Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut's Story of Invention

In Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention, Kathryn D. Sullivan describes her experience working at NASA, specifically as it relates to her Hubble deployment mission aboard STS-31. She chronicles her life from her earliest interest in space exploration through her desire for adventure in college that led her to become and Earth Science major and finally to her work at NASA, where she was the first American woman to perform a spacewalk. Paralleling her own life is Sullivan’s description of Hubble’s life from the earliest idea to create a space-based telescope before America had a space program through planning that linked the concept with the then-nascent Space Shuttle and the tireless work of astronauts and show more engineers to refine plans during the post-Challenger disaster grounding of the Shuttle. Sullivan writes with a clear voice and describes complex engineering concepts in a way that anyone can understand. Following her work at NASA, she served in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and continues to promote scientific programs related to the studies of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and the space program. This audiobook was read by Christina Moore, who ably brings Sullivan’s text to life and easily handles complex terms like “auroral” that would easily trip-up a casual narrator. A great read for those interested in Hubble and the space program in general. show less

This is a very focused book, telling the story of the origins of the Large Space Telescope, from its first speculative origins in a 1946 paper by Lyman Spitzer through its development as the Hubble Space Telescope, its deployment on April 25, 1990, and a nod to the subsequent maintenance missions.

This is a clear, but somewhat detached, telling of this story, written by one of the astronauts that originally deployed it in orbit. Unlike some of the other astronaut books, there is only a little of her personality in this narrative. She specifically chose to remove a lot of the acronyms and specialty terms that those in the aerospace business use routinely, to make it more readable to a wider audience.

I worked on software for the show more Hubble’s science operations ground system in the mid-1980s. So as I read, I compared what was going on in the process of developing the hardware and operational questions to what I remember happening in our related project, at that same time. There was some internal translation happening as I read, to put back in some of those technical terms. I smiled when she referred to a “critical design review” – a milestone I know as a CDR. Or when she mentioned that so and so was working on requirements and specifications for this theoretical astronomy satellite – clearly that person was the lead systems engineer, though she never called him that. After the discussion of the Challenger disaster, it seemed that it took forever for her to mention that the Challenger's payload, a tracking and data relay satellite system (TDRSS, in my life), was part of the means used by the Hubble to communicate with the ground. So Hubble could not be launched until after a replacement TDRSS was successfully put in orbit.
Loved the discussions of things I’d never considered – like what variables affect such things as choosing the altitude for deploying the Hubble, or how on-orbit maintenance needs affect various hardware designs (from astronaut foot restraints to bolts).

This book was fascinating from the perspectives of design, engineering, and maintenance of a hugely important scientific instrument and its deployment, but somewhat less engaging as a tale of an astronaut’s journey. show less

This is a really interesting book about STS missions involving the Hubble Space Telescope. The science and engineering involved in the entire Hubble development, deployment, and maintenance process was fascinating.

I wouldn't call this book a memoir, however. In order to learn about the author, I will have to go to Wikipedia. Reading this book, the author shares more information about fellow astronauts and workers at Lockheed / Marshall / Goddard than about herself. I know she had two parents, and her mother died, and that's about it.