Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour 20160602 : vimarsana.com

KQED PBS NewsHour June 2, 2016

That we as scientists understand the universe. Narrator the story of hubble is a story of discovery. Its also the story of one of the biggest blunders in the history of science. Sandra faber this is the moment we find out that we are doomed to failure. Is it possible that you could bring the telescope back . Narrator and of the genius and courage that saved the day. Story musgrave the moment of truth is coming. You cant run from it anymore, its coming, there it is. Narrator now, on hubbles 25th anniversary, nova tells the remarkable tale of how this magnificent machine was built, how it has solved some of our most enduring mysteries, and how it is showing us a universe as beautiful as it is astonishing. Invisible universe revealed right now on nova. Major funding for nova is provided by the following we love science. It inspires us to ask interesting questions and find amazing answers. We proudly support novas efforts to inspire the scientists of today and tomorrow. Proper nutrition can help maintain your immune system during cancer treatment. Thats why here, dieticians are part of every patients comprehensive care team. Integrative cancer care lives here. Learn more at cancercenter. Com. The david h. Koch fund for science, supportinova and promoting public understanding of science. And the corporation for public broadcasting. And by pbs viewers like you thank you. And millicent bell, through the millicent and eugene bell foundation. Since the dawn of humanity, weve looked to the heavens and wondered, how old is the universe . How many stars are there in the sky . Are there other planets out there like our own . But in the last 25 years, theres been a revolution. All because of a machine called hubble. Traveling in space, high above the distortions of our atmosphere, gives this giant telescope great power. Matt mountain its t size of a school bus. Its traveling at 17,000 miles an hour. Its 300andsomething miles above your head. But in there is onof the most precise mirrors mankind has ever built. Narrator billions of times more sensitive than our own eyes, the space telescope has literally brought the universe to us, making more than a million observations. One legendary image is called the pillars of creation. Its a giant plume of gas and dust where stars are born. Our own sun probably formed in a place like this. Amber straughn the whole region is Something Like 400 trillion miles, so its massive, its huge. But still within the context of our own milky way, its just one little part. Narrator hubble has also captured pictures oflaces where stars die. These are planetary nebulae remnants of expiring stars. They look like artworks in the heavens. Each one of them is different, like snowflakes. And these are some of the most spectacular images that hubble has produced. Narrator hubble has shown us that black holes are real. A giant one sits at the center of our galaxy and nearly every other we know. Its discovered the age of the universe and that there are more stars in the heavens than grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of the world combined. Over the past 25 years, hubble has told us a story of creation, destruction, and of vast, new mysteries that beckon our curiosity. But putting it in space long seemed an impossible dream, even to those who took on the challenge. Nancy roman i started out in optical astronomy and spectroscopy. But as a woman in my generation, i could not get tenure at a research institution. In 1959, when nasa was formed, one of the men there asked me if i knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy. And i decided that the idea of influencing astronomy for 50 years was just more than i could resist, so i took the job. Narrator astronomer nancy roman is known as the mother of the hubble. She worked on its design and development for nearly 25 years. Roman if i brought anything to it, it was perseverance and belief that it was possible. Narrator the idea of a space telescope was first seriously proposed in 1946 by princeton scientist lyman spitzer. He was the scientific visionary, and roman was the force that pushed this vision forward, decades before the technology was up to the task. Even into the mid60s, just getting a rocket safely into space was a challenge. Roman there were a lot of failures. We were babies learning how to walk. And we didnt always succeed. Babies fall down, and we did too. Narrator but however farfetched at the time, the lure of getting a telescope above the distortion of the earths atmosphere was strong. The major challenge facing astronomers was the twinkle of the stars livio twinkling stars are an inspiring source of poetry, but in terms of observing stars, its not very good. Jim crocker if you can imagine youre swimming on the bottom of the Swimming Pool and you look up and you see the distortion. Its like a fun house mirror. Thats what its like to study stars from the surface of the earth. The atmosphere is just like that water in that pool. It sloshes around and moves and distorts the image. But when you come up out of the water, everythings clear. Thats exactly what happens when a telescope gets above the atmosphere. In the pristine vacuum of space, light can travel for billions of light years, undisturbed. Narrator the atmosphere not only distorts light, it prevents some from reaching the ground at all. Roman so for those reasons, astronomers for a long time were eager to get something outside. And so i got a committee together, and that was the beginning of the hubble. Narrator the space telescope was named for edwin hubble, the great astronomer who did much of his pioneering work in the 1920s at mt. Wilson observatory in california. In those days, our own galaxy, the milky way, was considered the entirety of the universe. Nearly everyone, even einstein, believed the universe had existed forever in its present state that it was eternal and unchanging. But hubble would prove them all wrong. He began by figuring out how far away the stars he was seeing actually were. Livio at the time of edwin hubble, it was hard to measure distances. It still is even today. Narrator its difficult to know if a star appears bright because it is actually bright or simply because it is close to us. So hubble searched for a rare type of star called