Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994 TAG: 9401140050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: GREENBELT, MD. LENGTH: Medium
They released striking before-and-after pictures to show that the spacecraft should now begin to live up to its original promise of peering deep into the universe.
"It's fixed beyond our wildest expectations," Edward Weiler, the project's chief scientist, said at a news conference at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
As the telescope's test pictures of galactic cores and spiral arms, exploding stars and stellar gas clouds appeared on a screen with exceptional clarity, Duccio Macchetto, an astronomer with the European Space Agency, exclaimed, "All I can say is, `Wow!' "
Although the scientific dividends are yet to come and difficult to predict in any detail, NASA officials sought to translate the achievement into a restoration of public and political confidence in the agency, which has been hurt by many spacecraft and rocket failures in recent years.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., head of the subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget, said the success would indeed restore the agency's reputation in Congress and could help win needed support for its plans for the $30 billion international space station.
"The trouble with Hubble is over," she said at the news conference. "We now know that NASA has the right stuff."
Soon after the $1.6 billion telescope was launched in April 1990, astronomers discovered a manufacturing flaw in the primary mirror that prevented sharp focusing and resulted in blurry pictures.
Corrective optics were installed last month by space-walking astronauts of the shuttle Endeavour. The installation went smoothly, but only after weeks of testing and alignment checks could ground controllers confirm that the repairs had done the job.
Astronomers said the telescope should now be able to observe objects as far as 10 billion to 14 billion light-years away, almost to the edge of the visible universe and early in cosmic time.
Previously, it had been limited to vistas no more than 4 billion light-years away. In fact, the faint-object camera should be able to make observations comparable to detecting the light of a firefly 8,000 miles away.
by CNB