Space Telescope

It might seem as if astronomers and astrophysicists have had enormous success at unlocking the mysteries of space. Impressive evidence has been gathered to support the theory that our universe was created about 13.7 billion years ago with an explosion of energy that eventually formed the innumerable galaxies still spinning away from one another to uncharted expanses of space. We've discovered distant planets that might be friendly to life as we know it and have estimated distances to remote pulsing stars to help map the universe.

The seven astronauts picked to fly the final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope next year got a rousing welcome yesterday as they made the traditional courtesy call on the folks in Baltimore whose jobs may hang on how well the crew does its work. The crew of Servicing Mission 4 arrived to applause and cheers from a crowd that crammed the auditorium at the Space Telescope Science Institute. They introduced themselves, showed some training films they brought along from Houston. They also brought along their comedy act. OK, so it was astronaut humor.

Imagine a window with 62,000 shutters - each the width of a human hair. That's what scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are building to capture light from the most distant stars ever seen - in the most complex stargazer they have ever constructed. They say their contribution to the $4.5 billion James Webb Space Telescope will help answer lingering questions about the dawn of the universe, the fate of the earliest stars and the formation of the planets. "Nothing like this has ever been put in space before," said Murzy Jhabvala, chief engineer of Goddard's Instrument Technology Center in Greenbelt.

NASA's plans to replace failing gyroscopes aboard the Hubble Space Telescope this year are threatened by yet another delay in the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.The space agency said yesterday that Discovery's scheduled Dec. 2 launch would be postponed to give ground crews time to replace an engine and inspect the spacecraft for faulty heat-resistant tiles.No new launch date has been set.Without the repairs to Hubble, one of its three remaining gyroscopes could quit working, making it impossible for controllers to reliably aim the telescope.

Sandy Grosvenor of Annapolis makes her living at the Goddard Space Flight Center, helping to design the next generation of space telescope. She makes her fun racing sailboats.This week Grosvenor and an all-Annapolis crew are sailing in the Santa Maria Cup, a women's match racing championship being held at the mouth of the Severn River.Her tasks on the water and at work both require a fine edge of intellect and instinct.At Goddard, the job is to build the perfect replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope.

You don't have to buy a telescope to tour the universe. You don't even have to stand for hours in your freezing back yard to see cool stuff in the night sky.There is a galaxy of astronomy Web sites on the Internet. Some offer the latest, most beautiful images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and from spacecraft circling Jupiter and Mars.Others make it easy to predict when you can step out on your sidewalk for a few minutes to watch the space shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS) or Russia's Mir space station cruise over your head.

The mirrors on NASA's $108 million FUSE telescope won't stay put, and that is delaying astronomers' plans to study chemical clues to the origin, evolution and fate of the universe.Two of the four mirrors aboard the Hopkins-built Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer satellite keep drifting out of alignment, apparently in response to temperature changes, mission leaders say.It's only a tiny movement; the starlight reflected by the mirror drifts by barely the width of a human hair.But it is forcing ground controllers to stop and re-align the mirrors for each new observation, and it has postponed work on a final focusing of the telescope.

WASHINGTON -- The Hubble Space Telescope is in trouble, NASA reported yesterday.Three of its six gyroscopes have failed and the fourth could give out shortly, interrupting the flow of priceless astronomical data gathered by the Hubble from objects in space as near as the planets and as far as remote corners of the universe.Daniel S. Goldin, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said yesterday that he will decide by the weekend whether to launch a space shuttle on an "emergency mission" to rescue the telescope this fall.

A vital gyroscope on board the Hubble Space Telescope has sputtered and quit, forcing the high-flying observatory to shut its eye on the heavens until a crew of astronauts can get there to make repairs.The shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven are scheduled for blastoff Dec. 6 on a much-postponed mission to replace all six of Hubble's gyroscopes and to make other repairs and improvements.On the ground, astronomers will lose an estimated 74 observations each week until the telescope is working again.

A vital gyroscope on board the Hubble Space Telescope has sputtered and quit, forcing the high-flying observatory to shut its eye on the heavens until a crew of astronauts can get there to make repairs.The shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven are scheduled for blastoff Dec. 6 on a much-postponed mission to replace all six of Hubble's gyroscopes and to make other repairs and improvements.On the ground, astronomers will lose an estimated 74 observations each week until the telescope is working again.

