Handprints on Hubble : an astronaut's story of invention

Summary: The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the 30-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. With the first successful all-female spacewalk making headlines on October 19, 2019, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan backtracks along the footpath she created for these women as the first American woman to walk in space. Sullivan describes how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained The Hubble Space Telescope, the most productive observatory ever built. The now 30-year-old telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible.