Speaking of Hubble...

The Hubble Space Telescope, after having been released from Space Shuttle Atlantis.

“The Magnificent Seven” was a 1960 American western, about a group of gunmen that protect a Mexican village from bandits. The movie was an Americanized version of the film “The Seven Samurai,” by the legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

To me, the true magnificent seven are: Scott Altman, Greg Johnson, Megan McArthur, John Grunsfeld, Drew Feustel, Mike Massimino, and Mike Good — the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis that has just finished servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.

Now that the Atlantis has landed safely, we can say without reservation that this has been the most amazing servicing mission to this unique telescope.

It is relatively easy to succeed when everything is going according to plan. This crew was like excellent tea — you don’t know how strong it is until you put it into boiling water! These astronauts overcame every unexpected difficulty, and they succeeded in making Hubble the best it has ever been.

In the movie “The Magnificent Seven,” one of the gunmen expresses his admiration for a shot taken by one of his friends, exclaiming: “Ah, that was the greatest shot I’ve ever seen.”

I strongly believe that Hubble’s greatest shot of the universe is still to come. And it will come because of the work of the magnificent seven.

I am sure that many of you are familiar with the phrase: “Today is the first day in the rest of your life.”

Well, today is truly the first day in the rest of Hubble’s life. The telescope was released from the space shuttle this morning. And just as the above phrase is supposed to motivate you to pursue new ideas, to set new goals for yourself, and to forget all past mishaps, the new phase in Hubble’s life promises to be at least as exciting as the past 19 years. 

Hubble is currently equipped with the largest complement of functioning instruments it has ever had, and it is expected to continue observing for at least five more years. 

Servicing Mission 4 has not been just another servicing mission. This was the first mission in which elaborate repairs to existing instruments have been successfully attempted. This was also the first mission in which a major obstacle (the removal of a stubborn handle) has been overcome simply by brute force.

According to current planning, SM4 may also be the very last servicing mission to Hubble (except perhaps for the mission to attach a propulsion module that will direct Hubble into the ocean).

At times like this you cannot help but be reminded of the fact that a book entitled “1000 Events that Shaped the World” lists the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope as one of those events. The entry for the launch (at #977) shares the same page with the entries for the first successful gene therapy on a human, and the first e-mail. Was the launch of Hubble as important as those events?

I think it was. Gene therapy and email have undoubtedly changed our lives. Hubble has expanded our horizons.

Massimino and Good repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph.

Anybody who has ever tried one of those do-it-yourself jobs that require more than four screws knows just how frustrating those can be. Well, how about a job that involves 111 screws, which has to be carried out while wearing heavy gloves, in outer space?

In repairing the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), this is precisely what astronauts Mike Massimino and Mike Good achieved on Sunday. And if that wasn’t enough, their incredible feat followed on the heels of yet another miracle: the repair of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

The ACS repair was considered by many to be the most difficult – if not impossible – task of Servicing Mission 4. In fact, this repair was regarded as so challenging that only one part of it was scheduled for the third space walk. Yet astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel completed the full task in record time. And they made it look easy!

When miracles occur twice in a row, you have to consider the possibility that these are not miracles at all, and that other explanations exist. This is indeed the case here. The incredible achievements by the astronauts on board the Atlantis Space Shuttle simply reflect the wonderful preparatory work by literally thousands of people.

Scientists, engineers and astronaut trainers designed the new instruments, designed the tools for the astronauts to use, and trained the astronauts for this difficult mission. The astronauts themselves spent many months in training for this difficult mission. When you have an army of bright minds and skillful hands working together – “miracles” happen.

During the first of five spacewalks, astronauts Grunsfeld and Feustel remove WFPC 2.

When astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel started their first spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope today, I was worried only about one thing — the installation of the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. After all, this was supposed to be the real “brain surgery” in space. The SI C&DH unit controls all the flow of information between the instruments and the computer, and without it the telescope cannot function at all. The unit contains two identical sides for redundancy, but in the existing unit one side stopped operating last fall. NASA decided therefore to replace the unit with a new one, to regain the redundancy. Here exactly, however, was my concern. When you take out something that works and replace it by something new, how can you be sure that the new one will actually work? As it turned out, the replacement of the SI C&DH proceeded smoothly like magic. The problem came from an entirely unexpected direction. In order to install the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3), the astronauts had first to remove the old “work horse” on the telescope — the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC 2). For the replacement to take place, the astronauts had to disengage a particular bolt on a latch known as the “A-latch.” Sounds easy, right? Well, when it comes to a bolt in space that hasn’t been touched since 1993 surprises can happen. The astronauts had to change both a number of tools and procedures before the stubborn bolt gave way. I never thought that I would hear such an outburst of applause from my scientist colleagues just to celebrate the release of one bolt!

Space Shuttle Atlantis and crew head toward a rendezvous with the Hubble Telescope, May 11, 2009.

You could see it only for about a minute, and then it disappeared above the clouds. And yet, what an important minute that was!

Packed into that minute were the results of the hard work of thousands, and the emotions of millions.

I am talking, of course, about the launch of the shuttle Atlantis to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

I was fortunate enough to watch the launch from the press site at the Kennedy Space Center. When the countdown came to zero, and you could see the burst of flames and smoke, I could not stop the tears from running down my face. We have been eagerly awaiting this moment since the last Hubble servicing in 2002.

You may remember that following the Columbia accident, NASA decided to cancel any further servicing of Hubble, because of the perceived risk.

The public reaction was unbelievable. At the Space Telescope Science Institute, which conducts the Hubble science program, we were receiving letters from nine-year-old school girls who wanted to donate their lunch money to “save the Hubble.”

Fortunately NASA decided to conduct a more rigorous risk analysis, and in 2006 the NASA Administrator Mike Griffin announced the resurrection of the SM4 servicing mission.

All of that ran through my mind as I heard the deafening noise of the shuttle engines, and watched the enormous fiery tail behind the shuttle. The final phase in the life of this incredible telescope has begun. How appropriate, I thought, that this should happen exactly in the year in which we are celebrating 400 years to Galileo Galilei’s first observations of the heavens with a telescope.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

I am Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and Head of the Institute’s Office of Public Outreach. I have been at STScI since 1991.

In this very informal blog, I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on a variety of scientific, cultural, and educational matters. In particular, I would like to present science as a natural part of the human intellectual endeavor.

We are now only a few days away from the next Servicing Mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (currently scheduled for May 11, 2009). This fact has provoked in my mind the following thought, which at first blush appears to be somewhat disturbing.

Ever since the sixteenth century, we seem to find that the place and role of humans in the universe have been continuously diminishing. Copernicus showed us that the Earth is not at the center of the solar system. The astronomer Harlow Shapley demonstrated that the solar system is not at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that many other galaxies exist – in fact, observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, named in his honor, indicate that there are some 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

Recent observations of the cosmic microwave background show that even the matter we are made of constitutes only about 4% of the energy of the universe, and some speculative theories of the cosmos propose that even our entire universe may be just one member of an infinite ensemble of universes. Should we be depressed by our apparent insignificance in the grand scheme of things?

I don’t think so, for the following reason: Note that every single step in which the human physical presence appears to have been reduced, has actually been triggered BY A HUMAN DISCOVERY!

It was Copernicus – a human – who discovered that the Earth is not at the center of the solar system; it was Hubble – another human – who discovered that our Milky Way Galaxy is nothing special, and so on. In other words, the human mind has been not only very central, but also absolutely essential, to this process.

So while the human physical presence may not be very relevant for the cosmos at large, the human mind is certainly very relevant for our understanding of this cosmos.