1 00:00:00,500 --> 00:00:02,000 How do you get from here… 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:05,000 to here… 3 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:08,000 to here? 4 00:00:37,500 --> 00:00:40,500 Hubblecast Episode 41: Hubble’s History Told by Hubble’s Scientists 5 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:46,700 Venice is just a few centimetres above sea level, about as far from space as you can get. 6 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:53,700 But in 1609, Galileo Galilei brought this city a bit closer to the stars 7 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:57,500 when he gave one of the very first demonstrations of his telescope. 8 00:00:58,500 --> 00:01:05,500 A few months after that, he discovered Jupiter’s moons, Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. 9 00:01:06,700 --> 00:01:10,300 Four centuries later, another telescope is making history here, 10 00:01:10,500 --> 00:01:14,000 as scientists gather to discuss the latest results from Hubble. 11 00:01:16,700 --> 00:01:22,500 Hubble was launched in 1990. And that’s of course when its history of scientific discoveries starts. 12 00:01:24,300 --> 00:01:27,300 But Hubble’s history isn’t just about science and technology. 13 00:01:27,500 --> 00:01:35,000 Like Galileo’s story, it’s also one of politics, money… and extremely smart people doing very difficult things. 14 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:48,500 I became the first project scientist for the observatory in 1972. 15 00:01:50,000 --> 00:02:00,000 And as such I was the scientific leader for this observatory throughout its design and much of its construction. 16 00:02:02,500 --> 00:02:06,700 Difficult decisions were the normal thing in the early days. 17 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:14,700 Because in the early days we were often dead as a programme, and then we would be revived. 18 00:02:17,300 --> 00:02:24,500 Probably in the most difficult decisions were the simplifications that we had to make. 19 00:02:25,500 --> 00:02:31,000 For example, originally the design was for a 3-metre aperture observatory. 20 00:02:31,300 --> 00:02:38,700 But in order to save money, we had to reduce it to its final size of 2.4 metres. 21 00:02:40,500 --> 00:02:45,300 While the Hubble team hacked away at the technical problems and struggled to stay on budget, 22 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,500 a political storm was brewing in Washington DC. 23 00:02:50,500 --> 00:02:56,500 Politicians were alarmed by the rising costs, and told NASA to find an international partner. 24 00:03:00,500 --> 00:03:06,700 So early collaboration with Europe was absolutely critical for the Hubble Space Telescope even to be started. 25 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:12,500 There was a lot of controversy within the United States Congress 26 00:03:12,700 --> 00:03:15,200 about whether this programme should be funded or not. 27 00:03:15,500 --> 00:03:21,500 And it was a huge boost to the support of the programme in our own Congress 28 00:03:21,700 --> 00:03:25,000 because there was a sense that there would also be collaboration and support 29 00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:27,500 from outside and in particular from Europe. 30 00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:30,500 At a different level, we saved the project. 31 00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:36,700 I mean, the fact that ESA was a partner of NASA saved the project a couple of times before launch, 32 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:44,000 and I believe that we also helped a lot after launch, when the spherical aberration was discovered. 33 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:49,700 The fact it was an international project made it much harder for the politicians in the US 34 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:54,000 who wanted to kill the Hubble Space Telescope to do so. 35 00:03:54,700 --> 00:03:58,500 Hubble survived the politics, only to be derailed by optics. 36 00:03:59,700 --> 00:04:05,300 Spherical aberration – a flaw in the main mirror – meant that the telescope couldn’t focus properly. 37 00:04:06,300 --> 00:04:08,700 Where Hubble’s images should have been razor-sharp, 38 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,700 astronomers instead struggled to make out the fine details of their observations. 39 00:04:14,700 --> 00:04:19,300 I look back on the days when we diagnosed the spherical aberration 40 00:04:19,500 --> 00:04:25,300 as simultaneously the most exhilarating and depressing days of my scientific career. 41 00:04:25,500 --> 00:04:31,700 Because, for the better part of two weeks, we were puzzled as to why this telescope wasn’t performing 42 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:34,700 and it became a scientific problem that scientists had to solve. 43 00:04:36,700 --> 00:04:41,700 But in a great irony in the process of solving it and finding out what was wrong 44 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:44,700 we also unearthed this enormous, monumental disaster. 45 00:04:49,500 --> 00:04:55,000 Though nobody had predicted a problem with the mirror, Hubble was designed with the unexpected in mind. 46 00:04:56,300 --> 00:05:00,700 It’s the only space telescope ever launched that was meant to be serviced in space. 