Seven brave astronauts are about to launch...
...on the most challenging and risky mission ever flown in space.
It's an interesting emotion when you're sitting there...
...and realizing the clock is ticking.
- All the preparation time is over. - Feel okay, sir?
It's time to go out there and do it.
All right. Okay, good.
It's not a foolhardy risk.
It's not roller-skating down Massachusetts Avenue in rush hour.
If there's some risk that goes along with achieving a dream...
...I think it's worth it, and that's what I would wanna tell my kids.
Dreams do come true.
Okay.
It felt a lot like Christmas morning.
You know, going to get to open your presents.
I got up, big smile on my face.
And marched down to have my breakfast and just really felt great.
Right now the thing I'm looking forward to most...
...is the solid rocket booster ignition. I wanna get started.
I think it was my grandfather that had the most profound influence on me.
He'd bring out the binoculars and he'd teach us about the sky.
No idea that I would be traveling to the stars.
But here I am.
I go through the mission in my mind, and ask, "Okay...
...what could go wrong?" And I ask myself, "Are we ready to handle that?"
This is the last chance to save the Hubble Space Telescope.
Here we are, cocooned on our beautiful planet Earth...
...warmed by the light of our nearest star, the sun.
When you see our home like this, you think:
"Out there in all that black space...
...could there be another place like it?
Is there anybody else out there?
The nearest of those stars is billions of miles away...
...but that hasn't stopped us from exploring them.
Galileo was the first.
Centuries later, we built a truly magical machine...
...the likes of which Galileo could never have imagined.
Nice and slow.
The Hubble Space Telescope.
It took more than 10 years and 10,000 people to build.
Keep coming.
And it would be the first of its kind to be launched into orbit around the Earth.
Okay, stop. Okay, hold it steady.
This astronaut crew was chosen to ferry the telescope to space.
Hello, hello, hello.
They launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard the shuttle Discovery.
T-minus 10, go for main engine start.
We are go for main engine start.
T-minus six, five, four...
...three, two, one.
And liftoff.
With the sea and clouds of Earth reflecting on its door...
...the great silver bird was released to soar in orbit 320 miles above us.
Soon it would be sending images back to us.
Could we finally unlock the secrets of the universe?
Would we discover other worlds like ours?
The whole world waited for Hubble to open its enormous eye.
Engineers have discovered that the giant telescope has a warped mirror.
One of the mirrors in the Hubble Space Telescope is out of shape, and as a result...
...the pictures it's sending back are no better than those from the ground.
You've got a go to open the doors.
Okay, swinging.
It would be three long years before astronauts could return...
...with a remedy for the ailing Hubble.
I'm not even pulling it, I'm just coaxing it with my fingertips.
Pitch, pitch up a little.
They installed two instruments...
...each containing a huge contact lens.
Scientists hoped the new lenses would sharpen the telescope's blurry vision.
Good work, guys.
Above the splendor of Africa's Cape of Good Hope...
...Hubble was launched once again.
In the next 10 years, three more astronaut crews...
...would repair and enhance Hubble's vision even further...
...transporting us to places we could only have dreamed about.
In a stream of staggering images...
...Hubble revealed the powerful prolonged aurora on Saturn.
The haunting gaze of a dying star, the Helix Nebula.
The awesome Eagle Nebula, known as the pillars of creation...
...a birthplace of stars.
And the Mice...
...a pair of galaxies twisted and torn by their gravitational dance.
Hubble captured imagery so complex...
...we can actually travel through it.
This is real star travel.
The bright star passing by is Sirius.
It's one of the nearest to Earth, a mere 50 trillion miles away.
We're now heading towards the three little stars in a slanted row there...
...called Orion's Belt.
Distances here are so vast, they're measured in light-years.
A single light-year is almost six trillion miles.
Orion is 1500 light-years away.
That means we're traveling at 150 trillion miles a second.
We're going to explore that rose-colored cloud just below the belt.
It's called the Orion Nebula.
There are amazing things happening inside these clouds.
As we look through Hubble's eye...
...we're getting to see them as never before.
We're descending into a gargantuan canyon of clouds.
It's 90 trillion miles across.
It's a star nursery.
The biggest of the young stars are right in the center of the nursery.
Their energy creates unbelievably strong winds...
...howling down this vast canyon at five million miles an hour.
The winds have blasted out a huge bowl-shaped cavity...
...in the side of the cloud facing the Earth...
...giving Hubble and us...
...a window on the secret life of the stars inside.
The biggest star here is surrounded by a flock of baby stars...
...each nested in its own cocoon.
