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>>KATRINA: NASA Goddard's Space Telescope Operations Control Center

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has seen a lot of activity over the past 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope.

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It looks calm now, but 13 years ago, it was a

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very different story. [tense music]

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[music] >>JOHN: Engineers at the Goddard

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Space Flight Center discovered that there was a very small fault

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in the Power Control Unit. >>CHRISTINE: You know, it's the heart of Hubble. All the power

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runs through that box. >>MIKE: To change out the PCU, you actually have to turn off the

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telescope. This is something we've never ever done, is turn the telescope completely

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off. >>JOHN: When we turn all the power off of Hubble, it starts

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getting cold. >>AL: You know, space is a cruel environment, and so

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the temperature control of the telescope is very important. >>MIKE: I was brought on

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to develop a command procedure which we called the super proc, which would turn the telescope off

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as quickly as we possibly could. >>CHRISTINE: For months, we analyzed different scenarios.

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>>ART: We thought through everything that could possibly go wrong.

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>>CHRISTINE: We felt confident, we had a ream of analysis.  [electronic beeps]

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>>MIKE: I arrived late at night for the start of the orbit

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shift. >>AL: So the team was very prepared and very focused on what we had

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to do that night. >>CHRISTINE: You know everything was pretty calm, everything was,

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you know, you're nervous, but everything was going according to plan. >>MIKE: John was getting into

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his suit, he's getting into the airlock, they're going through all their checklists, and we're sending commands

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and commands. It's like we were starting down a roller coaster ride. >>ART: The goal was

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always to have the work site ready to go with whatever power needed to be

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removed for safety considerations, just when the crew got to the work

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site. [electronic beeps] >>MIKE: All of a sudden, we hear,

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over the loops we hear John say, "I have a leak." >>CHRISTINE: What does that mean?!

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A water leak in a suit, you know that's, that's not good.

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>>MIKE: Then Al comes on the loops and tells us, "Stop doing the commanding.

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We need to figure out what we're going to do from this point." >>AL: What we immediately did was

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started to assess what components we had already powered off.

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>>CHRISTINE: Then I said, "You know, these things don't have a large margin, you know we're

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up to the line." >>AL: Our thermal engineers would tell us, "Well given the condition

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and the current temperatures, we've got a certain amount of time."

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>>CHRISTINE: I said, "Okay, turn on this, turn on these, you know, general bus

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heaters." >>MIKE: At the same time, the astronauts are frantically working to change out

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John's suit to get him back ready. >>ART: The next thing we hear is, "Okay,

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we've got it fixed." >>CHRISTINE: You know, he got into a different suit, and things were

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working well. We turned right back around and starting shutting things back off. >>ART: And so

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we were right back on that roller coaster of powering down again. >>CHRISTINE: It was a relief to me, we're

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back on track, you know we're back to the original plan. >>MIKE: Luckily we had everything

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reconfigured in time, so that by the time John got to the door

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and was ready to start working on the PCU, we were able to send the super proc.

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>>VOICE OVER HEADSET: The telescope is powered down. John, tell those

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super proc people they're geniuses.

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>>MIKE: The telescope was completely off.

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>>CHRISTINE: It's an engineer's life blood to sit there and watch the telemetry, watch the temperatures, watch

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the voltages, watch the power, make sure everything is safe while they're working on the telescope.

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But we had none of that. >>MIKE: All we could do was sit back and watch John perform what was

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one of the most amazing EVAs of all times, it was like watching poetry in motion.

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[quiet driving music]

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[quiet driving music]

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[music fades out] [electronic beeps] >>ART: Before we knew it,

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it was time to power things back on. >>MIKE: They gave us the call

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down to say, "Go for the PCU aliveness test." This is where we actually

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can send the commands to turn the telescope back on.

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>>ART: All of a sudden, this flood of telemetry starts

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coming in from the telescope. >>CHRISTINE: Power was running through it, the batteries were

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charging, and for me the temperatures were

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looking in a safe, you know, range. >>ART:  Everyone's looking at their screens and

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it was pretty much just green across the board. >>MIKE: Hubble was back alive.

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>>AL: We were very pleased, of course. >>CHRISTINE: It was a lot of work, it was years of work, so

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it wasn't wasted, everything worked out according to plan. >>MIKE: Hubble

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is a great project with amazing people, and we were able to prove it that day.

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[music]

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>>KATRINA: The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most important scientific instruments

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in all of human history, so to think about possibly messing something up

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on the telescope is terrifying. This was not the first or last time

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that NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center took action to keep Hubble up and running.

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So stay tuned for more memorable moments from Hubble's 25 years.

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[music fades out]  [satellite beeping]

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[satellite beeping]

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