a cepheid variable. Cepheids pulse at a known brightness, so by measuring the amount of light he could see, he could calculate how far away the star actually was. In october 1923, hubble found a cepheid in a gaseous cluster of stars then called the andromeda nebula. It yielded a shocking discovery. Mountain when he actually did the calculations, he discovered andromeda was roughly a million light years away from us, which is outside our galaxy. Narrator andromeda was its own galaxy. Mountain oh, there are other galaxies out there, and were just one of them. Narrator for the first time in history, there was evidence that our universe stretched far beyond the milky way. Mountain but then what he did was he measured the speed of a whole bunch of these galaxies. Narrator edwin hubble measured speed by looking at the light the galaxies emitted. He knew if the galaxy was moving toward him, the waves would shorten and shift to the blue part of the spectrum. If it was moving away, the waves would lengen and shift to the red. Livio every distant galaxy hubble looked at, he saw the light from it being redshifted, which meant everything is moving away from everything else. Mountain and he found the further away they were, the faster they were going. Narrator in fact, the universe itself was expanding, stretching the light from the galaxies. Edwin hubble had changed our understanding of the cosmos forever. Mountain the whole universe was clearly expanding. And so this was the discovery of the expansion of the universe. You know, which einstein said, well, thats crazy, right . The discovery of the expansion of the universe of course was a very strong piece of evidence for a beginning. If everything is now expanding, you can run this backwards and see that everything should have started from a certain point or singularity, what we today call a big bang. Mountain that was pretty radical and mindblowing stuff back in the 20s and 30s, and some people today even find it mindblowing. Narrator hubbles discovery opened up the modern era of astronomy and raised huge questions, like how old is the universe . But astronomers couldnt see clearly and deeply enough into the cosmos, so the mystery would endure for decades. Livio determining the age of the universe was definitely one of the key goals of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers used to have fistfights whether the universe was ten billion years or 20 billion years old until we launched the Hubble Telescope. Narrator but first, they would have to build it. Roman i realized that my job at nasa to a large extent was salesmanship. And it was a particular problem with congress. We can cut the Space Program sharply. Congress has already cut that 400 million and i think we can cut it a billion dollars, and we should cut it a billion dollars. Roman proxmire was quite famous as a senator of picking out projects that he thought were stupid. We have a war going on in vietnam. Roman and he asked nasa why the american taxpayer should pay for Something Like the hubble. And i came up with the answer that for the cost of a night at the movies, every american would have 15 years of exciting discovery. Narrator finally, after more than a decade, the plans were approved in 1977. Hubbles power would come from an eightfoot wide mirror. It would gather light from across the universe. To magnify the sky and see tiny details, it would need a Long Distance to focus the light and give a clear image. But a space telescope needs to be compact, so hubble would use a second mirror to further magnify the light and focus it onto the cameras. For it to work, the mirrors would have to be perfect. Hubble was the most precise optical mirror ever made. No place along its surface could have deviated from a perfect curve by more than a millionth of an inch. Narrator an optics company, perkinelmer, was chosen to do the work, in part because it had already made mirrors for spy satellites. Faber they told nasa, we know how to do this, and this technology is proprietary. We are not going to let you come in and watch what we are doing. So nasa got a rather limited view of what was going on in that little group. Crocker they had very, very precise instruments that they designed just for polishing this mirror. They had to work at night so that the vibration of cars in the parking lot wouldnt cause problems with the polishing equipment. They had to isolate it and float it on a table so any vibrations from the building wouldnt come in. And this program was over budget, behind schedule. They were desperate to get the telescope built and flown. Narrator perkinelmers own measurements showed discrepancies in the surface of the mirror, but this was never passed on to nasa. The telescope was declared ready for launch, a disaster waiting to happen. applause ed weiler the hopes and dreams of the worlds astronomers were with us that day at cape canaveral. The last time astronomers leapt a factor of ten in observing capability was when galileo, in 1610, instead of using his eye, put the telescope in front of his eye. Announcer and liftoff of the Space Shuttle discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope, our window on the universe weiler all increases in capability after galileo were incremental. They werent leaps of a factor of ten, until hubble. Astronaut mission control, houston. Mission control roger aldiscovery. Weiler we thought, lets go, were off to the races little did we know the time bomb that was ticking. Little did we know. Mission control discovery, houston. You have a go to open the doors. Narrator after nearly 30 years of planning, on april 25, 1990, astronauts used a robotic arm to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit 380 miles above the earth. Astronaut capcom, we have a go for release. Mission control we concur, charlie. Announcer mission control, houston confirms, the Hubble Space Telescope is released. cheering narrator with the telescope finally in place, everyone was excited to see what it could do. Reporter . Make final adjustments before we get to see the clearest pictures ever seen in the history of astronomy. Mission control nose gear touch down. Narrator but when the first images arrived, they werent quite what the scientists had expected. Mountain when they first saw these images, they just assumed the telescope wasnt in focus. They tried to move the focus backwards