Hubble Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 1

In the pre-dawn hours on Dec. 2, 1993, the space shuttle Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a critical mission to repair NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble was designed to be serviced in space with components that astronauts can slide in and out of place. But prior to launch, no one expected the first servicing mission to be of such urgency.

For three years, Hubble had been the punchline of late-night comics and editorial cartoons: the telescope that couldn’t see straight. Since its deployment in 1990, the telescope had been beaming blurry images back to Earth, the result of a flaw in the shape of its primary mirror. Though the mirror was off by only one-fiftieth the width of a human hair, the error had devastating consequences: the light from the mirror didn’t focus quite right. While the images were still better than those taken from Earth and science was still possible, their quality was not what the world expected.

The sense that you got was everybody was looking at the servicing and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope as the mission that could prove NASA’s worth … There was this overarching focus and pressure on the success of this mission.

Richard Covey

Servicing Mission 1 Astronaut

Servicing Mission 1 was the solution. Aboard the shuttle were the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), along with other critical components to upgrade the telescope. WFPC2, responsible for the telescope’s visually impactful images, had built-in corrective optics to compensate for the mirror flaw and would replace the Wide Field/Planetary Camera that Hubble launched with. COSTAR was a refrigerator-sized component containing a constellation of mirrors, some only the size of a U.S. nickel, intended to correct and redirect light to the telescope’s other cameras and spectrographs.

The shuttle’s crew of seven astronauts was aware that not only Hubble’s fate was on their shoulders, but the public perception of NASA and its space program as well.

“If the Hubble repair is a failure, we can write off space science for the foreseeable future,” John Bahcall, the late astrophysicist who advocated for the telescope and a member of its science working group, told the New York Times in 1993.

On Dec. 2, 2023, NASA commemorates the 30th anniversary of Servicing Mission 1 and its success in transforming Hubble into one of NASA’s greatest triumphs: a shining example of human ingenuity in the face of adversity.

During one of the most complex spacewalking missions ever attempted, astronauts conducted five extravehicular activities, totaling over 35 hours. They removed the High Speed Photometer instrument to add COSTAR and swapped out the original Wide Field/Planetary Camera for the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. They also installed other critical components to upgrade the telescope.

At 1 a.m. on December 18, 1993, about a week after the mission had ended, astronomers gathered around computers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore to witness the first new image from the telescope: a star, shining clear and pristine in the image without the hazy effects of Hubble’s flawed mirror. The new images were so dramatically different that even though the telescope needed around 13 weeks for adjustment to reach its full capabilities, NASA released them early. “It’s fixed beyond our wildest expectations,” said Ed Weiler, Hubble chief scientist during SM1, at a January 1994 press conference.

The look on people’s faces as this picture came up – this was an old [cathode ray] tube-type TV. It took a while for it to build up, but it got clearer and clearer and clearer. Everybody starts shouting.

Ed Weiler

Hubble chief scientist during SM1

Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who had advocated diligently for Hubble, was the first to show off the new images to the public at the Jan. 13 press conference. “I’m happy to announce today that after its launch in 1990 and some of its earlier disappointments, the trouble with Hubble is over,” she said.

Though Servicing Mission 1 is best remembered for its resolution of Hubble’s blurry vision, it accomplished a host of additional tasks that helped transform the telescope into the astronomical powerhouse it remains today.

By the time Servicing Mission 1 launched, the telescope’s gyroscopes – delicate pieces of equipment required to steer and point Hubble – were already breaking down. Three of the six gyroscopes, or gyros, aboard Hubble had failed. The other three – typically kept as backups – were in operation, the minimum number needed to keep Hubble collecting science data. Astronauts replaced four gyroscopes, a fix that would help keep the telescope running smoothly for several years.

Early in Hubble’s time in orbit, NASA discovered that the telescope’s solar arrays would expand and contract excessively in the alternating heat and cold of space as the telescope traveled in and out of sunlight, causing them to vibrate. This forced engineers to use Hubble’s computing capacity to compensate for the “jitter” and reduced observation time. Astronauts replaced Hubble’s solar arrays with new versions that brought the natural jitter down to acceptable levels.

Astronauts also performed an augmentation whose vital importance would become clear a year later: upgrading Hubble’s flight computer with a co-processor and associated memory. Just weeks before the disintegrating comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter in 1994, Hubble went into a protective “safe mode” due to a memory unit problem in the main computer. Engineers were able to use that co-processor’s memory to fix the problem, capturing stunning images of the gas giant being pummeled by comet fragments.

