Watch Episode 1: Driving the Hubble Space Telescope.
Video transcript:
We have a lock and can send this command just fine. We have thirty-one minutes and thirty-two seconds to assist. Go to the status buffer dump.
Because that Hubble Space Telescope So scientifically effective right now that scientists are using Hubble to investigate some of the universe’s deepest mysteries.
One of the most important things Hubble did is look at the atmosphere around exoplanets.
If you had asked the people who built Hubble and designed Hubble, they would have sworn Hubble could never do this.
One of the things I love about Hubble is that it gives us new questions, new secrets to explore.
Hubble In The Sky
Episode 2: An Unexpected Journey
My name is Larry Dunham. I’m the chief flight systems engineer here at the Hubble Space Telescope.
I started the Hubble program in the summer of 1982 when Hubble was being built in California. The first telescope in space designed so that we have what are known as orbital replacement devices. They are modular boxes with handrails so the astronauts can go up and just play. They have nice connectors that make it easy for the astronauts with their large gloves to pull them in and out.
We had five maintenance missions. We changed some devices several times, especially the instruments. We always work with the advanced technology.
The telescope that we have in orbit today is not the telescope that we originally launched. We have been able to replace all five of our scientific instruments with instruments that have the technology that Hubble’s original construction did not have.
The Hubble Space Telescope is truly an observatory as it has multiple scientific instruments and different modes of operation. We have several cameras, several spectrographs. They each have different capabilities in terms of their sensitivity or the type of frequencies they can receive from the electromagnetic spectrum. We can also use Hubble in different fascinating modes depending on what we want to watch.
There are different types of observation scenarios and one of the things the scientists could do was that they could come up with very interesting and unique observation scenarios that allow them to do science that they would never have thought possible before.
Because the Hubble Space Telescope has been around for a long time, it gives us what we need to explore the universe in profound ways that would never have been possible when Hubble was first launched.
For example, scientists wondered if in the past few years we could use Hubble in an innovative mode by basically scanning objects slowly instead of just staring
on them. In some cases, it gives us greater sensitivity to what we are trying to observe.
And we are now using this particular mode on Hubble to get better information about many kinds of things in space, including the ability to study planets around other stars called exoplanets, planets outside of our own solar system.
What Hubble was able to do is that the spectrographs can see changes, very small changes in the spectrum, when the planets stand in front of the stars around which they move. This allowed them to do so Exoplanet atmospheric studies.
This is something Hubble really put on the plate. It was just phenomenally good at it.
The spectrographs really led to the fact that if you ever see anything about it, oh, a new exoplanet has been discovered that has this in the atmosphere or in the atmosphere, and we think it’s made of this, it’s the spectrographs, who showed you have this type of information.
In order to be able to carry out many exoplanet observations, one has to catch a so-called transit.
First, the exoplanet’s orbit needs to be such that it is between you and the star it is moving around.
We cannot just do an exoplanet watch whenever we want or whenever it is convenient. We have to do an exoplanet watch the first time it goes into the star, so you need to know exactly when to do it.
We have to plan it in advance. This is not something Hubble can come up with if it wants to. We have to say no, at this point on this date you have to be shown here and you have to look here. We really had to think about how to plan this.
There is a lot of thought about it. A lot of thought goes into planning and execution.
The Hubble operations team is quite ready and able to use the telescope in new modes and in new, innovative ways that will allow us to do science we otherwise could not achieve.
We asked her if it would be possible to use Hubble to track something that was moving rapidly across the sky. And they found a way to use Hubble in a fast-tracking mode that would allow us to make explorations and discoveries that astronomers didn’t anticipate for Hubble when it was first developed.
Now when we watch our planets, when we watch Jupiter, or Saturn, or Uranus, or Neptunethey move too. You have to move the telescope because they only go around the sun. They actually move because they really move, so we have to move with them.
Or if we’re watching asteroids or comets, you have to chase them.
‘Oumuamua, we know, came from outside our solar system, is like a large asteroid that was discovered racing through our solar system. We wanted to use Hubble to watch this as well. And we could follow it up and this was not an easy operation.
It moves at speeds in excess of a hundred thousand miles per hour. Hence, it is a wonderful ability that Hubble has made possible to observe and track this.
The telescope is big, it’s massive. It moves at roughly the same speed as the minute hand on a clock. So if we no longer point at one thing but bypass the other completely, we need half an hour. It’s not a very quick move.
We are actually using a very interesting technique. It uses Newton’s third law. We have these very large reaction wheels on it. They’re about two feet in diameter, very, very heavy, very, very massive wheels. If you turn these wheels in one direction, the telescope will turn a little in the opposite direction.
So we can move the telescope from one part of the sky to another part of the sky.
Once we have moved the reaction wheels and telescope so that we are in the right place, we need to be in exactly the right place to put the target in the opening of the scientific instrument.
What is going to happen now is that the FGS are going to start talking to the telescope, talking to the flight software computer, and saying, I want you to move the telescope here a little to position the science for the science opening can.
Most of the time, we use the Hubble Space Telescope to make observations that have been planned quite well in advance. Observers all over the world, astronomers will write proposals. We will then take these accepted suggestions and observe whatever the astronomer has suggested, but sometimes things happen that are unexpected or quick events that we need to respond to more quickly.
We have the ability to do what we call the goal of opportunity, and then something unexpected happens in the universe that astronomers with Hubble want to achieve immediately, as quickly as possible. A typical example was the gravitational wave detection of two colliding neutron stars. Hubble was given the goal of an opportunity to look at the rest and see if we can find it.
We ran the engineers through, we received new command sequences from the Space Telescope Science Institute. We can go through all of this and then run it in orbit.
We need to act very quickly to create a new schedule and set of command loads.
We can modify much of the flight software and change the controls on the instruments. It allows us to change. We can react very quickly.
What Hubble has done compared to what we expected Hubble to do is just amazing. Hubble had his fingers in almost everything. The Neutron star Collision. In search of all the supernovae, all the stuff that goes on with dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.
Hubble just kept finding new things. Now let’s look at these interstellar comets and these interstellar asteroids that are visiting us. It was really spectacular to see.
Hubble’s design really has two key aspects that have allowed us to get through the 30 years that we have and that is really the redundancy we have on board and then it’s the maintenance, the putting in of new and improved instruments and the ability to improve hardware through lessons learned from Hubble’s 30 years of operation.
We are now at our peak.
The Hubble Space Telescope has not only profoundly influenced astronomy. It was shown that humans in space and science can go hand in hand to explore space in richer ways than would ever be possible with just astronauts alone or instruments.
Using these skills together opens up new perspectives in exploration, and this lesson will still benefit us as we envision future exploration of space.
“Go straight ahead?” “We have to let go.” “Okay, Charlie.”
It’s amazing that the astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute keep coming up with new things with a program that is to last, the Hubble’s Duration, that they want to try with Hubble, and we definitely hope we can do be able to provide them with these types of skills through the late 2020s and beyond.
Hubble eye in the sky
