NEWS

By year-end, the world’s largest telescope should be able to see deeper into space and further back in time than ever before. According to media reports, if all goes as planned, it will be able to detect events closer to the big bang, explore the ‘cosmic web’ of galaxies and intergalactic gas that make up the large-scale structure of the universe. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is finalising plans to fly the space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to repair and upgrade the orbiting observatory that revolutionised astronomy. The long-delayed servicing mission will be the last for the Hubble, NASA says, but it will allow the telescope to perform at its highest level ever for the remaining five or six years of its operating life.

VIEWS

Dubbed a White Elephant and compared with catastrophes such as the Titanic, Hindenburg and Edsel, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)—or, just The Hubble, as it is sometimes referred to—has rendered yeoman service to mankind by providing deep insight into the universe. All the same, the Hubble has had a chequered history.

The Hubble’s past goes back as far as 1946, when astronomer Lyman Spitzer wrote a paper titled Astronomical Advantages of an Extraterrestrial Observatory. His efforts bore fruit when in 1965 he was appointed head of a committee assigned the task of defining the scientific objectives for a large space telescope. In 1966, NASA launched the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) missions. Spurred by the success of the OAO programme, NASA decided to develop a large space telescope (LST). After going through many a hurdle in the US Congress over funding, work on the design of the LST began in earnest in 1978. The telescope was named after Edwin Hubble who was the first to discover that the universe was expanding.

Development of the HST was beset with design, cost and time overruns. In 1986, when it’s planned October launch looked feasible, the Challenger disaster brought the US space programme to a halt, forcing the launch of the Hubble to be postponed for several years. By the time the Hubble was finally launched in its low-Earth orbit (LEO) by the Discovery space shuttle on April 24, 1990, its cost had risen from the original $400 million to a staggering $2.5 billion.