The wind from the giant star is blowing so hard against these little ones...
...it creates shock waves on their near sides, and long tails behind.
That's why astronomers have nicknamed these strange objects "tadpoles."
Inside each cocoon is an infant solar system.
These tadpoles might turn into full-grown solar systems one day...
...but the continuous blast of wind may stunt their growth.
But tucked away in a calmer part of Orion's nursery...
...Hubble has found confirmation...
...that planets are forming around other stars.
Our own solar system may have looked just like this...
...when the sun had formed, but the Earth did not yet exist.
Perhaps this is how we and our own world began.
The once-ailing Hubble Space Telescope...
...offered its greatest performance yet...
...a glimpse of time and space astronomers had previously only dreamed about.
But for the Hubble, time is running out...
...amid new concerns about safety in space.
In early 2003, the tragic loss of space shuttle Columbia...
...forced NASA to rethink its program.
NASA has canceled Hubble's final service mission.
In Washington, Senator Barbara Mikulski led the charge to review the decision...
...questioning NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's January claim...
...that keeping Hubble alive wasn't worth the cost or the risk.
Hubble is not a piece of techno-junk that's creaky, tattered and worn.
If we do nothing, then within about two years...
...either its gyroscopes or its batteries will die...
...and it'll tumble out of control.
But flight designers came up with a daring plan to reduce the risk.
If the shuttle was damaged during launch...
...another one could come up and rescue the stranded crew.
They could shimmy from one to the other down the arm, fireman style.
We'll let them try it first.
We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission...
...to the Hubble Space Telescope, to the shuttle's manifest...
...to be flown before it retires.
The final mission is a go...
...and for the first time, a second orbiter stands ready...
...in case there's a call for help.
Just weeks to launch, the Hubble crew is training hard.
The spacewalkers practice in this six million gallon pool...
...at the Johnson Space Center.
It's the closest they can get to zero gravity.
Motion is stopped for the stanchion.
Okay.
Four stories underwater...
...there's an entire shuttle cargo bay and a life-size model of Hubble.
A big thing about this telescope...
...is it can point really, really accurately...
...and hold its position, and it's the gyros that allow you to do that.
But they're in a tough spot.
- Got them? - I got your legs.
I'm gonna move in a little bit.
We'll stick Mass, my spacewalking partner...
...up inside the telescope, in the bowels of the science instruments.
We gotta be really careful around them.
And I'm a big goon and I've gotta get inside of there.
So this is the problem, how to get me inside of this really cramped place.
He's gotta work in there, but he has to be perfectly still.
And he can only work with one hand...
...right there amongst the fixed-head star trackers.
They don't like to be bumped. And, you know...
...you knock them off their axes and they're useless.
Then the whole telescope's useless.
Mike Massimino...
...otherwise known as Mass, has serviced Hubble once before.
- Got it.
- Fun today?
John Grunsfeld, on the left, is an astrophysicist and mountaineer.
He's had more visits to Hubble than anyone else.
Boy, are we having fun this time?
This'll be the first trip to space for Mike Good, known as Bueno.
He enjoys a slightly soggy hug from his wife Joan.
Soon they'll be saying their goodbyes to families and friends.
Shuttle arm operator Megan McArthur describes the last hours before launch.
I always loved being by the ocean...
...surrounded by dunes and, you know, seaside plants.
It's very calming for me, down at Kennedy.
And it's just a nice place to go kind of relax...
...and let your mind wander a little bit...
...and relieve you from the different cares about getting ready to launch.
Launch day is finally here.
It's no secret that space is a dangerous place.
In the last two decades, 32 astronauts have put their own lives on the line...
...to give life to Hubble.
Each one of these men and women is a true hero.
T-minus five minutes and counting.
Go for orbiter APU start.
PLT, perform APU start.
OTC, PLT and mark.
- SRO. - SRO is go.
- You have a range clear to launch. - And CDR.
CDR and entire crew is go.
Okay, Scooter. Look, it's a great day to go fly.
On behalf of the KSC processing and launch team I'd like to wish you, your crew...
...and the Hubble Space Telescope team a great mission. Good luck, Godspeed.
We'll see you back here in about 11 days. Enjoy the ride, pal.
Nozzle check of the SRBs, firing chain is armed.
Sound suppression water system armed.
T-minus 10, nine...
...eight, seven...
...six, five...
...four, three...
...two, one.
And liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis!
Atlantis on its way, all three engines now throttling down...
...as the vehicle passes through the area of maximum dynamic pressure.
Atlantis, go at throttle up.
