![]() In other words, the reflective null corrector was operating as though it were 1.3mm out of position. This exposed a spot of bare metal that the lasers were reflecting off of instead of what they were meant to reflect from. It was found that, on one of the reflective null correctors, a flake of paint had chipped off, gone unnoticed. (Image credit: NASA/STScI)Ī subsequent investigation found out what had happened, a catastrophic error dating all the way back to the grounding of the telescope that had remained hidden all that time, like a ticking time bomb. On the left is an image of the galaxy M100 taken by Hubble before its vision was fixed on the right is the first image taken after Hubble was repaired, showing the difference in clarity. Had $1.5 billion been wasted on a telescope with flawed vision? The images were blurred and an icy chill swept through the NASA hierarchy. Within a few days, Hubble was active and beaming images back down to Earth, but something was wrong. Yet those cheers swiftly turned to tears. Then, on April 24, 1990, its time finally came as it roared into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery to cheers in mission control and from astronomers all over the world. The Challenger disaster that happened in January of that year led to a three-year cessation of space shuttle launches while the accident was investigated. This grid was maintained by a device called a reflective null corrector, which is a fancy name for a metal rod with an end cap into which a hole is bored for a laser to enter and reflect off a panel of bare metal.īy 1981, the mirror was complete two years later it was mated with the other components of the telescope, and was set to launch on board a space shuttle in 1986 - only for tragedy to intervene. Because such accuracy is beyond the vision of the human eye, technicians used a grid of lasers to measure the mirror's curvature.
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