The Extraordinary Hubble Space Telescope

Summary

The video explores the history and impact of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, detailing its groundbreaking contributions to astronomy. Initially launched with a flawed mirror, a major repair mission was undertaken to correct the issue, resulting in the telescope delivering breathtaking images of the universe. Hubble's observations revolutionized our understanding of cosmic expansion, revealing galaxies formed earlier and faster than expected. Through its 25 years in operation, Hubble remains a monumental achievement in space exploration, offering humanity an unprecedented look back in time, to the infancy of the universe.

Takeaways

• 🚀 NASA released a historic image of a red galaxy on March 4th, 2016, showcasing the universe in its infancy, just 3% of its current age.
• 🌌 The image was made possible by the Hubble Space Telescope, which was designed to measure the expansion of the universe and determine its age.
• 🔭 Hubble was launched in response to the Challenger disaster to reignite national pride and confidence in space exploration.
• 🛰️ Hubble's advantage over ground-based telescopes is its location above Earth's atmosphere, which allows for clearer images.
• 💿 The initial launch of Hubble was fraught with technical difficulties, most notably a flawed mirror that blurred the images.
• 🛠️ After the mirror issue was discovered, a daring spacewalk mission was planned to install corrective optics called COSTAR.
• 👩‍🚀 Astronauts like Kathryn Thornton played a critical role in the risky spacewalks to repair and upgrade Hubble.
• 🔄 The repaired Hubble has provided stunning images and data, helping to solve mysteries such as the age of the universe and its expansion rate.
• 🌟 Hubble's deep space observations have revealed that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars.
• 🕰️ Hubble acts as a time machine, allowing us to look back in time to just 400 million years after the Big Bang.
• 🎉 Hubble's success has been monumental, with its 25 years of operation being celebrated as one of NASA's greatest achievements.

Q & A

What significant image did NASA release on March 4th, 2016?

NASA released a historic image of a red dot, which is an entire galaxy whose light took 13.4 billion years to reach us. This image represents the universe in its infancy, just three percent of its current age.

What was the primary purpose of the Hubble Space Telescope?

The primary purpose of the Hubble Space Telescope was to solve a problem related to measuring the expansion of the universe, which would help determine the age of the universe.

How did the Hubble Space Telescope surpass ground-based telescopes?

Hubble surpassed ground-based telescopes because it was placed above Earth's atmosphere, which caused stars to appear to twinkle due to atmospheric turbulence. Being in space allowed Hubble to provide clearer images.

What was the challenge faced by Hubble due to its speed in orbit?

Hubble was orbiting the Earth at an astonishing speed of almost five miles per second, which caused it to naturally tend to tumble end over end. This made it difficult to take clear snapshots as the telescope needed to be stabilized.

How did the team stabilize the Hubble Space Telescope?

The team stabilized Hubble using six of the most finely balanced gyroscopes ever constructed, each with a wheel spinning 320 times per second, to maintain stability by spinning quickly on one axis.

What was the initial problem with the Hubble Space Telescope after its launch?

The initial problem was that the first images from Hubble were blurry, indicating that the mirror was not focusing light properly, which was a critical issue for the telescope's mission.

What was the nature of the flaw in Hubble's mirror?

The flaw in Hubble's mirror was that it was spherically aberrated, meaning it was not the correct shape to focus light properly. The error was as small as a 50th of a human hair.

How did the team plan to fix the flawed mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope?

The team planned to fix the flawed mirror by sending a device called Costar, which contained small mirrors on motorized arms to correct the light beam entering the telescope, similar to glasses for vision correction.

What was the role of astronaut Kathryn Thornton in the Hubble repair mission?

Astronaut Kathryn Thornton played a critical role in the Hubble repair mission by replacing one of Hubble's instruments with Costar during a spacewalk, which allowed the corrective mirrors to deploy.

What was the outcome of the repaired Hubble Space Telescope?

After the repair, Hubble started sending back spectacular images that helped unlock numerous scientific mysteries, measure the expansion of the universe, and determine its age more precisely.

How has the Hubble Space Telescope contributed to our understanding of the universe?

