Does Hubble have a future in space race?

WHEN IT WAS launched amid much fanfare in April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope quickly became a talkshow joke.

A minute error in its precision-ground mirror meant the telescope’s vision was blurred - and it needed glasses.

However, despite this flaw, it actually produced pictures with better resolution than any land-based telescope and in the years since the problem was fixed it has gone on to help astronomers discover new solar systems and understand how the universe was formed.

On Monday, scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency will celebrate the Hubble’s 15th birthday amid speculation that its funding will be cut as a new generation of telescopes are prepared for orbit.

Much depends on the Space Shuttle flight planned for the next few weeks - the first since the Columbia exploded on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere in February 2003 - as it is used to service and upgrade the Hubble’s instruments, keeping it up to date with new technology.

Dr Frank Summers, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which analyses data from the Hubble, said having such a powerful astronomical device in space - where the Earth’s atmosphere does not distort the light from distant stars and galaxies - had made a huge difference.

Some extraordinary discoveries - the true age of the universe, a previously unknown force that is speeding up its expansion, and evidence of planets in other solar systems - had all been made with its help.

"I’m biased, I’m a cosmologist and the Hubble ultra-deep field for me is one of its greatest scientific achievements. We have taken the deepest variable light images of the universe and in it we can see objects all the way across the universe," Dr Summers said.

"Without Hubble’s fine resolution - it is able to see very small things - we’d never see these very distant galaxies in such detail.

"Since these galaxies are 12 billion light years from us, it allows us to see what the universe was like 12 billion years ago.

"We are able to see the most distant things in the universe, able to gauge the history and development of the universe and can see what galaxies were like in their infancy.

"It gives us an evolution of the universe and helps us understand how it developed and how we got here."

According to the latest research, the universe is believed to be 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus half a billion years.

Data from the Hubble was part of the evidence used to come up with this specific number. Previously astronomers could only guess that it might be anything from ten to 20 billion years old.

"The fact I can say ‘point seven’ to you with a straight face and not burst out laughing is amazing," Dr Summers said.

Hubble also helped scientists to measure the expansion of universe and discover that far from slowing down, it has in the last two billion years started to speed up.

This has led to theories about a mysterious force in the cosmos known as "dark energy", which is thought to be powering this process.

Hubble has also been used to study the solar system, producing highly detailed images of other planets and it has also been helping the search for other planetary systems round other stars.

But as people around the world prepare to celebrate its 15th birthday, there is speculation that it may not see a 16th.

There has been talk of a cut in its funding and next month’s expected Space Shuttle launch will be crucial. If the Hubble can continue to be upgraded, it should continue to be useful.

But, if anything goes wrong with the Shuttle, the Hubble is likely to be superseded by a new generation of telescopes being built, among other places, in Edinburgh.

Few, however, doubt the contribution of Hubble to modern astronomy.

Professor Ian Robson, director of UK Astronomy Technology Centre at Edinburgh’s Royal Observatory, where work is being done on instruments for the James Webb Space Telescope which is due to launch in about five years, said: "Hubble has been the highlight of astronomical instrumentation for certainly the last decade easily.

"I remember the disaster well. We all just groaned: ‘How can the world’s most expensive astronomical instrument be launched with the wrong mirror, a perfect, but wrong mirror’. I think it’s a real tribute that they managed to recover what could have been a total disaster."

Prof Robson said the range of information that has been produced was affecting astronomy in many ways.

"It’s just the huge volume of stuff that’s come out. It’s told us about the early universe and produced fabulous images of the planets. It’s done a huge amount across the board," he said. "Things like the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) always require new instrumentation to keep them up to date.

"With the James Webb Space Telescope, which we are involved in, we now look forward to a new generation beyond Hubble, but we are very grateful to all Hubble has done."

The James Webb, like the Hubble a co-operation between NASA and ESA, will be able to look back even further in time, allowing scientists to examine how "the very first galaxies formed in the universe - that’s one of the gemstones of it - and the very early stages of star formation".

"Basically how it happened - once we have looked at a few of those we can start to see how discs of gas collapse to form solar systems and groups of stars," he said.