Servicing Mission 1’s impact echoed far beyond Hubble. The mission was a showcase for tasks that could be done in space, proving humanity’s ability to perform highly complex work in orbit. The lessons learned from training for Hubble and from the servicing work itself would be built upon for other astronaut missions, including the four subsequent servicing visits to Hubble between 1997-2009. These additional missions to Hubble would enable the installation of new, cutting-edge instruments, repair of existing science instruments, and the replacement of key hardware, keeping Hubble at the forefront of astrophysics exploration.

Further, the lessons learned from Servicing Mission 1 were a guiding force for work on the International Space Station, and for missions yet to occur. “A lot of the knowledge that was developed there transferred directly to construction of the International Space Station and it’ll transfer to the things we do with [the future orbiting lunar space station] Gateway someday,” said Kenneth Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, who was also astronaut on Servicing Mission 1. “And it’ll apply to things we do on the Moon and in deep space, going to Mars and beyond. It all links.”

To celebrate Servicing Mission 1, NASA is releasing a series of videos over the next two weeks featuring key players – astronauts, scientists, engineers, and more – as they reflect on the struggles and triumphs of that time, as well as the emotional and personal impact that Hubble and SM1 had on their lives. Follow @NASAHubble on X, Instagram, and Facebook, or go to nasa.gov/hubble to watch as the series kicks off this weekend.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Stars Stories

Galaxies Stories

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…

Counteracting Bone and Muscle Loss in Microgravity

In microgravity, without the continuous load of Earth’s gravity, the tissues that make up bones reshape themselves. Bone cells readjust their behaviors—the cells that build new bone slow down, while the cells that break down old or damaged bone tissue keep operating at their normal pace so that breakdown outpaces growth, producing weaker and more brittle bones. For every month in space, astronauts’ weight-bearing bones become roughly 1% less dense if they don’t take precautions to counter this loss.  Muscles, usually activated by simply moving around on Earth, also weaken because they no longer need to work as hard. This loss of bone and muscle is called atrophy.

Atrophy has serious implications for astronaut health. On Earth, muscle and bone loss or atrophy also occur from normal aging, sedentary lifestyles, and illnesses. This may cause serious health issues from injuries due to falls, osteoporosis, or many other medical problems.

While researchers understand broad causes of atrophy, they continue to investigate the fundamental mechanisms and contributing factors of microgravity-induced muscle and bone atrophy. Much research focuses on determining the right combination of diet, exercise, and medication to keep astronauts healthy during missions and when they return to Earth or set foot on the Moon or Mars.

Exercise & Forces

Each astronaut aboard the space station engages the muscles, bones, and other connective tissues that comprise their musculoskeletal systems using Earth-like exercise regimens. Crews exercise for an average of two hours a day.

Astronauts have biked on stationary bicycles and run on treadmills in space for decades. One of the first missions on the space station flew TVIS, a treadmill with a harness to keep the user tethered to the machine and add some gravity-like force.¹ A current piece of equipment called ARED allows astronauts to mimic weightlifting in microgravity.

Unfortunately, these machines are too large to bring aboard a spacecraft for long duration space flight where room is at a premium. So scientists are curious: Could exercises using minimal or no equipment could provide adequate physical activity while taking up less room?

One study in particular aims to find out. For the Zero T2 experiment, some astronauts do not use the treadmill and instead simply perform aerobic and resistance exercises. Researchers plan to compare their muscle performance and recovery to their crewmates who did use the treadmill.

The motivation to exercise is a major hurdle both on Earth and on the space station. Two hours or more of exercise a day is a large chunk of time! VR for Exercise focuses on developing a virtual reality environment astronauts can pedal through while on the station’s exercise bicycle. It’s more than just a different view—creating an immersive experience helps astronauts enjoy their time exercising.

In addition to testing the exercise regime itself, researchers want to understand how the body experiences exercise in microgravity. Full-body exercise affects the entire musculoskeletal system. ARED Kinematics analyzes how muscle strain, bone stress, and other internal factors affect the body while exercising in microgravity. Measuring the body during space workouts can help scientists understand how astronauts need to adapt exercises in microgravity to preserve and optimize their health during long duration spaceflight missions. Researchers found that pre-flight exercise training improves performance on station, just as pre-season training helps athletes in later competition. ² The investigation aims to determine optimal exercise programs to prepare astronauts before a mission, limit the effects of microgravity during a mission, and enable safe and rapid recovery postflight.²

The search for treatments for bone atrophy in space overlaps with research on bone loss associated with osteoporosis on Earth. Some experiments, like Vertebral Strength, capture detailed scans of astronauts’ bones and muscles supporting the vertebral column before and after flight, providing researchers with information about overall musculoskeletal strength.

Drugs used to prevent bone loss on Earth, such as myostatin inhibitors, also may successfully prevent bone and muscle loss in both astronauts and animal models in space. Rodent Research 19 (RR-19) tested this drug during spaceflight.³ Developing drugs to treat bone loss could benefit people on Earth as well as provide countermeasures for those on long-duration space missions.

