[ticking] [swoosh] NARRATOR: Star-gazing,
humankind's way to predict the future,
to talk to the gods, and today, to unlock
the secrets of creation. Our tools, magnificent machines
built by pioneers pushing the limits of technology,
battling personal demons and public ridicule. Now, the great observatories,
from Stonehenge to Hubble on "Modern Marvels." [theme music] [winding] [laser blast] [laser blast] [beeping] The science of modern telescopes
is more fantastic than most science fiction. The sites gathered by these
machines, more spectacular than any imaginary visions. They extend our reach
to the farthest corners of the utterly mysterious
universe into which we were born. Early man yearned for a link
between the mysterious lights in the sky and his daily
life, envisioning the animals around him as patterns
in the heavens. Thousands of years before
Christ, peoples far removed from each other built
great stone observatories to chart the cycles of
the sun and the moon. From Egypt to the Americas,
remains of these star charts dot the globe still. So important were the structures
that generations endured backbreaking labor
to complete them. CHRIS BURROWS: Stonehenge
was the pinnacle of what that technology
was capable of producing in those times. It was something like
20,000 man years of effort to move these massive
blocks from North Wales all the way down to the
south of England, a distance of several hundred miles. And this was probably
without any beasts of burden to pull them. They were probably moved
by hand, rolling on logs, for that entire distance. So it was a huge effort
and represented the best that that technology was
capable of doing in terms of astronomical observatories. NARRATOR: For
thousands of years, mankind's celestial technology
and his knowledge of the stars changed little. Then one fateful day in 1609,
Dutch optician Hans Lippershey accidentally peered through
two pairs of glasses and realized that the twin
lenses magnified objects. The telescope was born. An Italian mathematics
professor named Galileo Galilei saw the instrument's military
potential, demonstrating to the Senate of Venice that
the so-called spyglass allowed incoming ships to be
spotted two hours earlier than with the naked eye. A grateful Senate immediately
doubled Galileo's salary. [dramatic music] In 16-12, Galileo turned
his spyglass skyward and instantly saw
10 times further than any previous human. In time, his
pioneering observations would reveal that the Earth
rotates around the Sun, directly contradicting age-old
beliefs that the Earth is the center of the universe. The Catholic church
was not amused. Galileo was brought before
the Holy Roman Inquisition to stand trial for heresy. Under threat of torture,
he publicly reaffirmed the church's belief that
the Earth is immovable. But as he was led
away to what would be house arrest for
the rest of his life and eventual blindness
caused by staring at the sun, he whispered, "E pur si muove"-- but it does move. [music playing] The year 1868 saw
the birth of a man, like Galileo, who would
devote his heart and soul to the advancement of
astronomy, George Ellery Hale. As the boy, Hale
read Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon"
and was hooked on astronomy. By age 13, he was working
with professional astronomers. Hales' self-appointed mission
was to build ever more powerful telescopes, machines
of staggering size and exquisite precision
that would unveil the secrets of the universe. To accomplish this goal, he
would brave a neverending series of obstacles,
including a lifelong struggle with mental illness. RONALD FLORENCE: At
times, the demons were literally crippling. He would wake up in
the night and have a sense of little demons
coming and talking to him, and telling him his
life was worthless, and everything he had
done was worthless. And much of his life was a
battle between these periods of extraordinary clarity, when
he was able to do what perhaps no other scientist or
organizer of science could do, and periods when he was almost
incapacitated by these demons, when he would have to
retire to a dark room. NARRATOR: The dawn
of the 20th century was an era of competition
to build bigger and better machines. Ships, buildings, trains,
engineers race to create more spectacular versions of each Hale took advantage of