Houston, Atlantis copies. Go at throttle.
Approaching staging...
...the burnout of the twin solid rocket boosters.
Thrust tailing off and SRBs standing by for separation.
Separation confirmed.
Phenomenal first stage performance.
Atlantis is continuing in its due easterly course...
...to catch up with the Hubble Space Telescope one last time.
- Hey Ray J, welcome to orbit. - It's great to be here, Doug.
- How was that ride? - It was wild, basically.
I like this floating in space.
- You have something in here? - No, my food is never there, so they're in my stomach.
- Best place to store food is your stomach. - Mine was there temporarily.
- Now it's in my tummy. - Well, hopefully it stays there.
You don't really shower. You cannot wet a washcloth with this.
This is our water-wetter thing. It's kind of like a garden hose.
Let me show you how it works here.
All I can tell you about going to the bathroom in space is suction.
- Hey, John.
- Hey, Drew.
- What's going on?
- Not too much, what you doing?
- Hanging around.
- What are you, a bat?
Nope, just a spacewalker.
Those tears on the shield shell were--
Day three. Their first task is to capture Hubble.
The rendezvous is basically us finding the telescope.
Now it's doing 17,500 miles an hour...
...so by the time we get right next to it...
...we're doing the same thing.
That's the tense part, are we going the right speed?
To make things even harder...
...in orbit the sun rises and sets every 90 minutes.
.03, I see you slowing down.
Till we can finally come up right underneath the telescope...
...with it floating just inches away from the aft window...
...so that Megan can reach out with the arm and grapple it.
- Still 0.03 over the pin. - Over the pin.
- Keep coming.
- I see halfway down.
Trigger.
- Timer.
- We got it.
- Close and capture.
- I got close and capture.
Wohoo ¶ã©I
Houston, Atlantis, Hubble has arrived on board Atlantis.
Atlantis, Houston, we copy. Nice job, Megan...
...it's great to be back with the telescope.
Once we have the telescope hovering over the latches...
...the idea is to just bring it straight down...
...slow enough so that if we did perhaps tap into the latches at all...
...that no damage would be done.
This last mission to repair it...
...will be the most challenging and difficult of all.
These are our EVA, that means spacewalking...
...tool caddies, called mini workstations.
They have our tethers on them so we don't lose things. We can tether to stuff.
You always gotta have that on you.
You gotta have these on.
- Drew?
- Yeah.
This is your first spacewalk tomorrow.
What do you feel? What do you think?
- I'm excited. I'm getting excited.
- You're ready.
Seeing Hubble come into the payload bay was pretty amazing.
The rendezvous was fun and now we're ready to go.
I'm looking forward to putting in the Wide Field Camera.
- What's Wide Field gonna do? - Unlock the secrets to the universe.
- That's right. - Unlock more secrets of the universe.
- That's right. - Right.
Getting dressed the day of a spacewalk, you know, it's very hard...
...just like you're a little kid going out in the snow...
...to get all those clothes on. You needed your mom.
One of the last things you wanna do...
...because once your helmet goes on, you can't touch your face any longer, is scratch.
Ah, what a beautiful view.
It's just a wondrous sight to see our planet in its entirety.
It's a gift that astronauts have been given.
Day four: the installation of the critical Wide Field Camera.
Right off the bat, trouble for John and Drew.
One stuck bolt.
The start of the spacewalk had been a little bit delayed.
We were kind of up against the clock to begin with.
And then running into that bolt.
I'm thinking, you know, "We are right at the edge here.
Our number-one science objective would be out the window on the very first spacewalk."
First roller's going in. Bring your down-- End down slightly.
With a lot of perseverance, the Wide Field Camera is finally installed.
Okay, that's good.
Day five brings the delicate task...
...of replacing the three Rate Sensor Units...
...known as RSUs.
If you're gonna be an astronaut, you gotta get used to the acronyms.
Tiny cameras inside the spacewalkers' helmets...
...give us a unique over-shoulder view as they work.
The new RSU is attached to a giant toothpick called a pick stick.
Very carefully, Bueno guides it into position.
One bump against the star tracker could cripple the telescope forever.
One down, two more to go.
For the next one, Mass goes in backwards.
Okay, your feet are on the boot plate here, left foot a little bit left.
- Okay, so, I'll take your right foot in first.
- Okay.
Right toe's coming in.
Uh-- Heel inboard.
Okay.
By nightfall, they're in trouble.
Anything sticking out the back of that?
I don't know.
This RSU just will not go in.
Coming off the plate.
Doesn't feel seated.
I don't think it is.