Hubble has contributed immensely to our understanding of the universe by providing detailed images that allowed scientists to measure the universe's expansion, age, and revealing the existence of billions of galaxies.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 NASA's Historic Galaxy Image & Hubble's Role

On March 4, 2016, NASA released an image of a galaxy whose light took 13.4 billion years to reach Earth, offering a glimpse of the universe in its infancy. This moment was made possible by the Hubble Space Telescope, which was initially conceived to resolve key mysteries about the universe's expansion and origins. The Hubble telescope's creation came at a critical time after the Challenger disaster, symbolizing NASA's resilience. Its design overcame the limitations of ground-based telescopes, allowing astronomers to capture clearer images by placing it above Earth's atmosphere.

05:01

🔍 The Unexpected Flaw in Hubble's Mirror

Two months after Hubble's launch, the first images were blurry, leading to concerns. Charlie Pellerin, the mission leader, initially thought a minor adjustment would fix it, but soon learned that Hubble's mirror had a serious flaw— it was incorrectly shaped. The realization was devastating, as the error was so small (about a 50th of a human hair) that it had gone undetected during construction. NASA faced widespread public ridicule for the $2 billion project, and morale was low. However, Charlie was determined to find a solution, and the team embarked on a journey to correct the issue.

10:03

🛠 Fixing Hubble with 'Cosmic Glasses'

Charlie’s team proposed a solution to fix Hubble's blurry vision by using a corrective device called COSTAR, which acted like 'glasses' to adjust the light entering the telescope. Astronauts, including Kathryn Thornton, faced the daunting task of installing COSTAR during a risky spacewalk. Despite uncertainties and fears of failure, the mission proceeded flawlessly. When the first post-repair images arrived, the results were breathtaking, exceeding expectations. The repair not only restored Hubble’s functionality but also led to new discoveries that reshaped our understanding of the universe.

15:03

🌌 Hubble's Unprecedented View of the Universe

Hubble allowed astronomers to peer deeper into space and time than ever before. By observing light from distant objects, Hubble could effectively look back billions of years, helping to calculate the age of the universe and the rate of its expansion. One of Hubble's most famous observations involved capturing thousands of previously unseen galaxies in a seemingly empty part of the sky. This discovery proved that the universe is teeming with galaxies and stars, vastly expanding our knowledge of its structure and scale. In March 2016, Hubble captured its deepest image yet, revealing a galaxy from just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Keywords

💡Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a large space-based observatory launched by NASA in 1990 to capture high-resolution images of the universe. It has helped answer fundamental questions about the cosmos, such as determining the age of the universe and observing distant galaxies. In the video, it is depicted as a transformative tool for space exploration, despite initial setbacks like the flawed mirror.

💡Spherical Aberration

Spherical aberration is an optical flaw that occurs when a mirror or lens is not perfectly shaped, causing incoming light rays to focus at different points. This was the primary defect in Hubble’s mirror, leading to blurry images. The video describes how this issue was discovered shortly after Hubble's launch, creating a major crisis for NASA until a corrective solution was implemented.

💡Gyroscopes

Gyroscopes are devices used to maintain orientation and stability by spinning on a fixed axis. Hubble was equipped with six high-precision gyroscopes to stabilize its movement in space and enable it to take sharp images. The video explains how essential these gyroscopes were, as even minor instability could ruin the quality of Hubble’s observations.

💡First Light

First Light is the term used to describe the first image taken by a new telescope. It signifies the initial operation of the observatory and serves as a milestone for assessing the telescope's capability. The video shows the disappointment felt by the Hubble team when its First Light image was blurred due to the mirror’s spherical aberration, marking the start of a long struggle to fix the issue.

💡Costar

Costar, or Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, was the set of corrective mirrors installed on Hubble in 1993 to compensate for its mirror’s spherical aberration. It acted like a pair of glasses, redirecting the light properly to create clear images. The video portrays Costar as a technological savior, restoring Hubble's functionality and enabling it to achieve its intended scientific goals.

💡Big Bang

The Big Bang is the scientific theory that describes the origin of the universe, stating that it began expanding from an extremely hot and dense state about 13.8 billion years ago. The video highlights how Hubble's ability to observe distant galaxies allows scientists to look back in time and study the early universe, confirming aspects of the Big Bang theory and refining our understanding of cosmic history.