and forwards, but the light kept being blurred like it was always out of focus. It was really quite a shock. Faber we were very worried. Livio i just couldnt believe it. It definitely was a huge shock. We were supposed to revolutionize astronomy. How is it that we cant focus this telescope . How is this even possible . Narrator after weeks of investigation, horrified astronomers suspected something was wrong with the mirror. This is my logbook that i kept during the early days of hubble. Daily, we went to meetings, and we kept a record of everything that was happening. Here is a particularly interesting day. We were told about the actuators on the back of the mirror. The actuators might be able to fix small errors in the surface of the mirror by pushing and pulling on it, so this says, one half wave is 7 times the dynamic range, meaning the problem is seven times worse than they could fix. And heres a little note i wrote this is the moment we find out that we are doomed to failure narrator sandra faber and her colleagues realized that the problem was massive and lay at the very heart of the telescope. Faber the Hubble Telescope has a big primary mirror that collects the light, and then theres a secondary mirror which reflects the light back down to the detector. So if everything is working, every zone of the primary mirror should come to a focus at exactly the same location. Narrator with a single focal point, a star would appear crisp and bright. But this wasnt what was happening. Faber as i looked at those star images, i could see that the problem with hubble was the rays are coming to a focus at different points. And that is the classic problem called spherical aberration. This is the actual set of images that my Team Presented that convinced people of the spherical aberration. The top set of images is simulated with software, the bottom is the actual images, and the fact that they match is what shows that we really understood what was going on. Weiler that was the kiss of death. It was like a bullet to the head. So i said, well, what are we going to do . Faber should we clare this telescope to be junk and just end it . Can we use it in its present form and get something out of it . Can we fix it . And all of those thoughts were running through peoples minds in those fateful days after this discovery. Narrator somehow, the mirror had been polished too flat, and there might not be anything anyone could do to fix it. Weiler it was probably early june when people starting saying the s word spherical aberration. That lead up to the Infamous Press conference that ill never forget as long as i live. What might have made this happen . Do you know for sure that that the aberration is in the primary mirror, the secondary mirror, both . Why wasnt it caught on the ground . Mountain this was one of the most expensive science projects that nasa had ever undertaken, and it was a technoturkey. Is it possible that you could bring the telescope back . It was an absolute disaster. And so it became life and death for nasa itself. It was the national joke. Crocker we went from being the heroes of the universe to the mr. Magoos, and being associated with the telescope was difficult. Narrator a nasa board of inquiry searched for clues to what went wrong. Inspecting every piece of every tool used to polish the mirror, they found the smoking gun a few missing chips of paint. They had thrown off the laserguided measuring tool used to shape the mirror. Crocker everything was off about a millimeter. And so they polished the edges of the mirror a little too flat, about 1 50th of the thickness of a human hair. Narrator many feared this meant hubble was dead, since the mirror was hard to access and impossible to remove in space. Sandra faber was on the panel tasked with finding a solution. Faber a Blue Ribbon Committee convened. People were thinking about everything from bringing the telescope down to having astronauts go up in orbit and swim down into the tube and install correcting optics in front of the primary mirror. I called the report, jokingly, 50 bad ways to fix a space telescope. Narrator the best idea was to put small corrective mirrors in front of the cameras and other instruments. But the problem was getting the mirrors inside the telescope. Jim crocker was an engineer in charge of hubble operations. Crocker we got to the point where its like, were kind of running out of ideas here and not sure what to do. Theres a lot of ways to fix this, theres just no way to perform them in space. shower running i actually came back from the meeting and went back to the hotel that we were staying at and i thought, well, ill take a shower before we go out to dinner. The showerhead is on a sliding rod, and the head goes up and down. And so i turned the water on and i slid it up, and then it was like it clicked. If we packaged the mirrors into a little robotic arm and we put that arm into a new instrument, you could raise this mirror up and flip the little mirrors out in front of each of the other instruments and correct them all. And i thought, huh, thatll work. Narrator nasa agreed and immediately started work. Astronauts would install an instrument called costar. Once in place, its flike the showerhead,out, and essentially give hubble glasses. But no one had ever done anything remotely this intricate in space. Story musgrave when i got the job, i didnt smile and i didnt celebrate anything. I says, here we go. Ill do the best i can with this. I told nasa and i told the media, theyre all saying were going to fix it, and i told them, i dont know if were going to fix it. Narrator musgrave and a team of astronauts trained for 20 months preparing to fix hubble. Musgrave we choreograph this dance down to every finger and every toe. You know, a great ballerina, its every finger and every toe. You cant have something messed up. You cant exactly mimic what youre going to do there. So in your imagination, you watch yourself work. Then it is practice, so that you can pull it off when you have to. Narrator to simulate working in space, the astronauts spent 400 hours underwater rehearsing on a mockup of hubble. Mountain i think the most incredible thing about this is that the astronauts were prepared to risk their lives to go and fix a scientific instrument. radio chatter mountain we know the shuttle was

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