The end of Hubble

When the space shuttle Atlantis touched down in California two days ago, it ended a mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. Such missions have happened before, and they are always news, but this was especially big news since it was the last mission to repair the world's most famous telescope.

And so when another piece on the Hubble breaks down -- as it inevitably will -- the Hubble will be no more. The telescope that brought us so many incredible images will just be another piece of space junk.

In fact, Discover Magazine (the link above) wrote, "It is likely to be the last time in our lives that human beings go to space to 'fix' an orbiting scientific instrument."

To see some of the great photos taken by the Hubble head over to the Hubble website and search through the amazing pictures taken by the telescope. They are public domain and you can use them as you want -- as long as you credit NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Miles O'Brien took a look at Hubble from the perspective of someone who "cut [his] teeth on the space beat covering the legendary STS-61 mission in December 1993"

So will there ever be another Hubble? As he unfailingly does, Ed Weiler cut to the chase: “Probably not, because there won’t be a shuttle.”

Indeed, Hubble and Shuttle are inextricably linked - both conceived and gestated with each other in mind in the seventies.

“They are like two kids growing up in the same family,” says Weiler. “They impacted each other’s designs.”

In fact, Hubble’s mirror is 2.4 meters in diameter so that it could fit in the Shuttle cargo bay – and it flies in Shuttle striking distance (low earth orbit) even though that is by no means the ideal place to park a space telescope (half the time, Mother Earth proves to Hubble she would be a better door than a window).

With some luck, the Hubble space telescope will continue sending pictures of distant galaxies back to Earth for another decade or so.

And we can keep using their photos (they are public domain as long as you credit NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute) to get tiny glimpses into the universe.