💡Deep Field Image

A Deep Field Image is a long-exposure photograph taken by a telescope to reveal faint and distant objects. Hubble's Deep Field Images, which include thousands of previously unseen galaxies, are mentioned in the video as groundbreaking achievements that expanded humanity's perception of the universe. These images revealed the universe's vastness and the sheer number of galaxies, transforming astronomical theories.

💡Space Shuttle Challenger

The Space Shuttle Challenger was a NASA space shuttle that tragically exploded shortly after takeoff in 1986, killing all seven crew members. The video references this event to show the intense pressure on NASA to recover its reputation, with Hubble serving as a project to restore faith in the agency's capabilities. The Challenger disaster added emotional weight to Hubble’s success and its eventual redemption.

💡Mirror Grinding Error

The mirror grinding error refers to the flawed process that shaped Hubble's primary mirror to the wrong curvature, causing the spherical aberration problem. Despite the mirror’s high precision, a slight deviation in the edge’s curve made Hubble nearly useless. This error, described in the video, was the result of a miscalculation during manufacturing, leading to a major setback for the project.

💡Astronomical Discoveries

Astronomical discoveries are significant findings about the cosmos, such as the age of the universe, the rate of its expansion, and the formation of galaxies. The video details how, after the Costar correction, Hubble enabled breakthroughs like measuring the expansion of the universe and observing the universe as it was billions of years ago. These discoveries reshaped our understanding of space and time.

Highlights

NASA releases a historic image of a galaxy whose light took 13.4 billion years to reach us.

The image is a photograph of the universe in its infancy, just three percent of its current age.

Hubble Space Telescope provides a ringside seat to watch the universe evolve.

Hubble was designed to measure the expansion of the universe and determine its age.

The Challenger disaster put the space program in mourning, and Hubble was seen as a way to get back into the game.

Hubble's primary role was to restore confidence after the Challenger disaster.

Earth's atmosphere was the main reason for Hubble being placed above it.

Hubble's speed of almost five miles per second in orbit posed a challenge for stabilizing the telescope.

Gyroscopes were used to stabilize Hubble, with each wheel spinning 320 times per second.

The slightest imprecision in Hubble's gyroscopes could smear its images.

Hubble was launched with high expectations and confidence despite the challenges.

Hubble's first images were blurry, indicating a problem with the mirror's focus.

The Hubble team discovered a spherically aberrated mirror, a fatal flaw.

The media and public ridiculed Hubble's failure, with NASA embarrassed.

The Hubble mirror was perfect but ground to the wrong prescription.

Costar, a machine with corrective mirrors, was developed to fix Hubble.

Astronauts risked their safety to perform a spacewalk and install Costar.

After Costar's installation, the first calibrated images from Hubble were stunning.

Hubble's images helped unlock scientific mysteries and measure the universe's expansion.

Hubble's observations allowed scientists to determine the universe's age with precision.

Hubble's capabilities to see 11 billion light years away provide a ringside seat to the universe's evolution.

Hubble's deep observations revealed there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in every direction.

Hubble acts as a time machine, allowing us to look back almost to the beginning of the universe.

A 2016 image from Hubble shows a galaxy from just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Hubble's 25 years of service have been described as second only to the moon landing in NASA's history.

Transcripts

March 4th, 2016, NASA releases a historic image, one that many believed was impossible.

This red dot is an entire galaxy whose light took 13.4 billion years to reach us.

It is a photograph of our universe in its infancy, a mere three percent of its current

age.

All of a sudden now, you have a ringside seat to watch the entire universe evolve and change

in front of you.

All of that is down to the Hubble space telescope.

What could this mysterious red galaxy reveal about the origins of the cosmos?

That story begins when the Hubble telescope is still on the drawing board.

Hubble was meant to solve a problem, cause people were trying to use ground-based telescopes

to measure how fast the expansion of the universe was.

And that means a factor of uncertainty in the age of the universe.

How and when did our universe begin?

Solving that mystery would be an historic success at a time when the space program needs

it most.

