Our 2015 Woman of the Year recipient and WAN Honorary Board Member, Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan, will be joining us for an unforgettable night to celebrate her new book, Handprints on Hubble. Dr. Sullivan is a NASA astronaut (retired), former Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), member of the National Academy of Engineering and an inductee in the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
The event will feature a moderated book talk with Dr. Sullivan followed by a reception featuring light refreshments and beverages, including an opportunity for a book signing.
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
6-8:30pm
The Meridian Institute
1800 M St NW
Suite 400N
Washington, D.C. 20036
This event has sold out, but if you are interested in attending email us to be added to the waitlist!
For those of you attending, PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING A GOVERNMENT ISSUED ID.
More About the Book:
The Hubble Space 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. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built.
Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a “Sputnik Baby,” her path to NASA through oceanography, and her initiation into the space program as one of “thirty-five new guys.” (She was also one of the first six women to join NASA's storied astronaut corps.) She describes in vivid detail what liftoff feels like inside a spacecraft (it's like “being in an earthquake and a fighter jet at the same time”), shows us the view from a spacewalk, and recounts the temporary grounding of the shuttle program after the Challenger disaster.
Sullivan explains that “maintainability” was designed into Hubble, and she describes the work of inventing the tools and processes that made on-orbit maintenance possible. Because in-flight repair and upgrade was part of the plan, NASA was able to fix a serious defect in Hubble's mirrors―leaving literal and metaphorical “handprints on Hubble.”
