Trouble with Hubble: 1. A window on the universe

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (0:06)

A solitary car pulls into an empty parking lot in Sunnyvale, California. It's late into the night of the 27th of January, 1986 Building 157 is quiet, but the lights inside still flicker with life.

A woman exits the car into the cold darkness. She's in her early 30s with short, wavy brown hair. Kathy Sullivan, a NASA astronaut, has flown from the other side of the country, Texas, for an appointment with a machine. The machine is considered too precious and too delicate to risk being contaminated by even a single speck of dust.

Kathy Sullivan (1:01)

If you're going to get in there, you need to get cleaned up very, very well.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (1:07)

She enters the building, flashing her security card, and heads with purpose to the changing room.

Kathy is a frequent visitor. She's hit a plan to prepare to get the machine ready.

Kathy Sullivan (1:22)

This would start with taking off all your rings and jewelry and watches, getting into a complete sanitized bunny suit.

The suit has a hood, so no little bits of clothing fibers could sneak out. We put booties on over our shoes and lace them outside the pants, so we're sealed at the ankles and sealed at the wrists.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (1:45)

Finally, fitting a mask, Kathy is sealed from head to toe.

Kathy Sullivan (1:50)

That's just the getting dressed part. Then you had to go into what's called an air shower. You'd open one door, go inside, and a bunch of air jets would blast you from every angle. You would turn around in it just like you were showering at home in your bathroom.

You would come into that large clean room one at a time.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (2:13)

The room Kathy steps into is meticulously controlled. Even the air is engineered. Temperature, humidity, pressure. Inside the white clean room of building 157, nothing is left to chance.

It's there. The machine waits.

Kathy Sullivan (2:38)

It's about the size of a school bus, I would say. A bright yellow bus that could carry, let's say, 30 or 40 students.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (2:45)

A school bus suspended vertically.

Kathy Sullivan (2:49)

Its back section is a little bit wider diameter than the main section of it. It's coated in bright silver reflective mylar.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (2:59)

It looks like a massive tube covered in crinkly silver foil.

Kathy Sullivan (3:04)

It was just me, this multi-story, tall, gigantic, sparkling, hyper-clean room, I don't know, 10 yards away to my left, all almost 60 feet of it standing on its back end, and just sparkling like a diamond.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (3:24)

The Hubble Space Telescope.

It's taken decades to build. Crafted by some of the finest scientific minds on Earth. Powerful enough to unlock the secrets of the universe. Providing everything goes to plan.

Kathy Sullivan (3:43)

And that's essentially the job that Bruce McCandless and I were given. You're going to deliver it. You're also the last two astronauts that will have direct access to the Hubble to test any tools or techniques needed to service it.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (3:58)

Kathy and her colleague Bruce will escort the telescope into space. But before launch, they must configure it for transport aboard the shuttle. NASA's reusable spacecraft, designed to carry astronauts and cargo into orbit.

Then comes the ascent. Through fire, vibration and the crushing forces of launch, the telescope will ride into orbit within the shuttle.

But getting there is only the beginning. Once in space, Kathy and Bruce will work in lockstep with mission control to bring the telescope to life, activating and assembling it piece by piece, system by system. The mission has been choreographed down to the second. There is no room for error.

Kathy Sullivan (5:05)

If something goes wrong in that timeframe, we need to hurry outside in our spacesuits and deal with whatever went wrong.

Clad in big bulky spacesuits that very much limit your reach and tax your strength and certainly limit your vision. So is it really true that people clad like that can get out all these pieces of gear and get them in and out?

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (5:35)

Kathy has systematically worked through every potential problem she can imagine. In space, one difficult bolt, an inaccessible screw or a misthreaded nut could spell disaster.

Kathy Sullivan (6:00)

We were on a good path to have everything we needed for the deploy mission. Ready, tested, verified, nothing to slam dunk, but that was pretty well in hand.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (6:12)

Kathy's convinced the Hubble Space Telescope will rewrite astronomy books, a breakthrough that will redefine how humanity sees the universe. But she has no idea what is to come. A disaster watched around the world is about to threaten the future of the $1.6 billion space telescope and jeopardise the entire American space programme.