this expansive spirit to raise money for
his epic projects. In 1907, he began a
decade-long effort to create a telescope with
a 100-inch diameter mirror, by far the most
ambitious ever attempted. This instrument, if only he
could find a way to build it, could hold the answers
to ancient questions about the size and
age of the universe. Hale took industrialist
Andrew Carnegie by the hand, wining and dining him,
demonstrating how telescopes work, awing him with the
wondrous discoveries to come. The Carnegie Foundation did
provide the needed funds. And over the next years, a dome
arose atop remote Mount Wilson near Pasadena, California. Chosen for its clear
air and distance from manmade lights, Mt. Wilson would see workmen
converge by the hundreds to transform Hale's dream into
a reality of glass and steel. The great observatory was
finally finished in 1917. But only the first sighting
through the telescope known as First Light would
reveal whether it worked. On a cold November night,
Hale led 20 colleagues across a narrow wooden
bridge to the dome. With them was poet,
Alfred Noyes, on hand to record the historic occasion
of First Light at the world's mightiest telescope. ACTOR AS ALFRED NOYES:
"Where was the gambler that would stake so much time,
patience, treasure on a single throw? All their youth was fuel to
the flame of this one work. One in a lifetime to the man of
science there comes this drama. If he fails, he fails utterly." Alfred Noyes, "Watchers
of the Night." NARRATOR: Hale, who
had aged from 39 to 49 over the course of
the project, was given the honor of first
view and turned the telescope on Jupiter. To his horror, not one but
several overlapping images filled the eyepiece. The 100-inch mirror
appeared fatally flawed, Hale's 10-year obsession
an utter failure. But then a colleague recalled
that workman had left the dome open during the day. Perhaps residual heat was
distorting the mirror. Hale must wait hours longer
for the mirror to cool. RONALD FLORENCE: And
for those few hours, no one is quite
sure whether they have a total dud on their hands
or a magnificent new telescope. Hale and Walter Adams don't
even sleep until they come back 2 and 1/2 hours later, come back
in, spin the telescope around to a new target, look
in, and sure enough, see perhaps the clearest and
most brilliant image anyone had ever seen
through a telescope. [dramatic music] [music playing] NARRATOR: Hale had built
the 100-inch telescope, but it was the observations of
astronomer Edwin Hubble that would make it famous. High school basketball star,
Rhodes scholar, and World War I infantry veteran,
Edwin Hubble gave up the study of law for
astronomy because, as he said, "astronomy matters." RONALD FLORENCE:
Hubble affected, on almost every circumstance,
a British accent-- he wasn't at all British-- a pipe, a tweed
jacket, and a set of mannerisms that were
really, if you want, English common room
and sherry sipping. It didn't win him
a lot of friends among fellow astronomers. NARRATOR: But no one
questioned Hubble's intellect or his determination. Night after grueling night, he
guided the 100-inch telescope, exposing single
photographs for hours, testing his commitment, his
weary eyes, and his bladder control. And guiding means you
have to sit with your eye at eyepiece, watching a guide
star, keeping it on a crosshair constantly throughout
the entire exposure. And you're stuck there. And in the winter,
you are really stuck because it's very
cold at most observatories. [dramatic music] NARRATOR: Within a few
years, Hubble's photographs answered the great astronomical
question of the age, proving that the
Milky Way is just one of innumerable galaxies. Our local cluster of
stars long thought to contain the entire universe
was but a small outpost, a drop in the cosmic ocean. And not only was the universe
far larger than previously imagined, it was expanding
at fantastic speeds. Edwin Hubble had
discovered the first clues to solving the ultimate
mystery, evidence that all we know or ever will
know began in a big bang. [explosion] Hubble's work on the
100-inch telescope had revealed new
depths to the universe. But it would take an
even mightier observatory to explore those depths. Master builder George Hale stood
ready to meet the challenge. In 200 BC, Eratosthenes
estimated the circumference of the Earth with
