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Projects: Save Voyager and Hubble

Hubble -- The People's Telescope

November 2, 2006

by Charlene Anderson
Associate Director of The Planetary Society

Click to enlarge > Hubble Space Telescope The name itself encourages familiarity: the Hubble Space Telescope -- in documents reduced to its NASA acronym, HST -- in popular parlance was inevitably shortened to just "Hubble" -- a friendly, easy-to-remember name. Here Hubble hovers at the boundary of Earth and space, taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery after the telescope's second servicing mission in 1997. Credit: NASA

By now you've heard the news: NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has decided to send the space shuttle Discovery to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, reversing a decision made by his predecessor, Sean O'Keefe.

This is a tremendous victory for Planetary Society members -- and for the millions around the world who rose up in protest at the premature decision to let Hubble die. Some 10,000 Planetary Society members focused their efforts in a petition campaign directed at the U.S. Congress, which controls NASA's purse-strings. Congress listened to us. And NASA listened to Congress.

Now that we have won the battle, it's perhaps useful to take a moment to consider how the miscalculation to let Hubble die could have been made. I believe it's because administration managers did not understand that -- as scientific success followed engineering triumph, and image after image brought home the beauty and sheer magnificence of space -- Hubble had become more than an orbiting scientific instrument.

Hubble became the people's telescope -- surprising NASA managers who perhaps underestimated the passion generated by those magnificent images of the cosmos. The astounding images captured by Hubble made the unfathomable depths of space accessible as had no other telescope in history. People came to feel a personal connection with this scientific instrument of metal and glass. They refused to let it die.

Here is the measure of their devotion: It will cost $900 million to repair Hubble, AND is  the people have made clear that is a price they are willing to pay. Even though it is 16 years old, they see Hubble as an asset for the future. NASA and the politicians now know the public feels that repairing Hubble is worth the money -- and worth the risk of a shuttle flight.

And so, perhaps as early as May 2008, the shuttle Discovery will rendezvous with Hubble and attempt the repairs that could keep it alive and teaching us more about the wonders of the universe.

You made that possible. You and your fellow Planetary Society members made your voices heard. You and millions around the world changed a government bureaucracy and got the result the future will thank you for. Congratulations.

But in our elation over Hubble, let's not forget Voyager.

The Planetary Society campaigned not just to save Hubble, but also to save the Voyager spacecraft now probing the edges of our solar system. As part of another wave of budget-cutting, NASA planned to shut down operations just as the spacecraft were approaching the heliopause, the boundary with interstellar space.

The patent absurdity of that move made it easier to counter than the decision to cancel the repair mission to Hubble, which involved the risk of human life following the loss of the shuttle Columbia.

The move to shut down Voyager was simply over-zealous bean-counting. When the ramifications of turning off two of the most successful robotic explorers in history were rammed home, the proposal was allowed to evaporate.

At the edge of the solar system, Voyagers 1 and 2 will continue to explore the unknown until around 2020, when their nuclear batteries will run down. By then, we will be ready to say "well done" and let them go. Even without power, they will continue to voyage outward, each carrying a gold record, created by Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan and friends, that is a message from the people of Earth to whomever or whatever might someday find these emissaries somewhere among the stars.

Whew! Hubble and Voyager saved. It's been a good day's work. Thank you.