I hear about the only person around it doesn't have TV coverage of the face and
then they got the black up now you're gonna be the one getting a TV picture is
still yet we are getting a TV picture
10
dialing
so the moment arrived the end of the 50 VA we've done everything we accomplish
all of our goals all the instruments we even put on extra insulation on the
outside of the telescope and to my great surprise in that moment when I gave
Hubble one last little pad and a salute
I wasn't sad at all I felt really happy that we've accomplished all of our goals
we've done our job in a little bit more and we were sending Hubble off in the
best shape of its entire career orbiting 375 miles above earth is a most
extraordinary scientific tool that is forever changed our knowledge of the
universe the Hubble Space Telescope is one of greatest technological
achievements in human history for 20 years the world is marbled it's
astonishing images of our dynamic solar system and the many wonders beyond
jupiter-sized exoplanets orbiting other sons exploding stars and nebulus massive
exotic galaxies these and other discoveries not only confirmed many
scientific theories including the existence of mysterious dark matter and
start devouring black holes but also raised new questions for scientists to
ponder about the origins of the universe and the endless diversity of the cosmos
yeah
since the dawn of time we looked skyward and wonder how those stalkers and how
many are there how did this all begin other worlds like ours happen it was
only 400 years ago a mere blink in the cosmic timeline that Galileo first
observed rings and moons on our neighboring planet Saturn and Jupiter
this forever dispelled the myth of Earth as the center of everything modern
astronomy was born as centuries past telescopes became larger and more
powerful able to observe far beyond the limits of our eyes in 1924 from a top
mount wilson California the astronomer Edwin Hubble first observed that the
universe is made up of billions of galaxies extending well beyond our own
Milky Way Hubble observed that distant galaxies appear to be rapidly moving
away from us using known stars to calculate distances between galaxies
Hubble confirm their retreat in 1946 the acclaimed astronomer lyman spitzer
proposed building a large telescope to orbit the Earth free of the atmospheres
blurring effects it would deliver images in brilliant new clarity you always need
visionaries who can look out into the future and and think about what's
possible and motivation that Lyman Spitzer and and others in his footsteps
had was about getting above the Earth's atmosphere
while Spitzer's idea was well received by astronomers it would be more than 30
years before funding was granted to begin the design and development
it took time for the technology that people had to catch up to alignment
initial of conception named in honor of edwin hubble the orbiting observatories
construction began in 1978 with the creation of an enormous nearly eight
foot mirror to gather light from objects across the universe that's kind of the
heart the soul of the telescope its and it's the thing that collects the light
with without the near you don't have a telescope when completed the hubble
space telescope would contain a wide field planetary camera a high resolution
spectrograph high-speed photometers a fate object Cameron spectrograph all
capable of beaming real-time data back to earth for analysis by scientists and
all contained within a spacecraft as large as a school bus and weighing more
than 12 x double journey finally began on $DAY april $MONTH twenty-fourth 1990
at nasa's kennedy space center in florida aboard space shuttle Discovery
difficult
after shuttering bone-jarring launch Hubble and its precision instruments was
gingerly placed in dormant I remember the crew talked for months leading up to
the flight about what the significance of the flight was going to be there was
a lot of conversation back then among the scientific community about the big
bang theory and there were those who believed that Hubble would provide all
the answers
among the crew members we thought that bubble would provide lots of answers but
it was probably going to revolutionize the field of astronomy and astrophysics
light from the objects that studied would be focused on the Hubble's giant
mirror then converted into data for downloading through a communications
satellite 260-foot microwave antennas at white sands test facility in New Mexico
from there the data would be relayed to Hubble's operations center at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland and onto the Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore for dissemination scientists worldwide
now that the telescope was deployed the promised brilliance it's photography had
astronomers eagerly anticipating Hubble's first images but they got their
pictures rendered useless by a fuzzy halo around each of the cited objects we
expected that we would have to make adjustments to make the images as clear
as is possible but as hard as we tried we could never get all of the fuzziness
out of these pictures
finally everybody kind of got around the table and said we've got spherical
aberration and we cannot do anything on the ground correct
while we were confident and in the settlement that was given by the
scientists and the engineers I always had this nagging feeling that we may
have done something in our real struggle to get Hubble out of the payload Bay
that had contributed to the to the problem the primary mirror had been
polished perfectly but to an incorrect prescription a repair plan was needed
NASA engineers focus their expertise and came up with what they believed was the
solution
december $MONTH 1993 sts 61 astronauts delivered to Hubble a new wide field
planetary camera with a set of internal mirrors that the telescope would wear
like a new pair of eyeglasses when we started out on this mission st s 61 all
the players and not happen we have to wear redesign the mission has more
things fail and they were contemplating splitting our mission up thinking we
couldn't possibly get all done what we got to get done and is more faith is
happening in miracle on the ground was getting it all done and getting onto the
shuttle on cost and schedule and a miracle and space was for the first time
ever
servicing a satellite with five TDs and having every single spacewalk go
perfectly and then it all culminated what what could only be called the day
of indication this time the images disappointed no one
it took years but I finally breathe a sigh of relief that that I have not been
