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
ofspace 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?
- My food is 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 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.
- Keep going.
- I see halfway down.
- Envelope out the window.
Trigger.
- Timer.
- We got it.
- Close and capture.
- I got close and capture.
Congratulations. Awesome job.
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 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 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.
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...
- ...the three RSUs?
- 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?
- 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.