Tissue chips are small devices that imitate complex functions of specific tissues and organs. Rather than bringing a whole organ to study in space, researchers can send a small sample in a handheld device. One tissue chip experiment, Human Muscle-on-Chip, used a 3D model of muscle fibers created from muscle cells of young and older adults to study muscle function changes in microgravity.  Electrical pulses cause the tissue to contract, just like the muscles in our bodies when we use them. Researchers found decreased expression of genes related to muscle growth and metabolism in muscle cells exposed to space, with differences based on the age of the individuals that the tissue samples came from.⁴

Understanding how to prevent and treat muscle atrophy and bone loss is particularly important as NASA plans missions to the Moon and Mars. Once they arrive, astronauts may need to perform strenuous activity in partial gravity after a long time in near weightlessness.

CIPHER is an integrated experiment measuring psychological and physiological changes—including bone and muscle loss – in crew members on missions ranging in length from a few weeks to one year. As NASA sets goals or longer missions deeper into space, scientists want to know: Do long missions change astronauts’ physical bodies more than shorter missions? Do changes to certain systems plateau after a certain amount of time in space? Do any changes feed back to affect different biological systems? NASA needs such data to best prepare astronauts to achieve agency exploration goals. 

Through CIPHER, NASA can conduct the same research over missions of different durations. This allows scientists to extrapolate to multi-year missions, such as a three-year round trip to Mars. Findings could be key to developing protective strategies and safeguarding crew members for exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.

Studying bone and muscle loss aboard the space station is advancing the development of strategies that keep space travelers safe and treatments for people on Earth with disease-related and age-related bone and muscle atrophy.

Resources for Additional Learning

Search this database of scientific experiments to learn more about those mentioned above: Space Station Research Explorer

Citations:

1. Belyaev MY, Babkin EV, Ryabukha SB, Ryazantsev AV. Microperturbations on the International Space Station during physical exercises of the crew. Cosmic Research. 2011 April 16; 49(2): 160-174. DOI: 10.1134/S0010952511010011.
2. Lambrecht G, Petersen N, Weerts G, Pruett CJ, Evetts SN, Stokes M, Hides JA. The role of physiotherapy in the European Space Agency strategy for preparation and reconditioning of astronauts before and after long duration space flight. Musculoskeletal Science & Practice. 2017 January; 27 Suppl 1S15-S22. DOI: 10.1016/j.math.2016.10.009
3. Lee S, Lehar A, Meir JU, Koch C, Morgan A, Warren L, Rydzik R, Youngstrom DW, Chandok H, George J, Gogain J, Michaud M, Stoklasek TA, Liu Y, Germain-Lee EL. Targeting myostatin/activin A protects against skeletal muscle and bone loss during spaceflight. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2020 September 2; 117(38): 23942-23951. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2014716117. PMID: 32900939.
4. Parafati M, Giza S, Shenoy T, Mojica-Santiago JA, Hopf M, Malany LK, Platt D, Moore I, Jacobs ZA, Kuehl P, Rexroat JT, Barnett G, Schmidt CE, McLamb WT, Clements TS, Coen P, Malany S. Human skeletal muscle tissue chip autonomous payload reveals changes in fiber type and metabolic gene expression due to spaceflight. npj Microgravity. 2023 September 15; 9(1): 77. DOI: 10.1038/s41526-023-00322-y.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics

Station Science 101: Human Research

Living in Space

Humans In Space

Latest News from Space Station Research

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Ana Guzman

Hubble Views a Double Cluster of Glowing Galaxies

This Hubble image features a massive cluster of brightly glowing galaxies, first identified as Abell 3192. Like all galaxy clusters, this one is suffused with hot gas that emits powerful X-rays, and it is enveloped in a halo of invisible dark matter. All this unseen material – not to mention the many galaxies visible in this image – comprises such a huge amount of mass that the galaxy cluster noticeably curves spacetime around it, making it into a gravitational lens. Smaller galaxies behind the cluster appear distorted into long, warped arcs around the cluster’s edges.

The galaxy cluster is in the constellation Eridanus, but the question of its distance from Earth is a more complicated one. Abell 3192 was originally documented in the 1989 update of the Abell catalog of galaxy clusters that was first published in 1958. At that time, Abell 3192 was thought to comprise a single cluster of galaxies, concentrated at a single distance. However, further research revealed something surprising: the cluster’s mass seemed to be densest at two distinct points rather than one. 