In 1986, the nation is in mourning after the loss of seven crew members aboard the space

shuttle Challenger.

This is truly a national loss.

The members of the Challenger crew were pioneers.

We'll continue our quest in space, the future doesn't belong to the faint hearted.

It belongs to the brave.

They needed something to get back into the game, and Hubble was sort of that big shining star.

This was a big space telescope and we're gonna put this thing into orbit, and it's going

to look at black holes.

It's gonna figure out where the universe came from.

It's going to revolutionize astronomy.

In charge of this daunting mission is Charlie Pellerin.

The primary role of Hubble was to fix things after Challenger.

To show we could still do hard things.

I kept reminding myself of John Kennedy when he said, "We choose to go to the moon.

Not because it's easy, because it's hard."

We choose to do Hubble because it's hard, and it was damned hard.

Hubble will far surpass all ground-based telescopes for one simple reason.

Earth's atmosphere.

If you look up at the night sky, the stars are gonna appear like they're twinkling, but

the star is not changing.

What's happening is the, the same kind of irregulars in the atmosphere that you encounter

when you get turbulence in an airplane, it's all over the place.

Now, the solution to that is to put a telescope above the atmosphere.

But unlike ground telescopes, Hubble would be orbiting the earth at an astonishing speed

of almost five miles per second.

And that's a problem.

Now of course, the Hubble is this thing in space, moving thousands and thousands of miles

an hour in orbit, and which means its natural tendency is that it's going to be tumbling

end over end.

It's doing everything but holding still.

If you wanna take a snapshot that's clear, you know you have to hold your camera very steadily.

If you shake your camera, you get a fuzzy picture.

Same issue with Hubble.

The team must find a way to stabilize Hubble perfectly.

The solution is a gyroscope.

Like a top, a gyroscope maintains stability by spinning quickly on one axis.

The team will equip Hubble with six of the most finely balanced gyroscopes ever constructed,

each with a wheel spinning 320 times per second.

But even the tiniest imprecision in the gyroscopes will smear Hubble's images.

So, if you ask me before the launch is Hubble gonna work, and people did, I would say, "Of

course it's gonna work, cause there's no other answer."

What would you say?

Would, would you say after you spent almost $2 billion and 15 years, would you say, "Hell,

I don't know?"

Or would you say, "Let's hope so."

What would you say?

There's only one answer.

"Of course, it's gonna work."

Let’s go for auto sequence...

And lift off of the space shuttle Discovery with the Hubble space telescope.

Our window on the universe.

Okay, we have a go for release and we're gonna be a minute late.

OK Charlie.

Telescope's released.

OK thank you.

So, the telescope's up, Hubble's working.

It's deployed into space, and the shuttle comes home.

Feeling pretty, pretty, really pretty good right now.

The flight systems are all working extremely well.

Almost everything we agonized and worried about has done a great job for us.

I think that today everything is going exactly as we would have hoped.

But if we...

We had an event about two months later where we're gonna look at what's called first light.

Charlie is with Chief Engineer Gene Oliver when the first images arrive.

And I said, "Gene, wait a minute, wait a minute.

That's a fuzzy spot OK?"

He said, "Huh, don't worry."

I said, "What do you mean, don't worry?"

He said, "Well, if it's out of focus, we drive the stepping motor in this direction until

it's in perfect focus, so no big deal."

Charlie becomes convinced all that's needed is a technical adjustment.

He leaves for a trip overseas.

When he returns, he calls his boss to check in.

So, he comes on the phone and says, "Charlie, where are you?"

I say, "I'm in the red-carpet lounge in St Louis airport."

And he says to me, "What do you know about sphere collaboration?"

And I said, "Well all I know is that when people, amateurs typically, make a telescope

mirror by hand, and they do it sloppily, then the telescope's useless."

He said, "Well I'm glad you know that, because you launched Hubble space telescope with a

spherically aberrated mirror."

I said, "Did not."

And he said, "Did so."

This is two PhD’s, right?

And he says, "Go find the front page of any national newspaper and bring it back and read it to me."

So, I come back and above the fold, "National disaster.

