The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as
part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the
universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of
galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our
knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other
stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In
Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her
work on the NASA team that made all this possible. Sullivan, the first
American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts,
engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained
Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built.
Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a "Sputnik Baby,"
her path to NASA through oceanography, and her initiation into the space
program as one of "thirty-five new guys." (She was also one of the first
six women to join NASA's storied astronaut corps.) She describes in
vivid detail what liftoff feels like inside a spacecraft (it's like
"being in an earthquake and a fighter jet at the same time"), shows us
the view from a spacewalk, and recounts the temporary grounding of the
shuttle program after the Challenger disaster.
Sullivan explains that "maintainability" was designed into Hubble, and
she describes the work of inventing the tools and processes that made
on-orbit maintenance possible. Because in-flight repair and upgrade was
part of the plan, NASA was able to fix a serious defect in Hubble's
mirrors--leaving literal and metaphorical "handprints on Hubble."
Handprints on Hubble was published with the support of the MIT Press
Fund for Diverse Voices.
