Hubble at 25 hailed as greatest scientific instrument

Traci Watson | Special for USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Building Hubble Video from the National Geographic Channel on Building the Hubble.

It's likely that no other modern-day scientific instrument has stirred as many passions as the Hubble Space Telescope, which marks the 25th anniversary of its launch into orbit on April 24. It brought us bitter disappointment one minute and thrills the next. It has provoked sorrow and wonder, devotion and outrage. At one point, it was a national disgrace. Now it's a national treasure, with the kind of name recognition usually enjoyed only by pop stars and presidents.

If Hubble's story were a movie, it would be pure melodrama, from the humiliating news of its defective vision to the triumphant repair by spacewalking astronauts. Its peerless abilities provoke pride in American ingenuity, its snapshots an almost spiritual awe.

From its vantage point roughly 350 miles above Earth, Hubble has become "the most fertile scientific instrument there ever was," says astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium. It has given the world an art gallery's worth of beautiful images of nebulae, distant galaxies and nearby planets. Before Hubble, few of us had any notion of how the cosmos looked. Now we all know: pinwheels of stars, gauzy pillars of gas and dust, bright galaxies scattered across a dark backdrop.

"Hubble turned the galaxy into our backyard," says Tyson, who hosted a recent remake of the iconic TV show Cosmos and was inspired by original Cosmos host Carl Sagan.

We might still be in the dark if the anti-Hubble forces had gotten their way. During the mid-1970s, many members of Congress saw no need for yet another large telescope. Even some scientists regarded the project as extravagant, grandiose or both — "Buck Rogers stuff," says former skeptic Ivan King, an emeritus astronomer at the University of Washington.

But the telescope had a champion in Princeton astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, often called the father of the Hubble. Spitzer proposed a space telescope back in 1946, helped design it and wooed lawmakers and suspicious astronomers. Congress finally approved funding for the telescope in 1977 after a three-year battle.

Despite all Spitzer and others could do, their telescope remained star-crossed. To build it, NASA burned through $1.5 billion in 1990 dollars, twice as much as originally estimated. Engineers, worried that the telescope project would be canceled, hesitated to ask for extra money for more tests, says the University of Alberta's Robert Smith, author of The Space Telescope and other books about Hubble. The telescope was originally scheduled to ride the space shuttle to orbit in 1983, but didn't make it off the launch pad until April 24, 1990.

That was the beginning of the real troubles for Hubble, named after famed 20th-century astronomer Edwin Hubble. By late June of 1990, the telescope's managers had realized to their horror that their vaunted telescope was half-blind. The shape of Hubble's main mirror, which collects and helps focus the light entering the telescope, deviated from design by as much as one-fiftieth of the width of a human hair — still enough to blur the telescope's vision. Investigators later found that NASA contractors had accepted a faulty test showing the mirror was perfect and discounted other tests pointing to flaws.

Two months after launch, NASA had to announce that its prize telescope had defective eyesight. Overnight, the instrument hyped as being able to reveal the secrets of space and time became an international laughingstock. "NASA's $1.5 Billion Blunder," Newsweek sneered, while David Letterman joked that NASA's excuses included "Ran out of quarters."

Devastated scientists and engineers couldn't smile. "It was hard to tell people who you worked for," recalls David Leckrone, a telescope team member from 1976 until his 2009 retirement. Many Hubble staffers left, he says, and some "badmouthed" NASA long afterward.

But a band of "Hubble huggers" stayed and tried to salvage their telescope. Their devotion was rewarded at last in 1993, when astronauts fitted Hubble with the equivalent of contact lenses. After the high-tech opticians' visit, the telescope could do what it was born to do: take astonishingly precise images of objects deep in the distant universe. NASA boasts that Hubble's vision is akin to an observer in Maryland being able to see a pair of fireflies in Tokyo.

On three more shuttle visits from 1997 to 2002, crews refurbished Hubble with the latest technology, ensuring that unlike other space telescopes that had gone up, it didn't become passé. Hubble owes some of its scientific success to that rolling rejuvenation, say Leckrone and other scientists. But most important is Hubble's position well above the Earth's roiling atmosphere.

With Hubble, "we're not looking through a haze curtain as when we're using ground-based telescopes," says astronomer Garth Illingworth of the University of California-Santa Cruz. "We have a crystal-clear view straight out into the universe."

The result has been a flood of scientific data on everything from black holes to the age of the universe to the comet that smacked into Jupiter. From 2008 through 2012, researchers published some 3,700 papers using Hubble data, says Dennis Crabtree of Canada's Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. By comparison, each of the mammoth telescopes at Hawaii's Keck observatory boasted only 770 papers in the same period. Hubble is "the most productive astronomical telescope ever conceived," Crabtree says. It's also a hot commodity. Last year, researchers from 44 countries applied to use the telescope, creating a demand for observing time that outstrips supply by 5 to 1.

Other telescopes besides Hubble notch groundbreaking discoveries. But no other telescope is a household name and a cultural icon. Leckrone notes that a recent action movie mentioned Hubble without explanation. Apparently none was needed.

"It's so embedded in our culture that all you have to do is say the word 'Hubble,' and everyone knows what you're talking about," Leckrone says. "I can't tell you how gratifying that is."

Hubble, like human celebrities, owes much of its fame to alluring pictures. The world had never seen images quite like those released by the Hubble team: sharp, vibrant images of the universe that have been cropped, oriented and colored with an eye toward beauty as well as scientific validity. Other telescopes had released wondrous images of the cosmos. But Hubble's were better, and a nimble PR effort helped keep them flowing.

The images "evoke — and are intended to evoke — a sense of awe and wonder," says Stanford University's Elizabeth Kessler, author of Picturing the Cosmos, about Hubble's images. At the same time, "they look like actual places ... something we can imagine projecting ourselves into."

Hubble's very flaws also helped it claim a place in our hearts, say Kessler and others. Who could resist the heartwarming trajectory from loser to winner? Who couldn't help cheering for the daring astronaut crews and the telescope they rescued?

Hubbles Rescue Mission Video from the National Geographic Channel on The Hubbles Rescue Mission.

"People were furious" about the defective mirror, Kessler says. "But everyone loves a story of recovery."

The public affection for the telescope would prove Hubble's salvation in its hour of need. In 2004, NASA canceled the shuttle's last servicing mission to the telescope, consigning Hubble to a lingering death. An indignant public rose to the defense of what had become known as the people's telescope. Hubble's managers were deluged with emails, some containing money. An online "Save Hubble" petition attracted thousands of signatures, and Congress pressured NASA to reverse course.

It did, and in 2009 astronauts flew to Hubble for the last time, equipping it with new batteries and other parts. It's now expected to last until 2020, perhaps beyond. Once again it is vigorous, and once again it is returning glorious images and fresh insights into the cosmos.

Hubble "shows what humankind can do," Illingworth says. "As we sit on this little planet around a little star … we are exploring the furthest reaches of the universe with a telescope orbiting our planet. That's a wonderful thing."