1. Hubble Space Telescope By Brittany Bellows Physics 1040 – Spring 2011

2. Launched in April of 1990, Hubble was soon found to have some serious design flaws.

3. Analysis showed that the primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape. This caused severe spherical aberration, a flaw in which light reflecting off the edge of a mirror focuses on a different point from the light reflecting off its center.

4. In Dec. 1993 NASA launched a shuttle to service Hubble and fix the lens problem.

5. Immediately after Hubble was fixed it started to transmit wonderful images of deep space.

6. Due to the success of Hubble's images, 4 more service missions were launched by NASA to make updates and repairs.

7. Service mission #2 installed a Near Infrared Camera to be able to photograph the universe in infrared wavelengths. An Imaging Spectrograph was also installed to take photos of celestial objects and to hunt for Black Holes.

8. Service mission #3 was broken into 2 parts due to the complexity and number of items that needed to be repaired and replaced.

9. Service mission 3A, launched in 1999, was done over 6 days with three, 6 hour space walks. Six gyroscopes were replaced which allow Hubble to point and focus on objects. Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensor was also replaced.

10. Service mission 3B was launched in 2002. It consisted of a number of huge upgrades and repairs to Hubble. Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was installed, along with a more efficient power system, a repair to the Infrared camera's cooling system, and a new steering system.

11. Service mission #4 launched in 2009, was perhaps Hubble's most challenging and intense servicing mission, with a multitude of tasks to be completed over the course of five spacewalks. With the shuttle flights coming to an end NASA knew it needed to do as many repairs as possible on this mission.

12. Two new cameras were installed. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit was also installed to replace the one that had stopped working a year before.

13. During service mission 4, astronauts accomplished a feat never envisioned by the telescope creators - on-site repairs for two instruments: the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).

14. To perform the repairs, astronauts had to access the interior of the instruments, switch out components, and reroute power. The successful completion of this task, along with the addition of the two new instruments, gave Hubble a full complement of five functioning instruments for its future observations.

15. NASA's final mission to Hubble ensure that the telescope will be functioning for many years to come. It has already shown us images of space that were never thought possible, and it has many more discoveries to share.

16. References: http://hubblesite.org/ http://hubble.nasa.gov/index.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope Clark Planetarium – Hubble 3D