For anyone who is a first timer, its an about terrys and we bring signs of discipline out of their labs and onto the public stages. They are part of the cultural life of new york city and people like you and me can come and be informed, energized and engaged by scientific ideas discoveries contract directly with scientists. Secret science club, regular hangout, our main one is important. The north when, where back here tonight in manhattan, part of us make series here, so we would like to thank all the people that symphony space, darren, rebecca, mary, james and zach and ricky for helping us expand our university. Big hand for them. [applause] very big thank you, we have the barr to the back left if you havent visited yet. Theyve concocted our cocktail, its called the atlantis, fabulous blue glowing drink its name from the Space Shuttle and its very tasty. We highlyen recommend it. To expand your universe brother. Also thanks to cspan, i want to give a shout out to them. If you like to find out more about the secret science club here in brooklyn or anywhere please visit our charmingly retro side, secret science clu club. Com, also sign up for our having list and we love new members. You are a member just by being here. We are thrilled to present astronaut, scientist and author, catherine sullivan. She spent over 500 hours in space before effect, trained as a scientist, receiving a phd in geology and she went from starting the ocean floor onto nasa and became the First American woman to fly in space. Shes a veteran of three Nasa Space Missions entries on book group of the discovery shuttle that watched the amazing hubble, Hubble Space Telescope which has radically revolutionized our views of the universe. When she left the Astronaut Corps, afterwards, Kathryn Sullivan served as the administrator of the u. S. National oceanic ministration, overseeing a network of satellites and airplanes that looked back from afar oceans and atmosphere. Ri now, after 2017, shes written a book called three of invention and theft the subject of her talk tonight. Lovely folks on call our our toast in it. Kathryn sullivan will sign copies after her talk and after the q a. She went to come and talk, its all about your day with you, our wonderful audience. Then we will have the book signing. Please welcome doctor Kathryn Sullivan. [applause] april 24, 1990 strike back where we had been 14 days earlier. Suited up, dressed in and ready to go the countdown clock stopped at 18 minus 31 seconds. Again. This time from a large Regional Center computers the content because of an indication that a valve on one of them used to fuel tanks failed to close. One was to prevent the fuel tank leaking into engine. If that happened we could end up landing site on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean splashed into the ocean. Would be scrubbed rather than taking risk. If it was wrong however, think about the tire Pressure Sensor on your car, if it was fine, no reason to scratch so which was it . Euros problem or faulty indicator . Go for lunch or scrub . The launch team shuttles, hisone i dont know only by call sign as mps. Time is not on this guys side. He set a strict limit on how much longer we can hold. Just 12 minutes more. The carpet, we listened intently as the Launch Controller worked out the problem. Ly what your status . The engineer calmly through the data on his display. The temperature and pressure in the lines surrounding it was not consistent with it being open. Fundamental physics that it was closed. He proposed that it would read correctly, that work. The control Center Computer still had a lot onk the countdon clock. Mps, what your call . Im prepared to manually override there software and proceed with the count, he replied. The best soldier would then be the launch director to do that and told the other Launch Controllers to get ready to resume countdown. And he advised the technical director that the launch team was ago. We had been waiting for came a split second later. Ill controllers, the countdown clock will resume on high marks. Three, two, one. Mark. The entire episode had taken less than three minutes. Thirtyone seconds later they came off the launch pad at the moment at which mike Hubble Telescope adventure really launched into the phase that matters early stages of the story go back several years before that. They start here in 1970, february 1978, nasa the world their newest class of astronaut, chosen specifically to find out what the Space Shuttle, her brandnew research vessel. The group of 35 people quickly became known as the tf energies, 35 new guys, if you come from the military, theres another phrase ready f doesnt stand for vice. It was something else. As a double entendre on but military phrase. The other interesting thing, we had strange people amongst us. We had 25 military test pilot, every other group of nasa astronaut had had. We also had six women from you see them here, three africanamerican men and one asianamerican man. By the end of our first day but after had been introduced to the public, it became clear to all of us that the simple way to describe our group was ten interesting people 25 standard white guys. [laughter] the 25 white guys were out of the building and off to the gym or the beach or whatever they want to to do about after the introduction ceremony ended six of us for other strange people besieged and barraged with interviews all the way through east coast news are and beyond. It was kind of life, a new phase of life that are expected to us in the picture here, left and on the far right we had only kind of just turned 26, straight out of graduate school, we finished our phd astronaut interview was our first serious Job Interview . Was our first ever fulltime job. Thinking about it, its beyond crazy. What happens when your baby astronaut . What happens when