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