NASA Provides Venerable Hubble Hardware to Smithsonian

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WASHINGTON -- Two key instruments from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
have a new home in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in
Washington after being returned to Earth aboard space shuttle
Atlantis last May.

Astronauts brought back the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or
WFPC-2, and the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement,
or COSTAR, after more than 15 years in space. The camera returned the
iconic images that now adorn posters, album covers, the Internet,
classrooms and science text books worldwide.

"This was the camera that saved Hubble," said Ed Weiler, associate
administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "I have looked forward for a long time to
stand in front of this very instrument while on display to the
public."

After Hubble's launch and deployment aboard the shuttle in 1990,
scientists realized the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw, known
as a spherical aberration. The outer edge of the mirror was ground
too flat by a depth of 2.2 microns, roughly equal to one-fiftieth the
thickness of a human hair. This tiny flaw resulted in fuzzy images
because some of the light from the objects being studied was
scattered.

Hubble's first servicing mission provided the telescope with hardware
that basically acted as eye glasses. Launched in December 1993 aboard
space shuttle Endeavour, the mission added the WFPC-2, about the size
of a baby grand piano, and COSTAR, about the size of a telephone
booth. The WFPC-2 had the optical fix built in, while the COSTAR
provided the optical correction for other Hubble instruments.

The WFPC-2 made more than 135,000 observations of celestial objects
from 1993 to 2009. The camera was the longest serving and most
prolific instrument aboard Hubble.

"For years the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has been taking
pictures of the universe," said John Trauger of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Today, we are taking pictures of the
WFPC-2 and I guess if there was ever a camera that deserves to have
its picture taken, this is it."

The Hubble instruments will be on display in the National Air and
Space Museum's Space Hall through mid-December. They then will travel
to Southern California to go on temporary display at several venues.
In March 2010, the instruments will return to the Smithsonian Air and
Space Museum, where they will take up permanent residency.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed and built the WFPC-2. The
COSTAR instrument was built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo. The
Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency. The project is managed by
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The Space
Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science
operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of
Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington.

For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Source: NASA