When an interstellar visitor zoomed
into our solar system last fall,
the Hubble Space Telescope scoured it for new
information about other solar systems.
he target: a comet called 2I/Borisov, the very
irst comet “unbound” to our sun. Instead of
tracing the oval path most comets follow as they
circle our solar system, Borisov lew past the sun
and out into space. We will never see Borisov
again, so astronomers worked fast.
Hubble’s observations were surprising — not
for what it did see, but what it didn’t see.
“It’s kind of a garden-variety comet,” said NASA
astrophysicist Padi Boyd, adding it looks just like
comets from our own solar system. “hey come
close to the sun, the ices in there evaporate and
sublimate of, and [they] make beautiful tails that
give you that cometary look,” she said.
Chalk up another milestone for the 30-year-old ob-
servatory, which irst launched on April 24, 1990, to
derision and dismay. Hubble was over-budget and
long past its original launch date — partly due to
development issues and partly due to space shuttle
program problems. Nevertheless, Hubble launched
with a fatal law: its vision was blurry. hat didn’t
look good for many reasons, especially including
the high cost to the United States government in
the recession-heavy early 1990s. Some critics
called the observatory, which cost the equivalent
of US$3 billion (approximately $4 billion Canadian)
in today’s dollars, a “techno turkey.”
Hubble’s turnaround came through a dramatic,
successful rescue mission (see sidebar) and a great
decision by NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore,
Maryland, that manages telescope operations.
hey opened up Hubble pictures to everyone, with
no copyright restrictions. Long before the days of
social media, Hubble pictures thus appeared in
textbooks and on classroom walls. So many young-
sters of the 1990s were touched by the telescope
that today, NASA oicials refer to them as the
“Hubble generation,” some of whom work on that
same telescope today.“It was a really wise move on the part of those
people planning the way,” said Jennifer Wiseman,
a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center. Wiseman was in graduate school
when Hubble launched and was similarly inspired
by the pictures coming through her university
department. As Wiseman grew more experienced,
she saw Hubble as a valuable sentinel for cosmic
change. After all, it’s the longest-running space
telescope of its kind watching the skies.Surpassing design
Hubble’s initial main goal was to better explain
the expansion of the universe. To astronomers’
surprise, the data coming back showed not only
expansion, but acceleration in growth. he
startling ind eventually generated a Nobel Prize.
Astronomers are still tweaking the measurements
today, using even more Hubble data. But, to →How the Hubble
Space Telescope
has transformed
our view of the
universe over the
past 30 years
By Elizabeth HowellSKYNEWS • MAR/APR 2020