Love Quote by Claude Nicollier

“Hubble” lands here less like a piece of hardware and more like a shared memory you can orbit. Claude Nicollier isn’t pitching awe at the universe; he’s describing intimacy with a machine that became a symbol of human competence under pressure. The key move is how quickly he shifts from the telescope as an icon to Hubble as a place: “going back to Hubble… because I was there once already in 1993.” Spaceflight usually trades in firsts. Nicollier’s emotional register comes from return, from continuity, from the rare privilege of revisiting a chapter you helped write.

The context matters: 1993 wasn’t a victory lap. It was the first servicing mission after Hubble’s infamous optical flaw, a high-stakes repair that turned a public-relations embarrassment into one of science’s greatest comeback stories. When Nicollier calls returning “a great privilege,” it carries the quiet knowledge of what servicing Hubble actually costs: years of training, the risk of EVAs, the fragility of shuttle-era human access. Privilege isn’t celebrity here; it’s access to consequential work.

There’s also a subtle reframing of authorship. Hubble’s images are treated culturally as gifts from the cosmos, but Nicollier reminds you they’re also the product of human hands, repeated effort, and maintenance. The heart-involved phrasing isn’t sentimental. It’s the emotional vocabulary of stewardship: the pride of having been useful to something larger than your own mission patch.