youre a baby you practical and one for things. We spent about an here going through the compressed graduate school restaurant, thelyie aspet science, engineering, science, physiology, physics, system design, anything that might touch on spaceflight, without a crash course in the expert, about equivalent to the first year when that was done from britains title to work after not so far, one yet but still. Then we started getting plump helping of light, tubing, helping preparations, planning for Operational Missions happen to turn in line came on. Its like starting your career mail morning by going around the company learning all the bits and pieces having works. We did that for a number of years before we started Getting Group slotted in my first Flight Opportunity came about october 1984, i probably cost me sally, the First American to fly in space in june the year before. 883, a press release was put for this information bother you with, it will sign something, you need to know. Announcing that she would be on macro again, making her second spaceflight, cap sullivan would be aboard her first spaceflight. I got to tell you, is a delightful wave of excitement and congratulations crept across space and the first woman ever to fight and you will be the space walk. A i looked at each other and said, these people have not been paying attention to history. Onsite was announced. 83 for october 84 lunch date and we had been paying attention to the Space Program was plenty of time that a soviet to another question into a spacewalk. If you asked t them to comply wt you think is happening here . This is on the launchpad, october 5, 1984 getting ready to board the counter are fancier Science Missions i told you about and guess what happening here. Tell you what here. Seating arrangements are mccallie dictated that sally and i would want shuttle bus. We waited our turnur just outsie the hatch known as the white room. We were keenly aware of the cameras above our heads our every move is being monitored by the Launch Control center all caps on as well. After a few minutes of idle chitchat, we decided we would do something waiting there always a big mission to the movies. So we decided to pretend synchronizing hours. There were no microphones in the white room what you think about us right now . Went from no, you think weve retched this out enough . Im delighted to say when we landed, this photo featured prominently on all the articles and the caption from solon synchronizes on the launchpad. [laughter] stupid astronaut joke number one. More followed. So thats a great eightday mission from the populace days, we were outside on the second to last day for several hours out in the shuttles back. You can cut in line in front of everybody else for every resource to get you ready for flight. Then you dont know the moment youryo Space Shuttle clears a tower leaving the earth into orbit the first four seconds of your mission there is another crew in a Conference Room that stands up and says new crew now when you land your nobody you are them back of the line and to get back in the cycle so it is disappointing and lonely you Wander Around with the deer in the headlights look and actually try and remind yourself that you did the stuff in the photograph. I was fortunate enough that this period did not last too long for me after my first flight and by early the next year my boss called me into the office to say we have a mission coming up soon with the Hubble Space Telescope but he said you know that big large telescope in the manifest it is supposed to be maintainable in space by astronauts. And at last 15 years but the tools and equipment that it would take to doe that so go get in the middle of all of that now to make sure that by the time you take it into orbit we have all the stuff that we need to fulfill that promise at 500 miles an hour for 15 years. So the time i was assigned to the flight with the Hubble Space Telescope the hardest concept of 1982 or three vintage that was not even yet named for Edward Hubble but the shuttle and we only knew about it for a fair while some is also working on a president ial commission for the United StatesSpace Program and to capture the future of the report tom paine went back to an illustration made many years earlier. This illustration appeared in an issue of colliers magazineea in 1952 and i encountered it middle 1985 at the age of 33. I looked at it and this of course describes the space station People Living there scientist working there and a jumping off point for iodestinations this is the craft that takes people back and forth from the earth to the station to specialize in taylor just for the 200mile hop back and forth thats the hardest step there is a purpose built vehicle and this is described as a telescope put into orbit never bothered by turbulence and those that are intent on fixing it or upgrading it to sketch this out to make this illustration the year i was born so in my early thirties i look at this picture that turned out to be white but there is one and it is a shuttle and is just what the vision was when it was created. And to put this into orbit it doesnt look like that the details came out different but the version that goes back to the forties and fifties to a time when engineers didnt have the skills to do it, has become ado reality. I will take it to orbit in a year or two. And the space station also did not look like Arthur C Clarke but more like the erector set but that too was on the drawingt board and to turn it from that conceptual sketch and into the four room house larger than a football field space station over our heads right now. So i was just stand by this picture and how rapidly no longer how long it takes to make that division but how powerful it was in the year i was born with no inkling, nor did my parents, where my life would go. So