspense about who will get this coveted honor. But there wasnt any that morning. Everyone knew it belonged to the eva team. Jim thorton, the eva leader johnson would climb the ladder alone that evening but hell be climbing for everyone on the satellite Servicing Team the for there. Ron sheffield screw from lockheed as well as large supporting cask of tool designers, suit technicians, machinist, and maintainability engineers whose work reached back fully 20 years. So i will close with this image, this is an actual picket and jet picture from the final hubble space of Service Mission its the outer side these marks are scuff marks, their handprints. Their places were some of the space walking astronautswh touch the outside with her gloves, teston the outside of the telescope. Scuffed it just enough that the bombardment of particles in outer space made it whether a little differently than the otherwise shiny silver skin. There are now handprints on hubble in orbit. But the ron sheffields machinists, the maintainability engineers that are referred to in that last excerpt, they have handprints on hubble two. Metaphorical rather than physical, but in every way the same kind of vital contribution to the success of the life of hubble, that my space walking colleagues may between 1993 in 2009. Now id be happy to take your questions. [applause] [applause] i think weve got someone out there with the microphone i will warn you in advance arent there ago. How about a big hand for Kathryn Sullivan, handprints on hubble. We are going to do q a now and unfortunately we have some technological problems, we have one microphone for that we could have use of expertise to get this fixed. Are going to be manning both sides of two of us when you ask your question just give that mike back to us so we can scurry around to the other side. We want to cover everybody. Here we go. And young folks first. How is the air on the Hubble Space Telescope made . Guest so hubble does not have a year its not press rises and open cylinder. Smack i meant the error. Guest i misheard you, my mistake. There are two ways to measure the shape of the mirror while you were forming it in china for your getting it right. In a net. Shell, one was an oldfashioned way and one was a slick new way. The new slick way was bouncing a laserbeam off of it and measuring the time difference betweense setting up a laserbeam and getting it back. The oldfashioned way was more of a physical device. They are late, they are behind schedule, their overbudget everyone is really annoyed with the guys making the mirror. They think they are done and they measure with both gadgets and the old gadget says nope youre wrong. Might be a little bit but youre wrong. The new gadget says its right. Now if youre a good engineer in egypt that point is you disassemble both instruments and give them entirely different groups of people and make everything get done independently because they ought to agree. If youre overbudget and behind schedule and people really mad atr you, its a temptation to talk yourself into the answer you like. So they essentially talk themselves into the newfangled answer. The reason the new gadget gave them the wrong information it was ms. Assembled. There is a place where a washer shouldve inserted and is inserted in a different place. So the measurement was off. As they deconstructed this after the fact exactly where and figured it all out. It was by exactly that will see that the mirror was wrong. Why didnt you give back the badge when it said lunch team instead of launch team. [laughter] guest we did what it back as if that is really funny prayed the people we gave it to, the engineers working on her behalf loved it. Great everybody thousand good joke they thought it was really cool. The only people that wanted it back was the administrative people who are responsible for ordering it. And they didnt check it carefully enough. They were embarrassed. The guys were embarrassed because they felt like it was their mistake. It really was their mistake. But they were embarrassed that kind of wanted them all gone. But those of us giving them out in the people that had them we thought it was really fun. No one wanted to get them back. Stu undergoing an adult in here. Were you scared . Guest everybody says a prayer multiple times in their life its please god dont let me screw up. This is a very individual thing. Some people feel much more anxiety and fear before they launch. Whatever my wiring as i grew up around airplanes i know there are risk, airplanes crashes you are writing bombs for a living you have to be clear minded about this. If the purpose and benefits of science, to humanity, to you in whatever way you equate that is worth it, and if you have basic competence good intentions and competency of the team are working with, because you cant be everywhere checking everything. To me that past the bother to worth test for it if you are on the crew you have to be all in. Youre the people at have to do it, he got to execute the mission you have to deal things not going the right way, someone slinking off in the corner because they got scared, we need all the handsome brains weve got. The one you got one back here. Did you ever get scared you would mess up and everyone will be mad at