Mostly I remember it being kind of a shitshow until suddenly it wasn’t. Cost overruns, technical difficulties, schedule problems. Then they finally get it into space and it can’t even focus right because they messed up the mirror. It—and NASA—was something of a joke at the time. Lots of questioning of why we spent so much money to take fuzzy star pictures.

And then they figured out a few algorithms to deal with the focus issues, the deep field photo came out, and suddenly everyone was (deservedly) big fans.