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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AnonymousCoward:

The Hubble Space Telescope launched 30 years ago:

The mission was novel from the beginning, with a planned orbit at 612km above the planet's surface requiring the vehicle to fly higher than any shuttle mission to date. Telescope deployment came a day after the shuttle reached orbit and involved a complicated sequence of events. After disconnecting the telescope from the shuttle's power supply, astronauts would use a robotic arm to move the instrument from the shuttle's payload bay, open its solar arrays, and finally release the telescope.

"From the time we disconnected Hubble from the shuttle's power, we had two clocks running," explained Bill Reeves, who was the mission's flight director and supervised operations from Johnson Space Center. "The telescope was on battery power from that moment, and there was a limited supply. And with the telescope attached to the arm, the shuttle had to be on free drift, as thruster firings might damage the instrument."

When ground controllers commanded the telescope to begin unfurling its two solar arrays, one of the arrays did not do so properly. Minutes turned into hours as engineers on the ground troubleshot the problem.

[...] As Reeves contemplated whether to give [an] egress order, engineers said they thought they had identified a problem with the software that monitored tension in the solar array. Making a small change, they proposed, would fix the problem. This worked, and the second solar array unfurled beside its companion.

[...] For a while, [STS-31 pilot Charlie] Bolden recalls being on top of the world after landing. Like everyone else, the astronauts eagerly awaited the first image from the telescope, a shot of a distant star named HD96755 captured on May 20, 1990. Their elation was crushed when the first picture turned out to be blurry and only marginally better than ground-based telescopes. Soon, astronomers realized the telescope had a warped mirror.

[...] NASA activated its Apollo 13 muscle memory and, over the course of the next three years, planned a meticulous servicing mission to correct the mirror, upgrade its instruments, and bring a new and more powerful set of solar panels. In December 1993, Space Shuttle Endeavour flew an 11-day servicing mission that included five spacewalks. Story Musgrave, who had worked on Hubble's development since the early 1970s, served as lead spacewalker.

[...] What followed, however, is a good story. Over the last 27 years, and four additional servicing missions, NASA and its astronauts have upgraded the instrument beyond the dreams of its original planners. Hubble has emerged as arguably the most important scientific instrument of all time, both enlightening astronomers about the nature of the Universe as well as transcending science into popular culture.

"I was not ready for the power of the observations," Musgrave said. "Compared to some of the big telescopes on Earth, Hubble is such a tiny telescope. But it's got a clear view. People love the images, not just for the science but for their beauty. It says something about who we are."

Original Submission