over 99% accuracy by measuring the moving shadow
cast by a stick in the ground. In the 1920s, George
Hale set his sights on creating a machine capable
of seeing a candle at 10,000 miles, 10 million times more
sensitive than the human eye. Only with a massive
200-inch telescope could scientists explore
the vast universe that Hubble had glimpsed. The largest scientific
instrument ever built, the 200-inch would
weigh over 500 tons. Not simply a bigger version
of earlier observatories, it was instead an
entirely new beast, requiring revolutionary advances
in a host of technologies. But Hale was 60 years old
and in perilous health. Increasingly incapacitated
by mental breakdowns, he had no time to lose. He zeroed in on his old friend,
Wickliffe Rose, a man fond of saying, "make
the peaks higher." Together, they persuaded
the Rockefeller Foundation to provide $6 million,
the biggest Grant ever for a scientific project. This was the birth of
big science in America, the beginning of a
huge, nationwide effort to study nature. When Hale announced the
project in October 1928, newspapers around the globe
went wild with excitement. They immediately dubbed
the telescope the Giant Eye and proclaimed it a landmark
event in human history. [jazzy music] ACTOR AS A REPOTER:
"Standing on the threshold of a vast uncharted
space to be penetrated by the 200-inch telescope, the
scientific world is frankly a tiptoe with excitement. What, men are asking themselves,
will the gigantic new telescope reveal?" "Los Angeles Times,"
October 29, 1928. And the public enthusiasm
that followed was just amazing. It went from a little girl
sending $1 that she had saved up from her allowance to
people congratulating Hale on, in a sense,
reinventing the world, beginning our great age
of science and achievement all over again. I think there's probably
never been a response quite as enthusiastic and as overwhelming
toward an instrument with such a benign purpose. [music playing] NARRATOR: When Hale predicted
that the new telescope would take seven years to complete,
he was called a pessimist. But he knew better than anyone
that every stage of the project called for research
and engineering never before attempted. Many doubted whether it was
even possible to make such an enormous mirror. ROBERT BRUCATO:
Nobody knew you could cast a piece of glass 200
inches in diameter successfully. And of course, without
that, there is no telescope. The glass, the 200-inch mirror,
is the light-collecting part of the telescope and
the focusing element of the telescope. And if that doesn't
work, nothing works. NARRATOR: Creating
a large mirror involves pouring hundreds
of buckets of molten glass into a mold, in this
case, a 200-inch mold. The resulting disk
must be free of bubbles or other imperfections. Corning Glassworks in
Corning, New York experimented with a new substance
for this mirror-- Pyrex glass. In March 1934, journalist Lowell
Thomas used his national radio program to inform America that
Corning was ready to create the 200-inch mirror. RONALD FLORENCE: He heard
about this mirror pouring, and in one of his
nightly news broadcasts announced, in the typical
Lowell Thomas hyperbole, that this was the
single greatest event of the 20th century, and
by which he did not mean even to exclude the first World War. And from that moment, the world
just turned toward Corning and poured it into
Corning to see this event. And it became an
incredible publicity show. Now, people in the galleries,
during the pouring, would be singing,
"I'm Seeing the World Through Rose-Colored Glasses." They had everything
but an orchestra playing during this very
delicate operation of trying to pour the largest chunk
of glass ever poured. NARRATOR: Only days
later would the audience learn that the
pour was a failure. Dozens of cords anchoring the
disk in a honeycomb pattern had broken loose. Reattachment was impossible. Nine months later, Corning
poured another disk, this time without spectators. But casting the mirror
was just the first step. To prevent scarring, the
1,500 degree molten mass was cooled by less
than 1 degree a day, a process that would
take 10 months. After six months of
controlled cooling, the worst flooding in
decades struck Corning. When the Chemung River
overflowed its banks, rainwater surged towards
the Corning factories. If power was lost,
