In years from now, when the fiery carcass of the Hubble Space Telescope streaks across the sky and falls to Earth as lumps of molten metal, there won't be a dry telescope eyepiece on the planet. The passing will be marked by astronomers with the kind of eulogies usually reserved for noteworthy humans, not bus-length space-based visual apparatus.
In the 20 years it has been orbiting the globe, Hubble has become world-famous. It has helped to redefine the parameters of the Universe, revolutionised astronomy, and shown us glimpses into the very nature of cosmic creation. Not bad at all considering that, at one point, Hubble was a technological calamity, destined to be one of the most expensive white elephants in scientific history.
Perhaps that is why Hubble has garnered such popular appeal. It is not just a machine. Its operational life is interwoven with triumph-over-adversity narratives that grab the imagination. It's an orbiting mechanised Rocky Balboa.
As author of the stunning new book Hubble: Window on the Universe, Giles Sparrow explains: "Part of the reason it has such popular appeal is the Cinderella story. Hubble is the little telescope that could".
When it was first launched into orbit 353 miles above the planet by space shuttle Discovery in 1990, Hubble was the little telescope that couldn't. After decades in development, an initial funding input from Nasa of $36m and a launch delayed for years because of the Challenger shuttle disaster of 1986, when Hubble eventually started working it soon became apparent that it was faulty.
"It was short-sighted," Sparrow says of the affair.
The 2.5m mirror mounted on the telescope that collects light from distant corners of the Universe to process into pictures was out of shape by one-fiftieth of a human hair and the initial images it sent back to Earth were blurred. It took another three years before the fault was rectified in one of the most complex space missions ever attempted (Hubble travels at five miles a second and takes just 97 minutes to circle the planet). By that time, Hubble had become a laughing stock. When it was fixed, however, the advantages of siting a telescope away from the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere soon became apparent and the images that able-sighted Hubble began to capture were astounding.
The concept of a space telescope was first theorised in 1923 and the foundations for the Hubble project were laid by US physicist Lyman Spitzer in 1946 when he outlined the advantages of developing an extraterrestrial observatory. Because the Earth's atmosphere distorts light from space – which is why stars appear to twinkle when viewed from the ground – and also blocks some wavelengths of light partially or entirely, Earthbound observatories never truly monitor clearly. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Spitzer was an enthusiastic lobbyist for the Hubble project and remained involved in the programme until his death in 1997.
The Independent
