The Quest for the Cosmos: The Perilous Life of the Hubble Space Telescope

The Minnowbrook Conference features stories of ancient quests and heroes. Today, the most dramatic quest of exploration is in space. It involves astronauts, scientists, engineers, administrators, and politicians. It also entails mighty machines of extraordinary complexity. Arguably, the most celebrated single machine of modern exploration is the Hubble Space Telescope. This $2 billion tool of astronomy is known as "the people’s telescope." It has had a controversial, perilous, and spectacular life. When NASA made a decision in 2004 to terminate Hubble, supporters produced such an uproar as to force a reversal of this decision to keep the telescope operating. Why is Hubble so important? The story of Hubble is about science, politics, risk, and humanity’s most basic quest of all: to search for how everything began!