so was the mirror. RONALD FLORENCE: The
water level slowly rose. And despite all the efforts,
and all of the pumping trucks, and all the men of Corning,
with jackhammers and sandbags, the water literally leapt to
the top of the transformer. They got the one
transformer they needed to keep the project
alive out, really, with about a minute to spare. And had that not happened, the
mirror would have been lost. NARRATOR: In 1936, the
40,000-pound chunk of glass was shipped west to the Caltech
optical shop in Pasadena. Everywhere it went, the train
was literally mobbed by people. There would be towns where
the temperature was 20 degrees below 0, and all the
schools were let out so the children
could line the tracks and see this achievement of
American technology go by. This was what we could do. This was achievement. This was the best of America. NARRATOR: Even the Lindbergh
baby kidnapping trial was knocked off the
nation's front pages by news of the mirror's journey west. George Hale's dream had become
a part of American folklore. In April 1936, the great
disk arrived in California. As locals rode shotgun down
the streets of Pasadena, the mirror was escorted to
the Caltech optical lab. In the excitement
of the day, no one could have imagined that
completion of the telescope still lay more
than a decade away. Our distance from
nearby stars is found by measuring
a star's position at six-month intervals. It's semi-annual
shift, or parallax, is used to calculate
the distance. [music playing] While the public focused
on the giant mirror, Hale and his colleagues turned
to the many other challenges of creating an observatory. The dome, the telescope
tube, the rotating device all presented major obstacles. By the mid-1930s,
Hale's brainchild occupied thousands of engineers,
mechanics, and workmen from coast to coast. Mount Palomar,
outside San Diego, was chosen as the site
for the observatory. At 5,000 feet above
sea level, Palomar is blessed with some of the
clearest skies in the Northern Hemisphere. And appropriate enough,
in Indian legend, the mountain served
as a departure point for souls journeying to heaven. In Philadelphia, Westinghouse
proudly unveiled the 50-foot long, 150,000-pound tube
designed to hold the mirror. This tube would eventually be
mounted on a horseshoe bearing weighing 400,000 pounds, the
heaviest single unit ever machined. Even when broken down
into component pieces, the hardware was too
big to ship by land. The giant steel blocks were
loaded onto cargo vessels and taken by sea
through the Panama Canal and up to California. These and 1,000
other difficulties were conquered by
Hale's leadership. RONALD FLORENCE: He is, in
effect, a one person network, bringing together industry,
academia, government, scientists, and forcing them
to work together in a way that has never occurred beforehand. Today, we have an
agency like NASA, or the National Science
Foundation, that spends all of its time doing exactly that. But George Hale is accomplishing
that when there are no support structures. There are known
institutions to do it. NARRATOR: The Palomar dome was
the largest welded structure ever built. And every part of
it demanded exact precision. The rails upon which
it would rotate had to be smooth, within
thousandth of an inch. Anything less would
introduce a jitter into the photographed images. Only after six
months and thousands of man hours of smoothing were
the rails pronounced ready. The moving parts of the
200-inch telescope go 535 tons. And we talk about tolerances
of thousandths of an inch. To see that kind of precision
in that size machine is a remarkable combination. NARRATOR: The biggest
enterprise in scientific history had grown beyond the
longevity of its creators. In 1938, Francis Pease,
the original designer of both the 100-inch and
the 200-inch telescopes, died from complications
of cancer surgery. And George Hale
was failing fast. Now confined to a wheelchair,
he approached the end with serenity. On February 18, 1938,
he was wheeled outside, where he looked up
at the sky and said, "it is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, and they
are working on Palomar." Just days later,
he died at age 69. [music playing] Hale's colleagues continued
to drive the project forward. As ever, the toughest
challenge was perfecting the giant mirror. In the Caltech optical