Hubble launched with flawed mirror."

And he says, "Now what do you say?"

And I said, "You guys are good.

How did you get a fake newspaper into this very lounge that I'm landing in?"

The headline is no fake.

Charlie has launched Hubble with a fatal flaw and not the one he had feared.

Yesterday NASA admitted that its multi-billion-dollar eye in the sky has developed blurry vision.

We had failed in the most visible possible thing we'd done in many many years.

I'd have to say it was like a family member died.

It was like that.

I mean, it really was.

The observatory will not be sending back the spectacular pictures that NASA had promised.

The reason is that the mirrors are not focusing light properly.

To achieve focus, a telescope's mirror must be perfectly curved so that its reflected

light converges at a single point.

After so much worrying about Hubble's ability to stabilize itself, Charlie's team made an

amateur mistake.

Hubble uses a mirror.

It's two and a half meters across, eight feet.

And it focuses the light to a very very specific focus.

And if it's off by even a little bit, the light won't come to a focus.

The problem with Hubble is that it wasn't the right shape.

I believe that the edge of the mirror, the whole error was like a 50th of a human hair.

No human could ever look at that mirror and suspect there's a problem.

We had so many safeguards and I'll look at this, and I just go, "My word."

Boy, we were in so much trouble and didn't know it.

What, what, what a tragedy.

Basically, without some novel technical answer, we're screwed.

NASA is embarrassed, while across the country Charlie and his team are mocked.

There was also so much in the media, Hubble was the butt of so many jokes.

People were saying, "Well how did we spend almost $2 billion and come up with this?"

I tried to avoid the news as much as I could but it, it was impossible.

It was even in the New York Times, Washington Post.

It had crying breaking out, and astronomers were crying everywhere.

One of my most senior people is drunk at his desk.

When I realised what had happened, I didn't believe my personal reputation was in danger.

I believed it was ruined.

I mean, it was gone.

I mean, for this, this level of failure.

Arguably the biggest screw up in the history of science, and I was the leader of the team,

so yeah, it was bad.

But Charlie is determined to find a solution.

I'm not waiting a minute longer than I have to, to get this telescope fixed.

I didn't know how to do it.

I had no idea if it even was possible yet.

After months of searching, his team thinks they might have an answer.

If the mirror was simply poorly ground to a very sloppy weight, it'd be hopeless.

But the mirror was perfect, just ground to the wrong prescription.

When we humans have vision problems, we correct that problem by wearing eye glasses, which

then are correcting the direction of the light and make sure that it is focusing properly.

That is basically what the Hubble needed.

These glasses would come in the form of a machine called Costar.

Costar contains five pairs of small mirrors on motorized arms.

These mirrors correct the light beam entering the telescope.

Finally, you sorta go, "My word, we can fix this thing."

But with Hubble already in space, this repair won't come easy.

Kathryn Thornton and her fellow astronauts must risk their own safety to save Hubble

from disaster.

A lot of things can go wrong when you're on a spacewalk, but most people when they leave

the airlock are not so much afraid that something's gonna happen to them, they're afraid they're

gonna mess up.

That's, that's, sure your biggest concern is that, is that our mission was so critical

and it was critical that they be done right.

Hubble's science instruments are contained in four bays.

Kathryn must replace one instrument called a high-speed photometer, with Costar.

Once installed, the corrective mirrors can deploy.

I mean, remember, this is a huge instrument the size of a bus.

Nothing like that has ever been done before, and it represents a huge number of technological

challenges.

But Thornton is far from certain that everything will go according to plan.

And I would have bet money that when we were putting these instruments in Hubble, we would

have run into some problem that we weren't expecting.

I tell you, I'm gonna slip over, you got another set to keep coming up.

Costar is a great big silver box the, the size of a phone booth, and I would have bet

that things wouldn't fit.

And we're gonna slide this thing in and it's gonna get halfway in, and it's gonna go kerthunk.

And, and hit something.

And as bad as it was, we could always make it worse.

We could have killed it, we could have killed it.

This is opening the door for Costar.

I'm on the end of the mechanical arm, and I can recognize that from this picture because

I can see the broken red stripes around my thighs there.