you . Guest you have a lot of responsibility in her hands when youre an astronaut, nasa and the United States has invested billions of dollars in this telescope and they give it to us and say carried up there please. And you dont bang it against the side of the orbiter you have to got to a spacewalk, please dont kick a hole in it. He practiced law, you study a lot, you train a lapse. You also count on each other. So no went on a shuttle crew did anything completely alone. If i was doing something with a spacewalk or check list, of my crewmates of the right there, reading the checklist with near watching watch me as i did it. If they saw me about to do something incorrectly afraid made a suggestion lets try this and it was not the best suggestion we can come up with, they stepped in it we Work Together to try to make it work. I think we all took that responsibility really very seriously. And like i said, you will hear almost any astronaut will tell you more than once in their life and sometimes more than once on a flight you said to yourself just please let me screw up. I saw your Wikipedia Page it says your ranking was captain at nasa cult so i will refer to as captain sullivan. Guest i did not have that rank at nasa but i did have that rank in the navy. What was one of your more favorite moments while traveling to the orbit using the Space Shuttle. Speech it my favorite moment was every moment between it started and when it ended. [laughter] host thank you so much for sharing your stories tonight. Im interested in your vision of where we should go in space now . The future space for us. Guest my answer is mars. My rationale is sort of a parallel argument to what apollo did for technology and for the country. Set up big gold beyond what you know you can do at the moment. Then dont blink. Actually pursue it. If i looked at apollo, i see a cascade of benefits. The range of problems that had to be solved from life support systems how do you monitor human health from 250,000 miless away. Computers, a lot of people dont appreciate apollo that Program Marks the changeover from the era when people bragged about how big their computers were to enable again to brag about how small they were. It was the cost of digital circuitry and apollo was the first really demanding more from driver on the liability and computational power and small lightweight package. You could have evolved computers in a room this big and it would be very different. Apollo triggered that first wave in microelectronics. It was not all done within nassau come as nasas need delivered out to privates industries. Pride of industries innovative response to it so that synergy was really huge. So i believe we say go to mars and if we mentored and stuck with it thet range of problems would have to solve and what cascade of benefitsha would flow back to life on earth, all of our lives to be hugely rich. I was wondering how your body felt when he initially came back to earth and with that was like and how long . Guest my flights were five, eight, ten days which is not all that long. You are aware you sort of feel like your body is made of wet sand. If you dont really think about the weight of your arm until you havent felt it for ten days. You fall down to sleep on your bedding look at your arm thinking why is that so hard to move. You forget theres a lot of adaptations you make when youre living in zero gravity. Your vocabulary changes your nice manage to not say please pass me the camera or please pass me. [inaudible] you very quickly start to say please send me the camera it floats across the room. You have to remember to not do that anymore. O [laughter] s two hi, im going to ask a question that Prince Philip was trying to ask an altar and the crown. I often was gone so that episode yet. When you are up there, may be the first time, did you have a moment where you sort of reflected our own humanity . The second part of that is you think there is life out there . Guest its inconceivable that there is not life elsewhere in the universe. Its not likely to have a bmw and a Business Card it would be bacterial or virus. But the ingredients, we now understand how rudimentary the can be and of life what crazy range of exotic and harshro environments life can exist in that we have a thought. We discovered life on this planet in an environment that would never have been believed even when i was in college, right here on this planet in the d. C. I dont think you can have this experience without having some expansion and shifts in your frame of reference. You see your home planet, you can see your hometown, you sorta see places you come from that youve never seen that context before. At the same time, you are in this place that feels very much normal to you. Sorted this odd schizophrenia to be floating over the earth looking down at cities lit up o at night and the bright stun still shining on the spacecraft and relisting somewhere down there someone might be looking up and saying there goes a satellite and pointing up at me. Yet we know how to get their wedo how to do this. I felt completely at home to be in a craft like that that far above thely earth. It does make everybody think a little differently about our place on earth. Can hear the optimistic statements of no