Hubble: A 30 Year "Failure"

Way back in the primitive days of post-WW2 America, astronomer Lyman Spitzer wrote a paper discussing the benefits of a space-based telescope. He spent the next couple of decades trying to convince anyone to help with the development of this telescope.

After many funding problems, a bunch of technical issues, an extreme delay caused by a Space Shuttle disaster (that traumatized almost half of U.S. school kids, including yours truly) and a sky-rocketing budget, on April 24, 1990, NASA finally launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.

Hubble has had a somewhat difficult history. It was a very ambitious undertaking with a lot of moving parts that had to be precise to an extremely small degree. It had plenty of naysayers, and the cost overruns made it an easy target for jokes about NASA and budgets.

But the HST is an instrument that is going to significantly improve our abilities to look further into space than we've been able to, and we were going to get back some AMAZING pictures.

And then....

Credits: Left: E. Persson (Las Campanas Observatory, Chile) /
Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington;
Right: NASA, ESA and STScI

The initial results were quite a bit underwhelming. The jokes took on a whole new life, even prompting Jay Leno to joke that Hubble should be shot down and put out of its misery. The project was a bust. 

But fortunately, NASA has some pretty smart, persistent people working there. They realized that there was a problem with the mirror, and, since HST was designed to be manually serviced, they set out to do just that. It took a few space walks to get the mirror fully corrected, but after just the first fix in 1993, they got...

Spiral Galaxy M100 - Before/After 1st Fix
Credits: NASA

Hubble was working a lot better. 

In the ensuing years, Hubble has been upgraded and significantly improved. It has made over a million impressive observations, made numerous discoveries, significantly increased our knowledge of our universe, given us stunning images to look at and sparked an interest in space. Hubble is a pretty impressive redemption story and has become an unimaginable success. Not too shabby for a project that was only supposed to last for 3 years.

The James Webb Space Telescope has some pretty large shoes to fill. 

Happy 30th "Birthday", Hubble!

The Hubble Space Telescope, seen from the space shuttle 

Discovery during the observatory's deployment 

on April 25, 1990.   (Image: © NASA)

Jupiter Moon Transit, January 24, 2015
(Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI)

Hubble took this image, titled "Cosmic Reef," 
released April 24 to celebrate its 30th anniversary.  
(Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI)

And a big THANK YOU to NASA, the ESA, the Goddard Space Flight Center and everyone else involved with Hubble.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/what-did-hubble-see-on-your-birthday

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/2017/highlights-of-hubble-s-exploration-of-the-universe

https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-the-hubble-story

The Eagle Has Landed!

“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” - Neil Armstrong

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke his historic words to a crowd of quite nearly everyone within view of a television. 50 years ago today, after a 4-day trip, Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon.

Humans have done some amazing things throughout history; far too many things to even try to list. But the one achievement that I think stands far above them all, was sending a manned rocket in the direction of our nearest satellite 240K miles away, depositing two of its passengers on the surface of that object and then bringing them all home. The accomplishment itself was not only impressive, but it also massively inspired pretty much the entire world.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins were incredibly brave to do something that we didn't even know could be done. They strapped into the 11th iteration of the Apollo launch, with some very hard lessons learned in the previous 10 launches. The three of them, and everyone else that worked on the Apollo program, are true heroes. They showed all of us that, if we put our minds to it, we can turn science fiction into science fact.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." -JFK (Sept 12, 1962)

It took just under that decade, and Kennedy wasn't there to see it come to pass, but we did it! It truly was a giant leap for all of mankind. And it was all done with less computing power than a RaspberryPi has.