I haven't seen some of this in a long time.

This is nice, I like this.

We had a lot of eyes watching us.

We had everybody on the ground watching, we had everybody in the crew module watching us.

You know, don't, don't hurt it, don't hurt it, don't hurt it.

And it's all up to you.

Don't screw this up.

Costar is, is a pretty big instrument.

It weighs several hundred pounds, maybe 700 pounds on earth, and I can move it with just

my fingertips.

As Costar slides into place, Thornton can only hope that everything will fit.

And it just slid right in.

I could feel it hit a stop, but that was a bit of a relief.

The nightmare I'd had didn't happen.

But they couldn't calibrate it until after we were long gone, and so we had no idea that

our mission was successful, even after we landed.

All anyone can do is wait for the pictures.

11 days later, the calibrations are complete.

You know, this was what was happening in December of 1993, everybody gathering around the monitors

and, and looking at the first images taken by Hubble space telescope.

And they were gorgeous.

I'm sitting there with tears running down my face looking at this stuff.

And everybody's spellbound.

I had no clue that the images would be as powerful as they are.

I never imagined something like this.

This is, this is astounding.

It's got to be astounding to anybody.

But these are more than beautiful images.

Each pixel helps unlock another scientific mystery.

Cause people was trying to use ground-based telescopes to measure the expansion of the

universe, and that means uncertainty in the age of the universe.

But by looking deeper and deeper, it's looking farther and farther back in time, and it's

measuring the expansion of the universe so we can tell precisely when the universe formed,

you know, 13.7 billion years ago.

Hubble has solved, you know, the, one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy and in science.

With each image, the discoveries keep coming.

The Hubble space telescope makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.

There, there is no way you're going to be able to sample and taste everything that you

want to.

It just, it amazes me the power of something where you are guaranteed to discover something

new about the universe.

The universe is a pretty big place.

So, you need a telescope that can see very very far away to even start to get a handle

on how the universe is changing over time, when it began.

In the case of the Hubble space telescope, the Hubble space telescope has the power to

see on the order of, of, you know, 11 billion light years away.

And that means you're seeing things as they were 11 billion years ago.

All of a sudden now, you have a ringside seat to watch the entire universe evolve and change

in front of you.

You can see how fast things were expanding, how that whole process worked.

And so, for the first time we knew that the universe really is about 13.8 billion years,

we know how fast it expanded.

There are very few times in history where you can just take new technology and discover

something new, guaranteed.

You know, in the case of the Hubble space telescope, you could point it somewhere random,

and you would see stars and galaxies, and objects out there that had never been seen

before.

How many galaxies are out there?

This was something that we wondered.

There were theories about.

But the Hubble space telescope really showed us how many galaxies there are.

Hubble actually looked at a blank part of the sky, a part of the sky that we didn't

think anything was there, and it stared at that place for a month.

And believe me, this was controversial.

Use a month of valuable Hubble time to look at nothing?

But instead, pixel by pixel, photon by photon, Hubble teased out thousands of galaxies.

Everywhere in the sky, every tiny point you look, is covered with galaxies.

They've been invisible to us before, but they were there all along, and we are surrounded

by them in the hundreds of billions.

In every direction we look.

They pointed Hubble at a place in the sky where there was nothing, and there are like

1500 galaxies in that photo.

1500 galaxies?

You know, our Milky Way is just one tiny little galaxy.

We now know that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches

in the world.

But Hubble is also a time machine.

You see, there's this wonderful look back effect, where the farther out in space you

look, it took light a long time to get to you.

And now you look at these images, and you'll effectively look back almost to the beginning

of time, the beginning of the universe with Hubble.

This new image from March 2016, is the furthest look back in time yet.

The light from this young galaxy dates to just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

It is surprisingly bright, which means that galaxies were growing much faster, and much

earlier than we ever knew.

25 years after launch, Hubble continues to amaze.

The idea that somebody could be interviewing me and putting these images up in front of me,

and have me comment on 'em, and telling me that we're in our 25th year of successful

science operations... that, that's a mind blower.

In, in NASA, I think Hubble's only second to the moon landing.

I mean, it's that big.