COLUMBUS (WCMH) — Kathryn Sullivan is a former NASA astronaut who flew on three Space Shuttle missions, and later served as president and CEO of COSI Columbus.

She returned to Columbus this weekend to describe her experiences preparing the Hubble Space Telescope for deployment.

In 1984, she teamed with Sally Ride on her second flight assignment that laid the groundwork for her work on the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in April 1990, and became the first American woman to walk in space.

In her new book, “Handprint on Hubble: An Astronauts Story of Invention” she wrote about making certain all of the tools and equipment were in reliably working order to fix the Hubble Space Telescope in space.

The numerous exciting and amazing Hubble telescope discoveries have enlarged our understanding of the universe by leaps and bounds, from planets outside our solar system to finding trillions of galaxies, and so many more discoveries.

She expressed pride in returning to COSI on Sunday, where she said “people touch real things and imagine their future … where people come to reach for their stars.”

“We set the foundation for all of that maintenance, for all the spectacular things that Hubble has done,” said Sullivan, who spoke in front of a large audience in the COSI’s National Geographic Giant Screen Theater.

Sullivan added, “The ability to maintain it has let the telescope get a thousand times better in orbit over the course of its lifetime, which few people realize.”

The unique achievement of Hubble is its ability to evolve over the last three decades in space.