It was subsequently shown that the original Abell cluster is actually comprised of two independent galaxy clusters – a foreground group around 2.3 billion light-years from Earth, and another group at the greater distance of about 5.4 billion light-years from our planet. The more distant galaxy cluster, included in the Massive Cluster Survey as MCS J0358.8-2955, is central in this image. The two galaxy groups are thought to have masses equivalent to around 30 trillion and 120 trillion times the mass of the Sun, respectively. Both of the two largest galaxies at the center of this image are part of MCS J0358.8-2955; the smaller galaxies you see here, however, are a mixture of the two groups within Abell 3192.

Text credit: European Space Agency

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Galaxies Stories

Stars Stories

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…

NASA’s Educational CubeSats: Small Satellites, Big Impact

Despite their small size, the satellites launching through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) missions have a big impact, creating access to space for many who might not otherwise have the opportunity. One recent mission tells the story of four teams of researchers and engineers who conceived, built, launched, and collected data from these shoebox-sized satellites, helping them answer a host of questions about our planet and the universe.

The teams’ CubeSats launched as part of the ELaNa 38 (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites) mission, selected by CSLI and assigned to the mission by NASA’s Launch Services Program. A little more than a month after launching aboard SpaceX’s 24th commercial resupply services mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the CubeSats were deployed from the International Space Station on Jan. 26, 2022.

Being selected by CSLI was an inspirational once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for more than 100 undergraduate students who worked on ELaNA 38’s Get Away Special Passive Attitude Control Satellite (GASPACS) CubeSat.

“None of us had ever worked on a project like this, much less built a satellite on our own,” said Jack Danos, team coordinator of Utah State University’s Get Away Special, or GAS Team. “When we first heard the audio beacon from our satellite in orbit, we all cheered.”

It took the GAS Team nearly a decade to develop and build GASPACS – the team’s first CubeSat – with many team members graduating in the process. But the team’s focus remained the same – to deploy and photograph a meter-long inflatable boom, known as the AeroBoom, from its CubeSat in Low Earth orbit.

“When we saw that first photo come through, we were blown away, speechless,” Danos said. “This had been a decade of work and learning everything required for a real satellite mission – a lot of us got skills that we never could have gotten in a normal school environment.”

The team of college students who built Georgia Tech’s Tethering and Ranging mission (TARGIT) developed it to test an imaging LiDAR system capable of detailed topographic mapping from orbit. TARGIT’s students machined the CubeSat components themselves and integrated several new technologies into the final flight system.

“CSLI was a great window into how NASA works and the formal processes to ensure the hardware that gets launched meets requirements,” said Dr. Brian Gunter, principal investigator on the Georgia Institute of Technology TARGIT CubeSat. “Our spacecraft would not have made it to orbit without this program.”

Prior to launch, the Georgia Tech team worked closely with NASA’s CSLI team, gained considerable industry experience, and delivered a flight-ready spacecraft, even after COVID forced a full shutdown of activity for an extended period, during which many key team members graduated.

“Just getting the spacecraft ready and delivered was the greatest achievement for the group and was a nice example of teamwork and resiliency from the students,” Gunter said.

Not all ELaNa 38’s CubeSats were student-built. With the goal of studying processes affecting Earth’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere, The Aerospace Corporation’s Daily Atmospheric and Ionospheric Limb Imager (DAILI) CubeSat employed an ambitious forward sunshade that was key to DAILI’s ability to examine atmospheric variations during daytime. As perhaps the most sophisticated sunshade ever flown on a CubeSat, it reduced intense scattered light from the Sun, the Earth’s surface, and low-altitude clouds by a factor of almost a trillion.

“Not only did we have a shade that occupied over half of the space we had on the CubeSat – we also needed room for the optics, the detector, and for the CubeSat bus,” said Dr. James Hecht, senior scientist at Ionospheric and Atmospheric Sciences at Aerospace and DAILI principal investigator. “The effectiveness of the shade depended greatly on the length of the shade to the angular field of view of DAILI. It was a challenge, but it worked.”

Rounding out the ELaNa 38 flight was the Passive Thermal Coating Observatory Operating in Low Earth Orbit (PATCOOL) satellite, sponsored by NASA’s Launch Services Program and developed by the Advanced Autonomous Multiple Spacecraft Laboratory at the University of Florida. PATCOOL tested a highly reflective surface coating called “solar white” to measure its efficiency as way to passively cool components in space.

Through ELaNa 38’s four small satellites, hundreds of individuals – many developing and launching spacecraft for the first time – achieved access to space. For NASA, increasing access to space and making data and innovations accessible to all also serves to reinforce the future of the country’s space industry.

“This is an opportunity that you just can’t get anywhere else – the ability to send something into space, get the ride paid for, and form relationships within the industry,” Danos said. “There are so many members of the team that went into the space industry after the mission – a mission we literally couldn’t have done without NASA’s CSLI.”

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Jason Costa