47 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:03,700 This meant astronauts were able to return to Hubble to fix the problem. 48 00:05:05,700 --> 00:05:09,700 They’ve been back another four times to carry out repairs and install upgrades. 49 00:05:12,500 --> 00:05:19,000 As an astronaut the Hubble Space Telescope mission is kind of the holy grail of being able to go up 50 00:05:19,300 --> 00:05:22,700 and do something that is widely regarded as extremely important. 51 00:05:23,500 --> 00:05:29,300 When we send a crew and when I go up to the Hubble Space Telescope, with the teams that I’ve led, 52 00:05:29,500 --> 00:05:32,500 there’s always been rule number one: rule number one is don’t break the telescope. 53 00:05:32,700 --> 00:05:39,000 You know, we’re in big bulky space suits and after all it’s a delicate scientific instrument. 54 00:05:39,500 --> 00:05:43,500 So when the first images come down, you know, it’s beautiful. 55 00:05:43,700 --> 00:05:52,500 To see some star that is in the act of exploding, or a beautiful galaxy interacting with another galaxy. 56 00:05:52,700 --> 00:05:53,700 And the science is very deep and meaningful. 57 00:05:54,500 --> 00:05:57,500 But to those of us who have been up there working on the telescope, 58 00:05:57,700 --> 00:06:01,500 it means that we didn’t break rule number one. That the telescope really works. 59 00:06:01,800 --> 00:06:04,500 And there’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction in that. 60 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:12,700 I think the crowning achievement of all of our missions has been on this mission in 2009 61 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:17,700 where we did brain surgery on the STIS instrument and on the Advanced Camera for Surveys. 62 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:20,700 Removing tiny screws and pulling circuit boards. 63 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000 This was technically the hardest but I think also the most rewarding. 64 00:06:28,700 --> 00:06:36,700 Risky, difficult and exciting in space, these Hubble repair missions are nail-bitingly tense for the team here on Earth too. 65 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:40,700 It was nerve-wracking, I’ve never experienced anything like that. 66 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:45,500 I mean, we were there as a team, waiting for John Grunsfeld 67 00:06:45,700 --> 00:06:51,700 to open up the camera and to repair it, and everything rested on a successful repair. 68 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:57,700 And it was just wonderful when we did the aliveness test and saw that the repair had been successful. 69 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:02,000 And then we did the functional test, which was done a few hours afterwards, 70 00:07:02,300 --> 00:07:05,000 when we got the first set of data coming and it looked... 71 00:07:06,500 --> 00:07:10,500 it was better than it had been before because of the updated electronics. 72 00:07:10,700 --> 00:07:14,000 So it was extremely satisfying and exhilarating. 73 00:07:16,700 --> 00:07:22,500 And so from planning, to launch, to repair, Hubble’s history has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows. 74 00:07:23,500 --> 00:07:27,500 With the telescope recently serviced, Hubble has more years in it still. 75 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:31,700 And scientists are already preparing what comes next. 76 00:07:43,500 --> 00:07:47,700 We’ve learned a few lessons from Hubble. One is that wonderful equipment will make wonderful discoveries. 77 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:53,700 The James Webb Telescope is aimed to go beyond what Hubble does by looking at things that are further away, 78 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:59,500 or fainter, or redder than Hubble can see, so that we can look further back towards the beginning of time: 79 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,500 we can see inside dust clouds where stars are being born today; 80 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:09,300 we can study planetary systems as they’re being made and as they change with time. 81 00:08:10,700 --> 00:08:15,700 Scientifically we learned that Hubble is wonderful, but not quite wonderful enough. 82 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:20,000 There’s stuff just beyond what the Hubble can see that we really want to be able to pursue. 83 00:08:21,500 --> 00:08:23,000 The first galaxies. 84 00:08:23,500 --> 00:08:25,000 The first stars. 85 00:08:25,500 --> 00:08:27,500 The formation of stars. 86 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:32,500 The evolution of planetary systems and the hunt for exoplanets’ atmospheres. 87 00:08:33,500 --> 00:08:37,000 These are some of the things we can look forward to seeing in the years to come. 88 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:51,500 Interviews conducted at the Science with the Hubble Space Telescope III conference in Venice, Italy, in October 2010. 89 00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:56,700 Hubblecast is produced by ESA/Hubble at the European Southern Observatory in Germany. 90 00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:01,000 The Hubble mission is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. 91 00:09:01,500 --> 00:09:03,000 Transcribed by ESA/Hubble