borders, all one planet, that is true. There also many, many places where you can see the hand of man and you see where we can draw lines between each other. You can see the tree boundary from space you can see the mexico guatemala boarding sea candidate in the u. S. It also came to me when human beings decide to directs their intention and energy toward making divisions we can make divisions that are visible from space. The planet doesnt have those but we managed to do them. Kind of on that note, as one of the first women and space as an astronaut did you feel any of the systemic sexism. Even with the size of the suits that you wore the height of the tables ive seenn a lot about that recently in social media, wanted to ask you about that. Speech of comment on the spaces its not the case that nasa made male spaces that we would wear the male spaces. For the shuttle area they intended to make space suit that would fit any human being up to the 95th percentiles credit of mr. Potato Head Assembly by the pieces approach. The problem was you need to make finer size divisions to have enough versatility to fit different size people well. You need to have enough inventory to cover a range of site is so, so well intended diagnostic design that fails in implementation. The failure mode was referentially affect small people happens to be the women in the astronaut corps. Some of it is basic physics. Remember from middle school you have a longer prybar its easier to lift something up within a shorter one. Your wake king and us a suit takes extra effort to move every limb on your body. The longer your limb is, the lower proportion of that energy is taxing your muscle. Shorter limb takes more muscle exertion to do that. There are ways to solve this physics. If i would flawed nasa for anything it would be that for suited moving to a second year 40 years later. All six of us would say we got a really remarkably good runway when we walked into nasa. We didnt walk innocent buck privates we walked in with this status and naming of astronaut. No one had ever seen an astronaut that looks like me but they already treated route that was a title and standing there was always supported a certain respect and treatment. We got that very much in the first round. And you have to earn your own stripes. And shown your own track record. But he really cant think of anyone that threw elbows at us or try to research we did not belong there. I know one of the bigger threats during space travel is fire. What types of Fire Fighting training or protection did you guys have . Guest pretty thorough firefighting training. The freon system to suppress fire on the station and on the shuttle as you woulde imagine. We mainly saw the fire risk staff by careful Material Selection and preparation in the spacecraft. And no open flames allow things like that. Youre vulnerable to shortcircuit the soviet system had as oxygen generator that had a combustion system to produce the oxygen for breathing. You and wild and started the fire. I am really curious about your transition to underwater explorer. Ra im just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what it was like for basic exploring underwater. Guest its kind of a full circle story for me. I did my undergraduate and graduate work u in some mine geologists i love doing expeditions for it if i had notn been selected by nasa, had in my hand of fellowship to go diving in deep submersibles exploit the bridges in the ocean. Tsa later in my nasa career rats leaving know what 196 i had a couple of opportunities to diving deep submersibles to the mid ocean ridge. I started, my real roots our fascination with the planet and how works and the desire to explore every facet of that i can. My real motivation, deepest personal motivation is fillingrs out the astra application what is left by some miracle i beat the odds and got selected i get to see the earth of my own eyes. Scott Event National completion of the circle after my several flights to come back down to earth and finding what really was the Vantage Point of space is to help us understand this planet. Produce information to help make better decisions about how we live on this planet. And what attracted me what i really liked about noaa is that niche. Keep the pulse of the planet, measure and monitor the things that can help us make those better decisions and then broker package, transmit the information to us as a Weather Forecast as heads of states or fishermen there are number right down here front. There feeling neglected. He mentioned briefly about the design of the telescope and theres only room for fist between that and the wall the shuttle. Was there a cause and effect or correlation between the design of the shuttle and the design of a telescope or did they just managed to make it the right size . Guest there is very much a coed evolution of this size of both the various ways in particular i would say 66 to 68 or 69 timeframe it was essentially a codependency. The telescope could be as big as this because there will be a shuttle. It will be very expensive but we promise it will live a long time. We promise it will keep up with technology. Just prior to hubble their space Astronomy Missions but the ateam an instrument on a satellite closer to the size of the