HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Cosmosphere had a virtual presentation with former astronaut and Kansas native Steve Hawley, who was part of the space shuttle crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope 30 years ago in April.
Hawley says he never imagined getting to fly three shuttle missions including two connected to the Hubble project.
“I had never been to Houston, never been to the space center, never met an astronaut and I thought it would be absolutely cool if I could do that,” Hawley said with a chuckle. “They flew me down and I got to meet some astronauts and went through a week of interviews and physicals and all of that stuff. I felt like I had won the lottery.”
Hawley says, originally, he was going to get to fly with Apollo 16 astronaut John Young, but one day in January of 1986 changed all that.
“We were initially assigned John Young as our commander. That was an honor, of course,” Hawley recalls. “The Challenger accident changed all of that as crew assignments were redone after we returned to flight.”
Hawley says launching Hubble had its own challenges for the shuttle crew.
“Hubble was large, it took advantage of the volume of the payload bay. Hubble was also fairly massive, it weighed about 24,000 pounds,” Hawley said. “One complication was, as you began to move it further away from the center of gravity of the orbiter, the automatic flight control system (aboard the shuttle) became unstable. And so we had to develop a way to maneuver the orbiter.”
While Hubble had some problems at the beginning, Hawley says it was a great scientific achievement. He noted that, with technology today, they are taking photographs from 30 years ago and making new discoveries about the galaxy and beyond.