shop, 20 technicians operated in the
ultimate clean room. If the slightest microscopic
speck fell under a polishing brush, the mirror would be
scratched, setting the process back months or even years. Marcus Brown, the single man
connected with the telescope from origin to completion,
protected his mirror with the zeal of a
Secret Service agent guarding the president. Some people thought that
Marcus Brown was almost a fanatic in terms of his disk. He would order a
cleaning as soon. As soon as they
finished the cleaning, he would order them to clean
the entire laboratory again. But he had become possessive. He was a man with a calling,
and this was his masterpiece. And he ruled his optic
shop as a dictator. NARRATOR: Month after
month, year after year, the 200-inch disk turned
in a never ending circle, polished with ever finer tools. Over 5 tons of glass were
removed at the optical shop. As the 1930s came to
a close, the mirror approached its goal-- 2-millionth of an inch
from optical perfection. ROBERT BRUCATO: If you want
to understand how smoothly polished the glass is,
try to imagine scaling that 15-foot mirror up to the
size of the United States. If you do that, the highest
mountains that the glass would have are something on the
order of 6 inches or so. It's an extremely
well-polished piece of glass. [piano music] NARRATOR: In 1940, with
the mirror on the verge of completion, the entire
project fell victim to the demands of war. Workers in facilities
were turned over to the war effort, the precious
mirror crated up and put into storage. The noble search for answers
to the riddles of the universe would have to pause before
the barbarity of mankind. [sirens] After the war, the mirror
was brought out of storage, and the task of polishing
its surface resumed. Finally, in late 1947, after
11 years and 180,000 man hours of grinding and polishing,
the job was done. The 200-inch mirror was
ready for its final journey to the top of Mount Palomar. Belyea Truck Company, who
guaranteed to tackle anything from a building to a
whale, was entrusted with the priceless cargo. A caravan of trucks escorted
by 10 highway patrolman crawled forward at a
maximum 10 miles an hour. RONALD FLORENCE: In the
early morning hours, this cargo goes by. It's not been
announced anywhere. And farmers first wake up,
and other people wake up, and see something go by. And it's not clear
what it is even. And then each village
it would go through, each juncture in the
streets, someone would say, it's the Giant Eye. And there would
be a sort of hush because people would have a
sense that they would never again see anything
quite like this. NARRATOR: The 200-inch telescope
had survived the Depression, a World War, and the
death of its creators. Two full decades,
a human generation had passed between
financing and completion, a long time in human
terms but insignificant on an astronomical timescale. On June 3, 1948, with George
Hale's widow in attendance, the telescope was
officially dedicated. ACTOR AS LEE DUBRIDGE: "As
this great instrument probes the secrets of the
universe, it is fitting that it should stand also in
memory of the great scientist who contributed so brilliantly
to the science of astronomy and who served so ably his
community and his nation." Dr. Lee Dubridge, dedicating
the Hale telescope. [triumphant music] NARRATOR: For 30 years,
the Hale telescope would reign supreme as the
finest observatory on Earth. Much of the history of 20th
century cosmology and astronomy was written at Palomar. On this mountain top,
man, for the first time, saw the life and
deaths of stars. It was here that the universe
was revealed as twice larger than previously imagined. And even today, the
telescope contributes daily to its continuing legacy. ROBERT BRUCATO: The
200-inch telescope, and all optical
telescopes in the world, are always kept at the most
critical edge of research capabilities. That was built into them by
the people who designed it. It always amazes me how well
built the 200-inch telescope is. It was built to last. [music playing] NARRATOR: The magnificent
new machine came too late for the great astronomer,
Edwin Hubble, who died in 1953. But Hubble's name would endure,
inspiring the next great leap in man's quest to
know the heavens. Using the Palomar