podium. That scene with you their observation and then you would be in line for the next one in the next one prayed this idea was going to make one big telescope, like you would put a big telescope on a mountaintop andde multiple teams of be able to use it because we would be able to get back to it. And we your instrument on your instrument on. When a company powerful detector computer i will add that. So we will be able to get a long life out of it and it wont be stuck in a technological under Old Technology rut we can keep it advancing. So the telescope thats out there now is probably a thousand times better telescope than the bubbly pudding or bread in 1990. The only things that arear the same are the outer silver skin, the grid work that holds the two mirrors and the two mirrors. And essentiallyls Everything Else we put up in 1990 has been taken out and replaced with a more reliable, higher power, higher resolution. Its gotten better with age. Wildly better with age. That was part of how they argued its worth this big investment because it will pay all of these dividends and will keep abreast of scientific questions and new technology. Because we are going to make it maintainable and because the shuttle haslo a capacity to keep going backca and forth doing that. I know you talked about how you went from first studying things on earth like geology in college and then moved to studying space and joining nasa. I am currently a junior in high school looking to study what i want to study in college and working towards stem i was wondering if you could talk about how you made that transition from more Earth Science to space and how you ended up joining them . Guest the short answer is having more curiosity than common sense. [laughter] when i wasen sure age in high school i was actually studying languages and believed my path would be best set by learning a lot ofld languages and somehow that would turn into a illini for people would buy me Airline Tickets to go explore all these places i wanted to explore. Then i got the college of my college said its lovely you are in arts and language major, but youre going to take three science courses during your freshman year. I thought that was a really terrible idea and i argued against it prayed i lost all the arguments. In two of the science classes iar was forced to take introduced me to it Earth Sciences and oceanography. And moreci importantly to see young, energetic compassionate professors i could see a life skill in them that was exactly that inquisitive adventurous lifestyle i was hungering for. And people were always buying them Airline Tickets ifop left interesting places. So i changed majors at the end of my freshman year. Certainly all of my calculus in physics exactly backwards to what you should do. So. [inaudible] some of it is just try. Reach beyond what you think have the courage to reach beyond what you know you can do, see what you can do, be curious about what you can do, give it a a try. You will get knocked back sometime just stuff your knee sometimes and sometimes it wont work. Take what lessons come from that and try again. See mcquivey one more in thetr back and the work around the front again. Guest have some young ones down here. Soon i just want to have you speak about your transition from nasa to noaa and the politics of it all. If nasa isge getting criticism and budgetary constraints, did you encounter hostility regarding budgets and political activity while you were in noaa . Nasa is a bipartisan gem like any other civilian agency. Its taken a haircut in its budget and requested ask was not fully granted. Its a budget level is well below, vastly below the level it was in the apollo era. But it has pretty consistently grown. Noaa has long enjoyed a bipartisan support its a bipartisan way to forecast the weather and measure the tides. But there are politics, budget politics are more complicated than nasas because theres not one single law is law on the United States called the space acts, it was passed in 1958. It lays outt comprehensively what a nasa is, why it exists and what it supposed to do. So had sort of a unified, this is what you are about. Noaa came in existence in 1970 when they started the environmental was making people realize we need to get these bits and pieces, scientific bits and pieces that are scattered apart. Understanding your really required between systems we have guys over here during oceans mothers are doing atmosphere and somebody else over here, its got to be connected and integrated. And brought together as a system off systems. Itd been around since the 1800s looking the the Weather Bureau had been around since 1800 and several other pieces. Came to not a singular design. O its politics on capitol hill are more attuned towards particular programs at different states or different members historically liked. Rather than a unified vision which is what noaa is supposed to do. Yet be more convincing to more people in a sense to succeed in moving noaas budget forward. What was the hardest part to getting where you are today . Guest the coolest part was i just completely get to learn always cool things pretty think the hardest part is sometimes you try something and it doesnt turn out as well as you thought and you feel really