Hubble's 15th Anniversary Images (click for larger image)

Hubble's 15th Anniversary Image Unveiling Historical Electronics Muesum, Linthicum, MD Notes for Speech by Dr. Frank Summers April 25, 2005 (plain text version)

Good Morning, and thanks to all of you for coming here to celebrate Hubble's 15th Anniversary.

Even though the telescope is continually circling the globe, 350 miles above our heads, Baltimore is home to Hubble.

At the Space Telescope Science Institute, located on the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus, we collect, archive, process, and disseminate the magnificent data from Hubble.

Today we are celebrating by unveiling two spectacular new images from Hubble at one hundred museums, science centers, and planetariums across the country. While there may be grander celebrations going on in Washington, New York, and Chicago, right here in Baltimore, you are at the center of it all.

Hubble's history spans much more than 15 years. It was the mid-1940's when the quest for a telescope in space was begun in earnest.

Even then, a decade before Sputnik, astronomers planned and dreamed of getting a telescope above the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere. They said that such a telescope would provide unprecedented views of the universe, and in hindsight, how right they were.

During the Space Race of the 1960's, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that the construction and deployment a large optical telescope in space be a priority on the nation's scientific agenda. Astronomers and NASA engineers developed a series of plans to accomplish this ambitious goal. Our counterparts at the European Space Agency created a similar program, thereby launching a somewhat competitive rivalry in a "telescope space race".

But it wasn't until 1976, when NASA and ESA joined forces to collaborate on a single design that they could muster enough political backing for the project. Congress funded what was then called the "Large Space Telscope" a year later, and construction began a year after that.

In 1985, telescope construction was complete and its launch had a firm place on the Space Shuttle schedule. Then the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed during launch, and the shuttle fleet was grounded. The telescope sat in storage for the rest of the decade.

After more than 40 years of planning and dreaming, you can imagine the anticipation amongst the astronomical community when the newly christened Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. It was deployed on it mission to study the universe fifteen years ago today.

But our hopes of discovery were dealt a severe blow one month later, when initial testing revealed a flaw in the telescope's mirror. The shape of Hubble's mirror was exact, but it differed from the desired shape by a tiny amount, much less than the width of a human hair. That small flaw was enough to prevent the telescope from achieving its design goals.

Despite the jokes from Johnny Carson at the time, Hubble still had a clearer view than any ground-based telescope, and could still do cutting edge science, but it could not do all of the science we had planned for it.

Since we knew the actual and desired shape of the mirrors, we could correct it by, in essence, giving Hubble a pair of glasses. It was an incredible engineering feat involving ultra-precise placement of mirrors and lenses, but the community rose to the challenge.

I must admit that I was one of the skeptics at the time, and I'm glad to say that I was dead wrong.

In 1993, shuttle astronauts installed the corrective optics and Hubble was restored to its full potential.

Shuttle astronauts visited Hubble again in 1997, 1999, and 2002. Each time they serviced the telescope by recharging the batteries and replacing the gyroscopes, but they also did something more important: they brought new observing capabilities.

Having been launched by the Shuttle put Hubble in what is called "low Earth orbit". Being this close to Earth brings many headaches for astronomers, due to the radiation from Earth, having half of the sky blocked from view, and the passage between day and night twice each orbit.

However, being servicable by the Shuttle brings many more benefits. Besides correcting the flaw in the mirror, the astronauts also removed some observing instruments from Hubble and replaced them with newer and better instruments.

This is like what I did with my computer over the years. I bought a 286 PC in graduate school. A few years later I swapped out the motherboard for one with a 486 CPU. I did it again every few years with more advanced processors. The chassis remains the same, but each time you change the internals, you feel like you've got a brand new computer.

Each time the astronauts put new instruments on Hubble, astronomers felt like they had a brand new telescope.

Some have said that Hubble is an aging telescope. At 15 years old, it is ancient technology in a rapidly evolving era.

I say Hubble is in its finest hour. Never have we gotten better observations of the universe than those obtained with the new instruments installed in 2002. And as long as we are able to service Hubble, it can be periodically re-born for many years to come.

It is important to note that there is, as yet, no replacement for Hubble in NASA's plans. The next space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, observes in infrared light, and will be the successor to the Spitzer Space Telescope, not Hubble. If Hubble ceases operations in a few years, it will likely be a decade, or even two, before a new optical space telescope is launched. That is a loss that not just astronomers, but the whole world will feel.

For that is perhaps Hubble's greatest achievement. In astronomy, Hubble has helped revolutionize our understanding of such topics as the outer solar system, how stars form and how they die, the intense energetics of supermassive black holes, the most distant galaxies across space, and the ultimate fate of the universe across time.

But most significant of all, is that I can just say the word "Hubble". Humanity is on a first name basis with a scientific instrument. Hubble's name and images have appeared not just in scientific journals, but in newspapers, magazines, books, television shows, movies, album covers, even an opera.

One might say that the flaw in the mirror and its subsequent fix was the greatest public relations event for astronomy since the church's trial of Galileo. Follow that with a steady stream of gorgeous images with magnificent detail, and the public has become hooked.

Hubble has transcended science and become the people's telescope. It is the provider of imagery from the universe.

I am proud to have played my small part in its story. And as we look back at its first fifteen years, Hubble's amazing track record shows that it deserves many more.

Please join me in wishing "Happy Anniversary" to Hubble.