telescope, astronomers have discovered quasars up to 12
billion light years from Earth. ACTOR AS EDWIN HUBBLE:
"From our home on Earth, we look out into the
distance and strive to imagine the sort of world
into which we were born. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied, and
it will not be suppressed." Edwin Hubble. NARRATOR: By the
1970s, astronomy was ready for its next
leap in technology. The main limitation on all
telescopes, even the Hale, was distortion introduced
by the Earth's atmosphere. The very twinkling of the stars
is caused by this unsteady air. The solution? Place an orbiting observatory
high above the atmosphere. With a clear view of the
stars, a space telescope would act as the
eyes of the Earth. It could see to the very
edge of the universe and the dawn of creation. What was soon named the
Hubble Space Telescope grew into the most complex scientific
instrument ever built. More than just a
telescope, Hubble is actually a
full-scale observatory, complete with cameras,
computers, and a guidance system. Throughout the 1980s, over
10,000 people around the globe worked to create it. The European Space Agency
build two giant solar arrays to power the craft, each
panel containing 48,800 postage-sized solar cells. Computers in Connecticut
and California monitored polishing of the
94-inch primary mirror. Hubble's operations
ground system, its brain, consumed 12,000 man years
of computer programming. Although a hefty 13 tons, Hubble
is actually the most fragile of machines. On April 24, 1990, the
space shuttle Discovery, with Hubble aboard,
counted down to lift-off. Around the world, astronomers
crossed their fingers. [intense music] CHRIS BURROWS: What you do
is you build your telescope the best way you know
how, and then you put it on top of a
controlled explosion and hope that it will make
it to orbit all right. So for me, the biggest risk-- and it was a nail-biting
time during the launch-- was that something
drastic would go wrong. MAN: 3, 2, 1, and lift-off of
the Space Shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope,
our window on the universe. EDWARD WEILER: When Hubble
launched in April of 1990, it was a dream come
true because many of us had worked on this program
for decades, some even longer than my 20 years. And just seeing the
shuttle going up there was this incredible high. But then the problem started. NARRATOR: NASA's plan called
for the shuttle's long arm to lift Hubble into space. And everyone knew
that this deployment was a period of maximum risk. Once in high orbit,
the Discovery crew set about carefully
freeing the $2 billion machine and its cargo bay. Discovery, you're go
from umbilical disconnect. NARRATOR: The slightest mistake
could imperil the telescope. As if that were not
pressure enough, the astronauts were forced to
operate under a tight deadline. Unless the solar arrays
were up and running in time, Hubble would be no more. EDWARD WEILER: We
had to get those out and powered up because
the batteries only had a charge for about six hours. And if those batteries
ran down, the Hubble would have been dead. So once the shuttle released
its own power system from the Hubble, we had to
get those solar panels out in about six hours. So we're all
frightened about that. NARRATOR: One of
the solar panels stuck, delaying separation
and costing precious time. As the clock ticked
down, Discovery's crew prepared for an
emergency spacewalk. MAN: This is Mission
Control, Houston. Flight controllers
here in Mission Control center discussing an
impending deadline. MAN (ON RADIO): The other
thing I need an answer to is if I can go ahead and commit
the EVA with a thought of going out and cranking it out if
whatever they're about to do fails, that they want us to
just press on to back them up. We need to get on with it. WOMAN (ON RADIO): OK, flight. I'll come back with the answer. I need answers now. Well, we had the astronauts
already getting their space suits on and getting ready to
go outside and do a spacewalk, to hand-crank them
out, just in case. And we got within
one or two hours before power ran out when the
solar panels finally came out. MAN 1: Rendezvous.
MAN 2: We're go. MAN 1: Fido? MAN 3: Go.
MAN 1: Eagle? MAN 4: Go. MAN 1: E comm? MAN 5: Go. MAN 1: Go. MAN 6: We're go. MAN 1: SIOs? WOMAN: Go.
MAN 1: Max? MAN 7: Go. PRS? MAN 8: Go, fight.