one of the causes of Hubble's small the newly restored Hubble was ready to work
just nine months prior to Hubble successful servicing three astronomers
at California's palomar observatory had discovered a comp whose enormous
fragments now appear to be on a collision course with the planet Jupiter
for Hubble it was a golden opportunity to watch as the gas giants atmosphere
was blackened and scarred then racked and seismic waves by planet sized chunks
of the comment
with almost every new observation Hubble was rewriting the science books and
raising new questions for astronomers overtime NASA would send for more
shuttle crews to service and upgrade the hubble space telescope in may 2009
sts-125 and its space shuttle atlantis crew performed the fifth and final
servicing mission upgrades repairs a new equipment would give Hubble and you
lease on life
it's just really a a wonderful experience to to be there and be inside
or outside of the telescope looking at it with the earth in the background
working during a spacewalk is really quite a privilege so I I doesn't do
those memories are the most vivid ones that i have this was mission specialist
John Grunsfeld third visit to Hubble on his sixth spacewalk Grunsfeld became the
last human delay hands on the telescope so it's the synergy between the humans
and the design of Hamilton service that has really given a snap one Hubble Space
Telescope of one observatory
I'll bet many observatories each time we visited and reinvent the telescope
I will really is an amazing example of the way people and robotics works
together in space bubble is up there without people operating it in space
every day taking these great observations and yet it benefits from
having people come to it and inject new technology so it's not a 20-year old
telescope it's got brand-new technology I think it's a real lesson in one of the
one of the legacy products that Hubble is that throughout this servicing series
this incredible series of five servicing missions Hubble has done nothing but get
immensely more powerful with Hubble our neighboring planets now reveal
themselves and never-before-seen clarity giant gas planets like Uranus and
Neptune they they sound large and they are large but they're very far away and
too ground-based telescopes they are small discs of light without a lot of
detail double really zooms in and shows us quite a bit of detail on those
pockets
surrounding us we now see billions of galaxies in every shape imagine millions
of light-years across a single point the sky we stared a 10-day to the single
blank piece of sky no more than a drinking spots look at the sky look
through drinking straw and we found 10,000 galaxies in that single pin point
of dark sky 10,000 galaxies there some of those galaxies have been around their
light has taken 13 billion years to reach us
Hubble's imaging of exoplanets circling nearby stars provides direct evidence of
new planet systems under construction
Hubble has given us new insights about how stars die and how they wore Hubble's
discovery of a supermassive black hole and center of galaxies m84 has led
astronomers to conclude that an immense black hole is at the center of most
galaxies what we did was we put the spectrographic slit of this instrument
down right on the core of this elliptical galaxies and maybe four
so what we're looking for is the signature of a black hole
what happens there what happens
well usually what happens is there's a ring of of gas in a very tight orbit
around that black hole and that ring of gas is rotating very very quickly of
course because the black hole mass is huge
one way to recognize the presence of a black hole would be to measure its
influence on the stars and gas that are that are close to Hubble is greatly
contributed to astronomers knowledge of dark energy and how this mysterious
little understood phenomenon is speeding up the very same expansion of the
universe discovered by Edwin Hubble decades before what everybody believed
was that the universal expansion was slowing down due to gravity
I mean it made sense there are no repulse that there's no anti-gravity no
but there is now in Hubble's 20 short years we've learned more about our
universe than in the nearly 400 since Galileo first . into his modest
telescope
Hubble's last servicing mission marks the telescope's new beginning
more powerful than ever it will lead our exploration of the cosmos for several
years to come to come to the end of that time and release Hubble and think you
know everything we came to do got done made me feel really proud about the
whole team the way we work together hopeful for the future with Hubble that
everything we've done actually worked and when they checked it out and just
thinking about what Hubble could do now we've given it a new lease on life is
very rewarding
not many humans get to work on things that a hundred years from now
history will remember Hubble was certainly one of them
the Hubble touches people not only for the science but it touches people for
its aesthetics and its beauty and the people that choose what to study have
done the right thing they've done an extraordinary job of not only getting
great science but also the beauty of the universe 400 years from now we'll look
back and i'll say around the Hubble really did change the way we see the
universe i think the scientific legacy is that text books have been rewritten
because of Hubble I think the fact that we didn't know 20 years ago about black
holes or extra solar planets or galaxies evolution dark energy we didn't know we
could measure dark matter
I mean we're at a point in our history where we have now discovered we only
understand four percent of the universe the rest of it is completely unknown
waiting in the wings is NASA's next generation telescope when it is launched
in $MONTH 2014 the james webb space telescope will soar deeper into space
and look even farther back in time to unexplored territory the beginning of
our universe the Hubble has shown us if you like the peaks of the iceberg that
was very first galaxies the James Webb teller going to penetrate right into
what we call these Dark Ages where those very first galaxies are probably look
out of sight from us copy the Hubble telescope has made a remarkable journey
from imagination to reality it is not only transformed the way we view the
universe but also fundamentally changed how we view ourselves our place in the
ever-expanding cosmos and the never ending journey before us
good
person around it doesn't have TV coverage of the face and it man you got
the black up now you're gonna be the one getting a TV picture is still yes we are
getting a TV picture now one
great