The Camera That Changed the Universe

StartsWithABang writes As the Hubble Space Telescope gets set to celebrate the 25th anniversary of opening its eyes to the Universe, it's important to realize that the first four years of operations were kind of a disaster. It wasn't until they corrected the flawed primary mirror and installed an upgraded camera — the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) — that the Universe truly came into focus. From 1993 to 2009, this workhorse camera literally changed our view of the Universe, and we're pushing even past those limits today.

Comments

Re:One of many

[mrsquid0]

NASA does not have the funds to build instruments, or to run them once they have been launched. One of the telescopes is being used for the WFIRST mission (http://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/). The other is waiting for money.

Re:It was the press coverage that was the disaster

[TapeCutter]

I recall reading about the mirror when it was being made, the precision with which it was polished was mind bogglingly accurate, if it was the size of Australia the largest deviation from perfectly smooth would be less than a millimetre. The problem was the shape (which changes slightly when put in zero-g), an extra shim in the framework that held the glass while it was cut was found to be the cause of the problem.

Cannot fathom why your post id marked redundant, OT maybe, but redundant?

Great book of the story behind the repair mission

[SuperKendall]

A photographer was given broad access across all of NASA years before the mission launched to fix the Hubble, and he put together an book of amazing photos and stories behind the mission:

Infinie Worlds by Michael Soluri. They have a hardcover and a Kindle version, not sure how the pictures would come out in the Kindle version but the hardcover is pretty large and the photos look great.

Re:Discovery

[Richard_at_work]

An attribution to Douglas Adams would be good ;)