Boston Globe Editorial: Hubble in Hand

[Dudley_DUright]

THE HUBBLE Space Telescope has earned its place in the universe, and NASA should keep it there for as long as possible, or at least until 2011, when its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch. The space agency, forced to reassess its mission in the shadow of the Columbia disaster, is considering whether to close the fabulous eye in the sky in its prime. That would be unconscionable given the worlds Hubble has opened since it was launched in 1990.

"I've been able to study exploding stars," says an irrepressible Robert Kirshner, who specializes in the field of dark energy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge -- a field that didn't exist when the Hubble was built.

He notes that the beauty of the telescope is that it grew and changed along with technology, that it "was like a new observatory several times over" despite its inauspicious start before a team of space-walking astronauts gave it "contact lenses."

Hubble has provided data for nearly 3,000 scientific papers, taken a half-million pictures, measured the expanse and age of the solar system, discovered planets, and probed the secrets of Mars.

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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2003/08/22/hubble_in_hand/