I'm hitting something on the bottom right now. I can't come down anymore.
See if you can drive it, it might work.
Now go left a little bit, just little, little, little.
Little bit more, little bit more right. Little more, roll right.
Okay, now come, come in.
After hours of exhausting attempts...
...in minus 200 degree temperatures....
- I've definitely got it. - Excellent. Do the next bolt.
- Yeah, that bolt is in. - Success at last.
Great job, Mike.
Houston, Atlantis. We're ecstatically able to report...
- ...the RSU-3R connectors are mated.
- Whoo!
Copy that and nice job by all.
Okay, Mass, Bueno. EVA-2, what do you think?
- It was like-- Go ahead. - No, go, you go.
I'd say it was like a heavyweight fight. Oh, my gosh.
RSUs, you love them?
- I love them now that they're over. - Love them to death!
- It's a good one to have behind us.
- What name would you give to the three RSUs now?
- Larry, Curly and Moe!
Okay, you guys know the drill, let's remove COSTAR.
Coming out slow.
We use lots of tethers...
...tethers for everything, because stuff in space floats.
You don't wanna lose your stuff. And you don't wanna lose yourself either.
This is a lot tighter than-- Heh.
COSTAR's, I think, the tightest instrument.
We're really dependent on our spacesuit to keep us alive.
We don't wanna get a rip or a tear in our suit...
...because outside of our spacesuit is space, and in space there's no air.
There's nothing to keep us alive.
And the part of our suit that's most vulnerable is our gloves.
Drew, I have a warning for you. There's a possible finger pinch hazard...
...when you're stowing COSTAR in the aft fixture, so be careful.
- Thanks, Mike. - You're stuck inside of that suit.
It's not quite Barneys New York.
It's good, but it doesn't come with its own restroom or cafeteria.
Continue down.
Copy, continuing down.
Top down, and left.
Well, I just finished shooting an IMAX scene...
...and so I'm done with that. So I wanna get a little exercise in...
...before I shoot my next scene...
...so this is a little stress relief here on the middeck.
Most of Hubble's instruments were designed for repair in space.
But not the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
When its power supply failed...
...the only hope was to remove and replace fragile circuit boards inside the camera.
They were held captive by dozens of tiny screws.
For John and Drew, it's like performing brain surgery with oven mitts.
It takes all the focus I can muster.
I have 32 tiny screws to remove.
- Number 3 is out. - Copy, Number 3.
And so I have a Zen approach to doing the task...
...where I only think about the one specific task that I'm doing, the one specific screw.
And when that screw's out, I move to the next screw.
Number 5 is out.
Okay, copy.
And eventually I'll get to the last one, and then I'll be done.
There's no point thinking about how many screws I have ahead...
...or how many I've completed, it'll just be the one screw.
- Number 11 is out. - Copy, 11. Great.
Removing the razor-sharp circuit boards is a dangerous business.
We learned what to avoid touching...
...because if you make a significant cut in your glove through the bladder...
...the oxygen will leak out of your suit and you will die.
- Card 1 is out. - That looks great, John. Nice job.
Somehow I don't think brain surgeons...
...go, "Yahoo!" when they pull something out.
When they came in, they were tired, they were exhausted, thirsty...
...but they were getting out of their suits with a sense of accomplishment.
Now the sad news was that once they relaxed for...
...oh, about five seconds...
...we had to put them back to work getting everything ready for the next day.
- Drew, what are you doing? - I'm using the tape.
Is there a reason why you have sunglasses on in the middeck...
- ...where there's no sun?
- Cause they look cool.
Ah. That's my man.
On day seven, Mass and Bueno run into a big problem.
Doesn't look good, Drew.
Before we can do any of this, all this fancy stuff...
...we had to get off this big handrail that was in the way.
I don't think it's coming out.
It was a night pass. It was dark out...
...which added to the trauma. It seemed kind of cold and lonely out there.
I couldn't wake up out of this nightmare that was occurring.
After hours of failed attempts...
...the flight controllers finally tell them, "Just break it off."
Think we're gonna be able to get this, Drew?
I do actually. I think once he busts off the handrail...
...the rest is gonna go smooth as silk.
- Okay, Mass. - Here we go.
It's off!
Easy, easy, Mike. Just real easy, okay?
- There we go. - I got it.
Looked like it all stayed intact with the tape.
Yeah, it did. I don't think we even scattered any debris.
- I see STIS in front of me. - Awesome.
Now there's lots of planets out there in other solar systems.
One of the cool things about STIS is it can analyze the atmospheres of those planets.
What everybody's hoping is maybe we find something similar...
