how do you get from here to here to here
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this is the hubblecast news and images
from the nasa/esa hubble space telescope
Venice is just a few centimetres above
sea level about as far from space as you
can get but in 1609 Galileo Galilei
brought this city a bit closer to the
Stars when he gave one of the very first
demonstrations of his telescope a few
months after that he discovered
Jupiter's moons IO Ganymede Callisto and
Europa four centuries later another
telescope is making history here as
scientists gather to discuss the latest
results from Hubble Hubble was launched
in 1990 and that's of course when its
history of scientific discoveries starts
but Hubble's history isn't just about
science and technology like Galileo
story it's also one of politics money
and extremely smart people doing very
difficult things
I became the first project scientists
for the observatory in 1972 and as such
I was the scientific leader for this
observatory throughout its design and
much of its construction difficult that
decisions were the normal thing in the
early days because in the early days we
are often dead as a program and then we
would be revived probably the most
difficult decisions were the
simplifications that we had to make for
example originally the design was for a
three meter aperture observatory but in
order to save money we had to reduce it
to its final size of 2.4 meters while
the Hubble team hacked away at the
technical problems and struggled to stay
on budget a political storm was brewing
in Washington DC politicians were
alarmed by the rising costs and told
NASA
to find an international partner so
early collaboration with Europe was
absolutely critical for Hubble Space
Telescope even to be started there was a
lot of controversy within the United
States Congress about whether this
program should be funded or not and and
it was a huge boost to the support of
the program and our own Congress it
because there was a sense that there
would also be collaboration and support
from outside and in particular from
Europe at a different level
we saved the project I mean the fact
that Issa was a partner of NASA save the
project a couple of times before launch
and I believe that we also helped a lot
after launch when the spherical
aberration was discovered the fact that
it was an international project made it
much harder for the politicians in the
US who wanted to kill the Hubble Space
Telescope to do so Hubble survived the
politics only to be derailed by optics
spherical aberration the floor in the
main mirror meant that the telescope
couldn't focus properly where Hubble's
images should have been razor-sharp
astronomers instead struggled to make
out the fine details of their
observations I look back on the days
when we diagnosed the spherical
aberration as simultaneously the most
exhilarating and depressing days of my
scientific career because for the better
part of two weeks we were puzzled as to
why this telescope wasn't performing and
it became a scientific problem that
scientists had to solve but in a great
irony in the process of solving it and
finding out what was wrong
we also unearthed this enormous
monumental disaster
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though nobody had predicted a problem
with the mirror Hubble was designed with
the unexpected in mind it's the only
Space Telescope ever launched that was
meant to be serviced in space
this meant astronauts were able to
return to Hubble to fix the problem
they've been back another four times to
carry out repairs and install upgrades
as an astronaut the Hubble Space
Telescope mission is kind of the holy
grail of being able to go up and do
something that is widely regarded as
extremely important when we send a crew
and when I go up to the Hubble Space
Telescope with the teams that I've led
there's always been rule number one rule
number one is don't break the telescope
you know we're in big bulky spacesuits
and after all it's a delicate scientific
instrument so when the first images come
down you know it's it's beautiful you
know to see some star that has you know
in the act of exploding or beautiful
galaxies interacting with another galaxy
and the science is very deep and
meaningful but to those of us who have
been up there working on the telescope
it means that we didn't break rule
number one that the telescope really
works and there's a tremendous amount of
satisfaction in that
I think the crowning achievement of all
of our missions has been on this mission
in 2009 where we did brain surgery on
this instrument and on the advanced
camera for surveys removing tiny screws
and point circuit boards now this was
technically the hardest but I think also
the most rewarding
risky difficult and exciting in space
these Hubble repair missions and
nail-biting ly tense for the team here
on earth - it was nerve-racking I've
never experienced anything like that I
mean we were there as a team
waiting for John Grunsfeld to open up
the camera and to repair it and
everything rested on a successful repair
and it was just wonderful when we did
the aliveness test and saw that the
repair had been successful and then we
did the functional test which was done a
few hours afterwards where we got the
first set of data coming and it looked
it was better than it had been before
because of the updated electronics so it
was extremely satisfying and
exhilarating
and so from planning to launch to repair
Hubble's history has been a roller
coaster of highs and lows with the
telescope recently serviced Hubble has
more years in it still and scientists
are already preparing for what comes
next
we learned a few lessons from the Hubble
one is that wonderful equipment will
make wonderful discoveries well the
James Webb telescope is in aim to go
beyond what Hubble does by looking at
things that are further away or fainter
or redder than what Hubble can see so we
can look farther back towards the
beginning of time we can see inside dust
clouds where stars are being born today
we can study planetary systems as
they're being made and as they change
with time scientifically we learned that
that Hubble is wonderful but not quite
wonderful enough those stuff just beyond
what the Hubble can see that we really
want to be able to pursue the first
galaxies the first stars the formation
of stars the evolution of planetary
systems and the hunt for exoplanets
atmosphere these are some of the things
we can look forward to seeing in the
years to come
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you
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now that you've caught up with Hubble
make sure to get the latest from the
ground too
the esocast highlights the best of the
european southern observatory and its
powerful telescopes that observe from
high in the chilean andes at the
southern hemisphere's best known sites
for astronomical observations
the only person around that doesn't have
TV coverage of the food and I don't got
the flag up now we are getting a TV
picture here now
at one
on diet please