NASA Provides Venerable Hubble Hardware to Smithsonian

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DC Agle 818-393-9011
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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News release: 2009-169 Nov. 18, 2009

NASA Provides Venerable Hubble Hardware to Smithsonian

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-169&cid=kintera_release_2009-169

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.

JPL 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 . For
a gallery of some of the most well-known and stunning WFPC-2 images, visit:
http://bit.ly/nasawfpc2gallery .

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