Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope (1990)

Hello there. My name is Kathy Sullivan, and I am an astronaut. Do you know what an astronaut does? We get to go on big trips into outer space. It is so exciting. I put on my special white suit with a big round helmet. It was time for a very important journey. My friends and I were going to fly on a giant spaceship. Our spaceship was named Discovery, and it was ready to zoom into the sky. We weren't going alone, though. Oh no. We had a very special passenger with us. It wasn't a person. It was a giant telescope named Hubble. Hubble is like a super-duper camera, but instead of taking pictures of puppies or birthday parties, it takes pictures of things that are very, very far away. It helps us see shiny, twinkling stars and beautiful, sparkly galaxies that swirl like glitter in the dark. We had to take Hubble all the way up into space so it could get a good look at everything.

On April 25th, 1990, it was time to go. The big spaceship started to shake. Rumble, rumble, rumble. Then, WHOOSH. We went up, up, up, faster and faster, right through the clouds. Soon, everything was quiet and we were floating. Can you pretend to float like an astronaut? It feels like you are a little bubble in the air. I looked out the window and saw our home, the Earth. It looked like a big, beautiful blue and white marble. It was time for Hubble’s big moment. We used a long robot arm on our spaceship, like a giant helping hand, to pick Hubble up. Very, very gently, we moved it outside. Then, we let it go. Hubble started to float all by itself, opening its big eye to look at the stars. It was ready to start taking amazing pictures for everyone back on Earth to see. My job was to help give the world a new window to look at the stars, and Hubble is still up there today, showing us how wonderful space is.