JPL film documents turbulent ‘90s, Hubble lens error and those who came ‘To the Rescue’
For those unable to secure their “Ticket to Explore JPL” this weekend, another opportunity to peek behind the curtain of La Cañada’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory takes place Tuesday evening when the documentary “To the Rescue” is screened at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium.
Directed and produced by JPL Communications Director Blaine Baggett and colleagues, the 60-minute film highlights the momentous 1990 launching of the Hubble Space Telescope and the awful discovery weeks later when images returned to Earth indicated an optical system error.
“When the Hubble Space Telescope went up, one NASA official called it the Eighth Wonder of the World,” Baggett said. “So when the first pictures came down, everyone was just shocked.”
Diagnosing Hubble’s misshapen mirror was relatively easy, but correcting the problem from down below was a challenge that took three years. That dramatic repair and similar rescue efforts made during problematic missions to Venus and Jupiter, as well as the 1993 loss of communication with the Mars Observer spacecraft, pinpoint a turbulent decade in JPL’s history.
JPL’s director of Strategy, Technology and Formulation, Dave Gallagher — who worked in the ’90s as integration and test manager on Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 — recalled the complicated task of correcting the aberration.
“We really felt almost like the future of NASA depended on us getting this right,” Gallagher said of the solution and its exciting aftermath. “In some ways taking something that’s broken and fixing it is almost more satisfying than building it and having it work.”
“To the Rescue” is the seventh installment in a continuing documentary series that chronicles JPL’s missions and leadership since the 1930s — when scientists tested rockets for the military from the relative remoteness of La Cañada’s hillside — up to the present day.
The free screening takes place Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena.
Twitter: @SaraCardine