- EVA? MAN 9: We're go. So cap time, we
have a go for release. Discovery, go for
Hubble release. NARRATOR: Spacecraft Hubble
was free at last, orbiting 380 miles above its homeworld. Aboard the Space
Shuttle, astronauts celebrated the moment by
recalling the telescope's namesake. We managed to
obtain this device, which is the guiding eye
piece, we are assured, from the 100-inch telescope
on which Edwin Hubble did many of his observations out at
Mount Wilson in California, so it's his fundamental
work, in fact. NARRATOR: The eyes of the
Earth were ready to behold the origins of the Big Bang. Who could have thought
that this dream come true would soon become
astronomy's worst nightmare? [dramatic music] Almost immediately, the
solar panels caused problems. Every 45 minutes, Hubble moved
from sunlight to darkness, with an abrupt temperature
shift of hundreds of degrees. The sharp temperature
changes caused the arrays to contract or expand,
shaking the delicate machine for several minutes. Hubble had a bad
case of the jitters and no way to get rid of them. Tests over the next few weeks
revealed an even more puzzling problem-- data from the 94-inch mirror
simply didn't make sense. It seemed to indicate that
the mirror could not focus. As the evidence
mounted, no one was eager to confront
the possibility of a major malfunction. CHRIS BURROWS: The
primary contractor who had built the mirror
and the telescope, and who was nominally in charge of
helping to set up and align the optics, was
saying in this period that there wasn't a problem. So I was, on the one hand,
saying there was a problem. The official contractor,
on the other hand, was saying there
wasn't a problem. NARRATOR: And then all
at once, the problem was too obvious to deny. A mistake in the primary
mirror, an optical error 1/40th of the thickness
of a human hair, had left Hubble
seriously flawed. The astronomical
community was devastated. EDWARD WEILER: It was
finally in late June that the final data came
in, and we couldn't deny it. And it was just a crushing blow. I mean, I remember getting a
call on a Sunday afternoon. And I was crushed. NARRATOR: The mirror disaster
was immediately followed by a public relations fiasco. The press and public savaged
NASA for its apparent hubris and incompetence. Coming just four years after
the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy, Hubble's
plight made many wonder if NASA could do anything right. The summer of 1990 was filled
with scathing editorials and brutal cartoons. The most complex scientific
instrument ever built had become a national joke. Congress would reconvene
in September amid fears that the lawmakers would
simply let Hubble die. EDWARD WEILER: If Congress
had turned off the telescope that summer before we
had a chance to fix it, it would have been a death
blow to American astronomy, that we would probably never get
a chance, within our lifetimes certainly, to build another
large optical telescope. And for those 10,000 people
that had spent decades on this program, it would
have been a personal tragedy. You want to press on into EVA? NARRATOR: The impending tragedy
threatened to consume everyone connected with it. As summer turned to fall in
Washington, not only the Hubble Telescope, but
the future of NASA itself and America's space
program hung in the balance. While the Hubble telescope
orbits the Earth for a clearer view of the stars,
an observatory for measuring the
sun's nuclear reactions is buried 1 mile
underground to protect it from other forms of radiation. As the wounded Hubble
telescope circled the Earth, an investigation traced its
imperfection to human error. Computers had warned of problems
with the mirror, warnings unaccountably ignored
by optical supervisors. By a strange twist of fate, yet
another human miscalculation would rescue Hubble. CHRIS BURROWS: We were
saved by Saddam Hussein. Before the invasion of Kuwait,
there had been congressional and Senate hearings into it
and more promised in the fall. Well, then he
invaded Kuwait, and I think that distracted
the public opinion and gave us a window in
which to fix the problem. NARRATOR: In theory,
Hubble's nearsightedness could be corrected by replacing
its camera with one equipped with compensating lenses. A nickel-sized piece
of corrective glass might restore its full vision. A shuttle crew of seven
trained for nearly two years for the repair mission. They spent 400
hours in water tanks practicing maneuvering Hubble's
refrigerator-sized components. But for Story Musgrave
and his fellow astronauts, nothing mattered more
than mental preparation. STORY MUSGRAVE:
It's choreographing a dance such that five
days of activity out there, you know precisely what body
motions you're going to take, how you're going
to fit into things, where all the 300
tools are going to be throughout that five days. You simply build a script that
you can now follow through out there in space. NARRATOR: When the Shuttle
Endeavor blasted off in a spectacular night
launch in December 1993, it embarked on an
extraordinarily complex and high-risk mission. Five full nights
