For the past decade, Hubble has cut through veils of mystery and made a number of head-scratching findings. A worldwide community of astronomers has been forced to rethink everything from the inner workings of planets in our own solar system to the perplexing makeup of stars, black holes and the most distant of observable galaxies.
"The sociology of astronomy has been changed by Hubble," said Bruce Margon, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. "The fact is that the average astronomer now views Hubble as part of his or her normal tool kit."
Margon said he was hard-pressed to pick any top-10 Hubble observations. "Its impossible to identify 10 or 12 or 15...Hubble is now something that the average astronomer anywhere in the world doesnt blink at the thought of using," he said.
For Heidi Hammel, senior astronomer at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Hubbles ringside seat in July 1994 to fragments of Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter produced special meaning. "I think perhaps the most important thing was that these impacts drove home to all of us that impacts are real...we saw what really happens when a small body hits another body," she said.
Hammel pointed out that Hubble's scans of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and faraway Pluto, along with several moons of these planets, show how these worlds can change over short periods of time. "We cannot simply send a spacecraft to a planet and claim that we understand how that planet exists and evolves with time," she said. "Hubble has revealed to all of us in the planetary community what remarkable diversity and change there is in our own solar system."
Off the charts
Each day, Hubble churns out 3 to 5 gigabytes of data. Thats enough information to fill a typical home computer.
Be it detailing the birth and deaths of stars or pushing the limits of its capability to produce a "deep-field" view of a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution, Hubble has become a premier gateway to the universe-at-large.
"What we do is so completely off the charts in terms of the units of scale," said Jeff Hester, professor of astronomy at Arizona State University in Tempe. That sense of scale is difficult to comprehend, he said.
"Its hard to get our brains around it. And harder yet to get our guts around what it is that were looking at," Hester said.
Duccio Macchetto, senior astronomer for the European Space Agency at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, is confounded by the answer to one universal poser: What came first, the chicken or the egg? In his mind, the realization that all galaxies in the universe have black holes at their center evokes a key question.
"Did these black holes come first, or did the galaxies come first?" Macchetto said. "That is one of the remaining questions."
A black hole is a celestial object, once theorized and now confirmed to exist, that squeezes a lot of material into a very small space. The resulting gravitational pull is so monstrous that anything passing nearby, even light, is trapped and cannot escape.
Going the distance
A distant and young universe has been found by the Hubble Space Telescope, one that appears not to be slowing down but accelerating, said Alan Dressler, senior astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California.
Hubble has focused on exotic spots in the universe "where strange and wondrous things are going on," Dressler said. Galaxies are on the main branch of our tree of life, and are a critical step in our existence, he said.
"We need to dissect the galaxies," Dressler said, and doing so will demand new telescopes looking into the infrared, such as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) to be orbited in December 2001, and the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) to be on-duty in 2007.
What's next
Whats the future of the Hubble Space Telescope? Given the three service missions to the orbiting eye in the sky -- in December 1993, February 1997 and December 1999 -- the telescope is in better-than-new condition. Two more Hubble servicing missions are planned for 2001 and 2003. Coordinated research campaigns are planned between Hubble and the now-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as the yet-to-be-lofted SIRTF and NGST.
Hubble is expected to end its science operations in 2010.
Astronaut John Grunsfeld, who took part in the observatorys last servicing mission, said "Hubble is a very young telescope" contrasted to many of the instruments presently in use on Earth. Now outfitted with fresh gyroscopes, a new high-tech computer and a data recorder, the spacewalker said that "we gave planet Earth a working telescope."
Keeping Hubble afloat in the future would be valuable scientifically, said Heidi Hammel. "Weve got a great start with 10 years of Hubble. If we can get another 10 years, that would be just so much better. Id like to try and keep Hubble in orbit as long as possible," she said.
There is talk of hauling Hubble down and placing it on a museum floor. Others mention the prospect of turning the telescope over to a university at missions end. Whatever the case, budgets and needed monies for new spaceborne telescopes are likely to overtake Hubbles usefulness.
"Come 2003 or so, weve got to start investing in the Next Generation Space Telescope," said Al Diaz, Goddards director. "Then we will have to deal with what we do with Hubble beyond 2010. Right now, there is no specific plan."
"Now is the time to reflect on the past and just think about what we can do with the next 10 years," he said. "Its a decade old, but at the same time, weve managed to keep it young. Hubble has a lot of future as well as past."
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