April 24, 1990, 08:33:51 am EDT (12:33 UTC) Man’s vision, though still myopic becomes a bit more farsighted. Strapped securely in the payload compartment of Discovery OV-103 on the STS-31 mission was the Hubble Space telescope.
Named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, the instrument is placed on a low earth orbit 347 miles overhead and despite a design flaw in the instrument’s mirror of 2.2 microns, (the average human hair is 100 microns in diameter) opened our eyes to wonders of the mulitverse mankind had never before seen.
A solution to the mirror’s flaw in was devised and launched aboard Endeavour OV-105 flying STS-61 in December 1993. Hubble, with brand new glasses really showed us the black.
The Hubble space telescope has looked back in time to the virtual birth of our universe, The HST has focused on a mini galaxy, the light from which has taken 13.4 billion years to reach us here on our tiny, pale blue dot., Thirteen billion light years, or nearly 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. Look at this mini galaxy today and you are seeing this galaxy as it was when our part of the multiverse was a mere 480 million years young.
Equipment failures, gyroscopes nad batteries will sound the death knell for The HST. Plans were considered to de-orbit the telescope by retrieving it and bringing it home on an STS shuttle mission. The retirement of the Orbital vehicles and the prohibitive costs of the mission have all but eliminated the possibility of displaying HST at the Smithsonian.
Sometime between 2019 and 2032 Hubble’s orbit will decay and the instrument will fail and fall from the sky. Not without providing us with invaluable astronomical insight to our universe.
If you’re reading this, the chances are pretty good that you’ve seen images captured by Hubble, and perhaps even used some as wallpaper or a screensaver for you computer.
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