Learn how JPL saved the Hubble Telescope at this Caltech screening – The Pasadena Star-News

An unexpected design flaw almost made the Hubble Space Telescope into a $1.5 billion joke, but a daring rescue mission orchestrated by the La Caada Flintridge-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory created a legend out of the blunder.

On Tuesday, JPL and Caltech will host a screening of To the Rescue, an hour long JPL-produced documentary detailing the space agencys efforts to save Hubble and three other missions that similarly went awry after launch.

It begins in the 1990s theyve ended the Cold War and NASA is trying to reinvent how it goes about its missions, to make them, particularly, less expensive. Its launching this highly anticipated mission, theres tremendous expectations, said Blaine Bagget, the documentarys director. Then, shortly after launch, they get the first images down and theyre blurry.

The head of JPL, Michael Watkins, will introduce the documentary at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Caltechs Beckman Auditorium. The event includes remarks from Baggett and former JPL leader, Ed Stone.

Seating is free on a first-come, first served basis.

The problem, they would learn, was caused by spherical aberration, a term that meant Hubbles primary mirror was slightly too shallow. The mirrors prescription was off by a 50th of the width of a human hair, Baggett said.

The bus-sized Hubble telescope was in orbit for a month after its April 1990 launch before NASA learned of the aberration. The agency was suddenly facing a disaster that had turned this flagship mission into fodder for late-night comedians and put their scientific goals at risk.

It was like climbing to the top of Mount Everest and then suddenly, within a couple of months, sinking to the bottom of the Dead Sea the lowest point on Earth, said Ed Weiler, program scientist for Hubble at launch, in a 2009 statement recalling the mission.

But within three years, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory fixed the mistake through a complicated repair that used astronauts to install a piano-sized replacement camera that would eventually capture some of the most iconic images of our Universe ever produced. The replacement camera would be subsequently swapped out in yet another mission.

In the documentary, the efforts to save Hubble bookend tales of other ingenious solutions for NASAs Magellan, Galileo and Mars Observer missions. However, not all of them made it.

One of those three missions does not survive, but the sort of heroics the teams do on all three of those missions plus Hubble to try to fix them, is what the program is all about, Baggett said. How do you save a spacecraft that you cant touch, thats millions of miles away?

To the Rescue is seventh episode in a documentary series created by Baggett to detail JPLs history. Baggett began the work nearly 10 years ago and says theres still a few more stories left to tell.

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These are some of the greatest adventures in all of humanity and we must capture the first person accounts of these first explorers, Baggett said.

JPL plans to distribute the entire series once its finished, he said.

What: A screening of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-produced documentary To the Rescue.

Where: Beckman Auditorium, 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA

When: 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 23

Cost: Tickets are free, but seating is available only on a first come, first served basis.

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Learn how JPL saved the Hubble Telescope at this Caltech screening - The Pasadena Star-News