Page 13 - hstoverview-v42021-1

History

In April of 1990, Hubble first opened its eye on the universe and ushered in a new era of discovery. As successful and

productive as it is now, NASA and its international partners had to overcome many daunting challenges to make it so.
These ranged from converting its exacting requirements into a workable and modular design to developing the capability to
upgrade and repair the observatory in orbit. Tackling these challenges has regularly punctuated the agency’s storied history

of human spaceflight with notable and memorable successes.

Hubble is the culmination of a dream as old as the space program itself. Theoretical physicist and astronomer Lyman Spitzer
first proposed a large space telescope in 1946—more than a decade before the Soviet Union launched its first satellite and

12 years before the United States formed NASA. Spitzer knew that such an observatory would take clearer images across a
wider wavelength band than any ground-based telescope, as it would not suffer from the blurring and filtering effects of Earth’s
atmosphere. Spitzer proposed that such an observatory would reveal much clearer images than any ground-based telescope.

A tireless advocate of space astronomy, Spitzer was joined in the 1970s by colleagues John Bahcall, George Field, Nancy
Grace Roman, and others to champion the concept within the astronomical community, to the public, and to the Federal
Government. In order to defray the cost, Congress required NASA to seek international collaboration on the mission.
Thus, in 1976, the European Space Agency (ESA) was enlisted as a partner. ESA agreed to provide one of the science

instruments, the telescope’s solar panels, and staff members to support science operations. Congress subsequently
authorized the visionary mission in 1977.

Serious technological and managerial challenges—including funding and scheduling issues—arose during the turbulent

years of Hubble’s design and manufacture. After extensive testing, Hubble was in the final stages of preparation for launch
aboard the space shuttle when, in January of 1986, the nation suffered the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and its crew
following a failure in one of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. Nearly three more years would pass before reengineered

Hubble went through the latter stages of its integration in a clean room at the Lockheed Missile and Space Company in California. Launched
in 1990, the telescope is approximately 44 feet tall.

11