disappointed, maybe you feel embarrassed. Or maybe 70 criticizes you because it didnt work out or teasing you a didnt work out. Youve got to kind of pause for a moment, get yourself past that and back to where you are willing to try again. I write in the book about my u solute super biggest best worst ever mistake. You can read about in the book. [laughter] s two speaking of the book ran take two more questions and then kathryn sold will be signing the book. If youreat getting when you might be able to ask w your question two. Out of all the constellations that you have seen from hubble, which is your favorite one . Guest it seriously hard to pick a favorite star. I am really fond of the whites and this gentleman here, okay tomorrow. Im really fond of the cats i galaxy. Thank you. I remember reading that report that your committee worked on about the future of the Space Program and being really excited by it and really angry when nothing happened. What were your expectations when you are working on it and how did you and your colleagues respond when it ended up on the shelf . Speech if youre ever on a president ial commission you know you will definitely bely a doorstop, thats just the way of the world. The dogs, the scheme i would say that our leader tom paine had instead of publishing through the Government Printing office we bitten publishing through valentine books made it lawfully year end the hope was going to put it actually directly, working to make it possibly directly in all of your hands because the lawyers assistant missed supposed to work is you guys are talking to your members of congress and telling them i know we have this problem, that problem the other problem i want you to know i support x if you just lead in a group of people, they will groupthink their way into the couple of things that need done and they wont see the longer broader range things throughout the country. The problem was space goals is there very long rage. If im a member of congress or the president , i have to make a commitment now to put some money on this instead of that. If i put it here you might get a benefit from it tomorrow or weeks. Ker couple but overhear there will be of benefit thats a little hard to describe, it might maybe benefit your kids or grandkids. Thats a hard thing in human nature to do both for politicians and for voters. Thats a lot of pressure. I think we all love looking at space. You have looked at space from space. You talk about looking back at earth. Does it change your perspective when youre looking out the stars from the outside atmosphere . Guest they are not measurably closer. [laughter] you are in a wildly different place with respect to the earth, yet oddly when you look out the shuttle window that looks like what its look like it and airliners is supposed to be looking way differently because were so much higher . Because of the respective across continents and mountains its like a vastly different sense of anything youve ever had. If you try to look outward even if something is closed by simone, its just not measurably closer. Ifur you think of us cool kids globe its about 12 inches in diameter, a shuttle flew about a half an inch above that. So karl sagan writes about the pale blue dot, not my experience it was a big blue beachbody. Thats it for the questions for Kathryn Sullivan handprints on hubble. [applause] shall be signing copies of the book, just so you know she will only be citing copies of the book, no memorabilia so dont bring a jar tanker anything up there. [laughter] back to the left if youre looking that way you can find someone who will direct you. And also note cell fees please, no selfies but you can do candid photos. Thank you so much for coming and we hope you will doing this again. ebola very quickly the animal connection comes into play ebola or bats for where this virus lives and infects the body and then affects the chain of transmission and human. There is nothing that suggested anything other than a natural mutation. It is a reminder there are theories of biological where one warfare to explain something that is natural and it should be a wakeup call to all of us that it should be taken very seriously. Often we are in denial something that i discussed in my own research that people view it as the meritocracy that everybody is the same because everybodys treated in the same way so people who have different experiences and with that kind of logic we not only denied difference but inequality now there is a couple of strategies. Will you solve to facebook or google . And then is it worth the ability of the innovators in Silicon Valley to innovate to market needs and ideas instead everybody adapts how could i adapt something that Google Google or facebook will buy and that is and how we run the economy once a month for the past 20 years book tv invites an author to discuss his or her books and take their phone calls. Unfortunately due to coronavirus we have postponed new indepth programs and stimulus for you highlights from past programs first from november 2018 from Princeton University we have doctor parry the author of several books including the history of the black National Anthem and breathe which is written as a letter to her sons and here is a portion of that program