Peering Through the Hubble

If all goes according to plan on Hubble servicing mission 4, the orbiting observatory will be reborn as the most productive telescope in history, with even greater powers to probe the Universe's deep dark secrets. It will help cosmologists understand one of their biggest problems, dark energy.

The astronauts on the shuttle Atlantis have the task of installing a new panoramic camera and the latest generation spectrograph, an instrument for measuring the chemistry, temperatures and motion of celestial objects.The astronauts will also repair and update other equipment.

With all the new technology aboard Hubble, any astronomer in the world can apply for time to observe with the orbiting telescope. According to David Leckrone, project scientist at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Centre,"If you couple the massed human brain power, the global intellect, with the new powerful telescopic equipment, you produce shock and awe in science."

The Hubble has already tallied many historic achievments. It was the first instrument to fix the Universe's age at 13.7 billion years. It also unveiled the mysterious dark energy, the name coined for the pervasive force which appears to be inflating the Universe at an ever increasing speed.Until then cosmologists had believed the expansion of the Universe was slowing down.

The mystery of dark energy may be made clearer, if not solved by the new wide field camera. It will allow astronomers to see deeper into space and with more detail.

The spectrograph will measure the gases in the black voids between galaxies, which have been there since the big bang, and detect very faint objects by their chemistry, temperature and motion.The new equipment is so efficient that they can gather information in one orbit that used to take twenty or thirty orbits.

We are driven by the need to know what's out there, to explain our own origin,our future and to find out if there are other planets like ours.