The Hubble Space Telescope's science team in Baltimore has lost one of its original leaders, a physicist whose comprehensive knowledge of the complex observatory helped keep its science operations running smoothly, and astronomers' discoveries rolling in. Rodger Doxsey, head of the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubble Mission Office, died of cancer Tuesday after entering an area hospice over the weekend. The Towson resident was 62. "Rodger was the heart and soul of Hubble here at the Institute," said STScI's director, Matt Mountain.

One image appears uncannily like a butterfly, its ethereal wings extending into the blackness of space. But looks are deceiving, and the apparently tranquil scene actually depicts a violent nebula of superheated gas charging across the Milky Way Galaxy at 600,000 miles per hour, with a dying star once five times the mass of the sun at its center. In another picture, a cluster of several swirls of light seem to interact in a celestial dance, while a smaller, glowing circle hovers at some distance from the others.

Arnold man, 29, dies in crash in Pasadena 3 A 29-year-old Arnold man was killed Wednesday night when he lost control of his Ford F-250 pickup while driving north on Route 10 near Ritchie Highway in Pasadena, struck guardrails on both sides of the highway and flipped over, Anne Arundel County police said. Timothy Duane Blevins of the first block of Elmridge Road died at the scene of the 11:20 p.m. crash, according to police. His truck flipped on top of the barrier wall on the overpass to eastbound Route 100 and slid more than 100 feet before falling to the road adjacent to Route 100, police said.

Hoping to tap into an economic engine that can weather the recession, Gov. Martin O'Malley unveiled a strategy Tuesday for bolstering the space industry's foothold in the state by lobbying for more federal dollars and emphasizing science and mathematics in schools. O'Malley, speaking to more than 500 aerospace industry representatives in Greenbelt, outlined a plan to harness what he characterized as the state's "unsung economic hero." The vision is similar to one the governor has articulated for the biotechnology industry as a way to further move the state from a manufacturing- to a knowledge-based economy.

Five days of work on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope should end Tuesday morning with the release of what one astronomer said is "in many ways ... a brand new telescope." "At this point, Hubble actually has the largest complement of functioning instruments it has ever had" since its launch in 1990, said Mario Livio, senior scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "This is going to be an observatory that is just so much more powerful and more promising." The crew of the shuttle Atlantis was to release the telescope just before 9 a.m. Tuesday.

The crowd of scientists watching on the big screen in the auditorium of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore went silent Thursday when it appeared a single stuck bolt might foil NASA's plans to install a powerful new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronaut Drew Feustel had tried and failed to budge it with his power wrench. If he couldn't muscle it into submission with elbow grease alone, the 15-year-old camera would have to be reconnected. Worse, its replacement - the $150 million Wide Field Camera 3, packing more than ten times the "discovery power" of the old camera - would have to be repacked for the ride home.

The space shuttle Atlantis is racing to catch up with the Hubble Space Telescope after a nearly flawless launch Monday into clear skies. If all goes well, four astronauts will begin a series of spacewalks Thursday to repair and upgrade the 19-year-old observatory for the last time before the shuttle program ends next year. "It was fantastic," said Mario Livio, a senior scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore who was at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch. "There were tears in my eyes when I saw the shuttle go off," he said.

NASA officials said Thursday that they will try to launch their mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope a day earlier than planned. The push to launch the shuttle Atlantis on May 11 instead of May 12 is driven by a desire to add a third day to the available launch window. Failure to launch by May 13 would delay the Hubble mission until May 27 because of competing demands on the Florida launch facilities, officials said. "I feel fairly confident we can make a May 11 launch date," said LeRoy Cain, deputy manager of NASA's shuttle program.

At home, you might find Matt Ashmore reaching into his tool chest for the right socket wrench to speed up the restoration of his 1969 Dodge Polara. But at the Goddard Space Flight Center, the 30-year-old aerospace engineer has spent the past several years developing a sleek new power screwdriver for spacewalking NASA astronauts. They'll need it to pop the hoods of two broken-down scientific instruments on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Ashmore heads a team of more than 35 in Goddard's Crew Aids and Tools Development office in Greenbelt.

Hubble repair mission delayed until May The long-delayed launch of an 11-day shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed again - this time from late winter until no earlier than May 12. NASA officials in Houston said yesterday that they need more time to prepare an 18-year-old space science data computer for flight. Astronauts are scheduled to install the device during one of five spacewalks. Scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and around the world are counting on astronauts to restore two failed instruments on the telescope, install two new instruments and replace key hardware needed to extend the observatory's lifetime by at least five years.