Frank Cepollina - Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope

After the Solar Maximum Mission Satellite, as the Satellite Servicing Project Manager, Cepollina was faced with an enormous challenge: repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. The mission he undertook has widely been cited as the most difficult on-orbit repair mission ever attempted. Having worked on the development of its modular design, as well as its command and control subsystem, Cepollina knew the Hubble well. However, few could have anticipated that the Hubble, launched in 1990 and orbiting 375 miles above the Earth, would have such a simple but crucial problem: a flawed mirror. NASA officials were appalled and embarrassed to discover that the contractor responsible had a miscalculation that made the telescope incapable of coming to a sharp focus.

This unexpected problem was too serious to fix by simply swapping out a defective module, so Cepollina became project manager of a hurriedly assembled team charged with repairing the telescope. "The first Hubble repair mission took us to the next level of servicing", he said. His team designed new optical elements that could correct the Hubble's flawed vision yet also fit in with the modular instrument design philosophy. Cepollina's leading additional successful repair and improvement missions for Hubble followed in 1997, 1999 and 2002. These additional missions enhanced the satellite to implement technologies which were not available at the time of Hubble's initial deployment, including better cameras, more efficient solar arrays, and a more powerful processor for data transfer.