of spacewalks were planned, by far the most ever. The astronauts were
charged with attempting a dozen difficult tasks. Insiders would have been glad to
see half the repairs performed successfully, all the while
transmitting pictures back to spellbound earthlings. Endeavor began by capturing
Hubble on its long arm. The first order of
business was replacing the troublesome solar arrays
with new, temperature-resistant panels. When one of the old arrays
refused to go quietly, it was unceremoniously
ejected into space. Replacing the arrays had been
built into Hubble's design and was a relatively
simple procedure. However, no one had
anticipated the need to replace the solar
array drive electronics. That task would require
exceptional patience. STORY MUSGRAVE: I have a very
bulky spacesuit that weighs about 500 pounds with me in it. And I'm riding on the
end of a 60-foot arm, dealing with screws
that are 3 millimeters and are non-captive. That task was
excruciatingly painful. That was three hours
of very, very hard work with 3 millimeter screws. And the reason being is because
that job had not designed to be done by a spacewalker. NARRATOR: Day 3 marked the
critical moment of the mission. To correct Hubble's
vision, the primary camera would be replaced. And that meant removing the
mirror's protective cover. Human hands would be moving
large, unwieldy objects just 6 inches from
the mirror's surface. STORY MUSGRAVE:
Even the slightest of touching on the Hubble's
surface, you are making dust, which could end
up on the optics. Every time you have
to tie yourself down or some other instrument,
and you put a metal hook metal to metal, you're
worried about flaking. You're worried about scarring. We were very, very
concerned about the threat that we were to Hubble. EDWARD WEILER: When
we got that camera in, and they turned it on to
make sure it was working, and it was working, that was
a great, great, great relief. I think everything after that
was sort of anticlimactic. Getting that camera in was
the number one priority because that was the camera that
was going to do all the science that we always promised. [triumphant music] [music playing] NARRATOR: The Endeavor
repair mission succeeded beyond NASA's wildest dreams. Every one of the dozen
planned tasks was carried out flawlessly. With its vision restored,
Hubble allowed humans to see 10 times more clearly
than ever before, the same jump in resolution as when Galileo
first pointed his spyglass towards the sky. This photo of Galaxy M100
was taken by Hubble in 1990. Here, the same region, viewed
by the repaired telescope. CHRIS BURROWS: It's a
very, very exciting time to be doing astronomy. And everybody has their
favorite objects, which they have studied for many years. And when you finally get the
opportunity to take a Hubble picture of those objects,
you'll suddenly see things that you hadn't suspected. You'll see things that
you've long suspected but really wanted to prove. You'll always learn
something new. NARRATOR: Hubble has put
some of astronomy's his most treasured imaginings
to the test. EDWARD WEILER: What
Hubble did was look at the center of a galaxy where
we suspected there might be a black hole. A black hole is an object that
is very, very dense and very, very small, so dense and so
tiny that the speed of escape from that object exceeds
the speed of light. So nothing can get out of it. Everything just
gets sucked into it and disappears
from the universe. Black holes have been
fantasy and science fiction for decades. And what Hubble has done now has
shown us that black holes are scientific fact. NARRATOR: Hubble was made
possible by the 10,000 humans who labored so long to
conceive, build, and repair it. But even more, it is
the direct descendant of those men whose thirst for
knowledge would not be denied-- Galileo, sacrificing his freedom
to put the Sun at the center of our universe, George
Hale, overcoming his demons to build ever greater
observatories, and Edwin Hubble, guiding a telescope for
eight hours in a freezing dome to capture evidence of
an expanding universe. EDWARD WEILER:
People really yearn to understand the stars,
the universe, because that's where we came from. We are children of
the stars in the sense that the chemical
elements in our bodies were cooked in stars. The carbon, the calcium, all
the good stuff in our bodies, were cooked inside the
nuclear furnaces of stars. Then those stars blew up
and sent those chemicals all over the universe. And luckily, some of
them collected here in the solar system. NARRATOR: Mankind has always
been a race of star-gazers. The tools change, the
yearning remains the same-- to know whence we came. Writing in 1902, at the
dawn of our great age of astronomical
discovery, HG Wells foresaw the adventure
that lay ahead. ACTOR AS HG WELLS:
"It is possible that all the human mind has ever
accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. A day will come when beings, who
are now latent in our thoughts and hiding in our minds,
shall stand upon this Earth as one stands upon a footstool
and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars." [dramatic music]
