ASTRONOMERS will never forget the near miss they had with the Hubble Space
Telescope. Soon after its launch in 1990, researchers discovered that its mirror
was misshapen and produced virtually useless blurred images. Over the following
two years, NASA analysed the problem, built an optical device to correct the
defect, and installed it with the help of astronauts who went up on the space
shuttle. “It would have been a bag of bolts from day one had we not been able to
go up and fix it,” says Roger Angel, an astronomer at the University of Arizona
in Tucson.
With…