...to what we have here on Earth.
And then we hit the jackpot.
Guess what, it fits.
That's awesome.
For Drew, it's one more spacewalk to go.
And Mass, I do have a tether.
In case it floats away.
He and John are replacing a Fine Guidance Sensor.
When it's locked on a target...
...it will be like holding a laser beam steady on a dime...
- ...that's 200 miles away.
- Is the mirror clean?
Oh, yeah, the mirror's clean. It's very clean. Wow.
What?
This is an amazing view of Hawaii.
It has been said that in the process of going to the moon...
...we discovered Earth.
Seeing it from here, you experience a new appreciation...
...for the perfect utopia we inhabit.
Fantastic!
In all our searching, we have yet to find another planet...
...that could nourish and protect us as it does.
In our future journeys away from our sheltering Earth...
...we'll need all the amazing skills and teamwork of this crew.
The same courage and inventiveness that has restored Hubble...
...to its full capacity and beyond.
Now it's time for our favorite segment:
Scooter's Corner.
- He's actually in his real corner. - This is my seat--
- Wait, I've got gum. - What are you gonna do with that?
I put it under the dash. Maybe the next guy can enjoy it.
- There you have it. - You know, I was afraid I'd say:
"Bye, Hubble. Waah."
But no, you know, we did it.
- Oh, one more thing. - Yes.
Steve Lindsey, I was just kidding about the gum.
Don't eat it, you might get sick. Never know who's been there.
On day nine, above the Sahara, the crew returns the telescope to orbit.
They'll return safely home to their families...
...knowing they've exceeded every expectation.
When we look back 500 years from now...
...I believe that Hubble will be judged...
...one of the truly remarkable inventions of humankind.
Hubble addresses such fundamental questions:
How did planets form? Where did we come from?
Where did the universe come from? How did the pieces...
...the chemical elements that we're made of, form?
All these things that allowed us to be here, to build a Hubble...
...to look out into the cosmos.
And already, what wonders we now see.
The new Wide Field Camera captures a huge pillar of newborn stars...
...in the Carina Nebula.
The infant stars here are hidden...
...but Hubble's new infrared eye can peer through the veil of gas and dust...
...revealing for the first time a magical treasure trove of young stars.
An exquisite butterfly signals the spectacular death of a star.
Its wings are boiling caldrons of gas...
...spewing out at 600,000 miles an hour...
...from the dying star at its heart.
Millions of stars at a glance...
...in Omega Centauri.
Our eyes see only the middle-aged white stars, like our sun.
But in a single combined infrared and ultraviolet view...
...the new Wide Field shows us the extreme temperatures of stars.
We know that older stars become cooler, ballooning into red giants.
Intensely hot stars...
...some burning the last of their fuel before they die, shine bright blue.
All the stars we see in our night sky...
...are but a tiny handful of a few hundred billion stars in our galaxy.
This giant disk of stars, gas and dust...
...is our home in the universe.
We call it the Milky Way.
Our nearest neighbor is some two and a half million light-years away.
It's another spiral galaxy named Andromeda.
We're the largest members of our local group...
...of about three dozen galaxies.
Yet our small group is like a village, far from the bright lights of the big city.
In the distance is a metropolis called the Virgo Cluster.
It glows with the light of over 2000 galaxies...
...of every shape and size.
In the center of the Virgo Cluster...
...is a giant elliptical galaxy called Messier 87...
...perhaps 10 times the size of our Milky Way.
At its heart is a super-massive black hole...
...spewing a jet of high-energy radiation...
...huge distances across the galaxy.
Virgo's collection of 2000...
...is but a small drop in an ocean of galaxies.
Hubble is now peering deeply into a tiny region of the sky...
...looking back across time towards the very edge of the observable universe.
The further back we travel in time...
...the more misshapen and less developed the galaxies appear.
The objects we're now seeing...
...are 10 billion light-years away.
Their light began to cross the universe towards us...
...billions of years before the Earth existed.
From this small sliver of a view...
...astronomers estimate...
...there may be a hundred billion galaxies across the universe.
Immense strings of galaxies crisscross the cosmos...
...collecting into vast clusters and super-clusters...
...where the strings intersect.
On the largest scale, the structure resembles a cosmic web of galaxies...
...spanning the universe.
Billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars.
Doesn't it make you wonder?
Will we ever find anywhere as perfect as our own planet Earth?
Hubble has given us a renewed perspective on the place we call home.
We now know how important it is to protect this fragile oasis...
...deep within the boundless reaches of Hubble's magnificent universe.