The Telescope That Needed Glasses: How Astronauts Fixed Hubble

In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope sent home its first pictures, and every star came with a fuzzy halo. The main mirror had been polished, with incredible precision, into exactly the wrong shape: about two microns too flat at the edge, one fiftieth of a human hair. I sketched the whole case from NASA's official investigation report: the testing tool with one lens 1.3 mm out of place, the tiny flake of coating that probably caused it, the two warnings that were explained away, and the 1993 rescue mission that gave Hubble a pair of glasses. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:34 The dream 1:09 First light 2:21 The investigation 3:31 A flake of paint 4:34 The warnings 5:26 The fix 6:13 The rescue 7:09 The result 7:37 The lesson Question for you: what's the smallest mistake you've ever seen cause the biggest problem? Sources: • NASA, The Hubble Space Telescope Optical Systems Failure Report (Allen report, 1990): https://research.ssl.berkeley.edu/~ml... • NASA, Hubble optics: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubb... • NASA SVS, Servicing Mission 1 (STS-61): https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13082/ • ESA/Hubble, Servicing Mission 1: https://esahubble.org/about/history/s... • ESA, Kathy Thornton releases the bent solar array: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Im... • Astronomy.com, "Techno-turkey": https://www.astronomy.com/space-explo... Photos in the notebook (NASA, public domain): Hubble on Discovery's arm, 1990; the primary mirror being polished at Perkin-Elmer; Hubble approaching Endeavour, 1993; Kathryn Thornton during spacewalk 2; Story Musgrave and Jeffrey Hoffman at work; Hubble released again; M100 before and after (NASA/STScI, PIA22913). Music: soft space bed (royalty-free, Pixabay license). Astro Bite Club: one cosmic mystery, one bite at a time. Hand-drawn in Mira's space notebook. #hubble #nasa #space #astrobiteclub