this is where hubble really started and came from. The timelines between my life and hubble started to jump out at me. Wemust like we were born at the same time. And at the different junctures with the college or grad school and then to in the support and the enduring definition. And in 1978 with the Astronaut Corps on the road to space that is when Congress Finally supported the budget that led hubble start to be built and putting it on as well. Not many months after to be assigned and to see that illustration i found myself reading the real Hubble Space Telescopebb and that is taken out and shipped down to florida for the launch. These are human beings. The size of the school bu bus, 15 feet diameter, it fits very snugly. If he went to hubble and they tried to put the fist between the fist and the telescope theres not a whole lot more room that is how tightly squeezed it was. One of the remarkable things to me was we cant do that sketch on the right it is a diagram that shows you all the equipment with the doors are open and giving access into operating the electronics all the stuff that makes hubble work that runs the data and the onboard observations and the spectrometers the architecture hubble was given in the late sixties, early seventies in the infancy of the spaceage they had the foresight to draw largely from their experience to think about spacesuited astronauts to work on it 17500 Miles Per Hour what does that mean . To fullbody snowmobile suits with a bucket on your head and then go to change spark plugs. By the way if you put down a tool it floats away. It is incredibly difficult working environment so you have to think about how do i make a wrench somebody can hold onto . This isnt found and home depot. [laughter] now you can go get our ratchet wrench on aisle for and modify it with a fat enough handle so the suit and gloves can hold it and the big mushroom at the pivot point so you dont have to make a fine grip because you cant hold your hand this tight with the spacesuit glove but a lot of other stuff doesnt exist in the universe and needed to be invented but the choreography of getting the repair work also had to be invented and that works out largely underwater you see two different water tanks and simulation sessions. This is not deep enough to hold the whole telescope to stand altogether sweet break the model the back and over here in the front and off to the side. So this is me again moving around in the markup with one of the scientific instrument so for this choreographed you want the box to be as closely as exact the right to mention in shape and size but you dont want to have to move a real box through the water just think how hard it is to move your hand through the water. Is just like screen door mesh to see through it and then to remind you you cannot see around it so you learn can i see around it why have a place to grab do i need a partner to spot me to put it back into the spot that took dozens and dozens of long test for that choreography bruce and me and a dozen other astronauts to make sure that more than just the two of us had good familiarity with the telescope good bench strength and then another discovery that i made working on the book, i thought is what my boss said it was always the plan that anything on hubble is done by spacewalking astronauts but i learned that was not true. The original idea the big boxes and the batteries that you knew you wanted to keep the best technology, that was a short list designed for spacewalking astronauts to work on all other electronics did not have that in mind at all because first they thought they would bring it back to earth every five years so the job was to be easy and doable but the other really hard stuff we will just bring it home. And then have a specialized Maintenance Facility do it. That idea didnd not die until late 1984. It when it died the engineers had a whole list of electronics boxes and realized that stuff can fail. We have to find a way to modify that stuff. The telescope is exist and it is built you cannot take it apart somehow we have to make those pieces as well so that drove another wave of innovation but first if youre going to repair something in orbit its easy here because i have gravity i can move the podium, gravity creating friction but we dont have that in outer space a portable foot restraint to put your toes through here and if you touch it to the pedal you can go forward or back or left to right and all these other places and then they stick you just where you need to be to do some work. Then we had to create it through that choreography through that water taken in the engineers to figure out why it happens that makes it possible to tilt and pivot the foot restraints still in use on the International Space station but we had a particular problem for a flight in 1990 when it was all said and done coming in at 35 pounds. Its a chunk and almost 3 feet from over here. Whats the problem with that . Bruce and i had to go outside to fix the telescope sometimes we used a cherry picker to move the astronaut around they are busy holding the telescope above her head. So we would have to move hand over hand like going across the jungle gym up to whatever point on the telescope we needed to work and then drag us with us and just tell her you say. Sure. Every time i move my body it goes drifting around and bangs into the telescope. The skin of the telescope is thinner than a beer can thats a sure way to and your career by damaging the Hubble Space Telescope so we need a tether. To attach it to ourselves because all this space here to maneuver but its stiff and rigid that i can make bendable so we created a gadget called the semi rigid tether you know those tripod for the camera or the go pro . That is the principle but larger, we created one to use and like the foot restraint itself, its still in u