Initial discussion of an orbiting telescope, led by Lyman Spitzer and Leo Goldberg in the late 1940s, generally met with little enthusiasms.
Ground based astronomy remained more attractive to most astronomers, as shown by the national observatory campaign of the next decade.
During the 1960s, however, NASA’s Orbiting Astronomical Observatories program rekindled interest in the concept and led to suggestions for a federally funded Large Space Telescope with a 3-meter mirror.
The telescope soon became linked with the proposed space shuttle as an important payload and as a target for later maintenance missions.
As part of a continuous concern with the costs, astronomers joined NASA officials to redraft plans for the instrument during the 1970s, ultimately decreasing the mirror size to 2.4 meters and minimizing scientific goals in favor a program design that congress would accept.The instrument proved much more difficult to design than originally thought, leading to higher costs, further modifications and a complete management shake-up in 1983.
The successful launch of the telescope in April 1990 appeared to justify the $1.6 billion project costs (more than four times the original estimate), but the instrument soon proved seriously flawed. The main mirror had been ground to the wrong figure, making precise focusing impossible.
The NASA review panel report, issued in November, concluded that inadequate testing procedures had led to the misshapen mirror.
The scientific rewards that Hubble Space Telescope promised are at hand. In 1996, Hubble Space Telescope took its 100,000 exposure – a milestone that some thought would never come.
The newly improved telescope is often more productive than the most productive ground based telescope with which it works.
With proper care and maintenance, it could last well into the first decades of the 21st century.
The Hubble Space Telescope
