The Hubble space telescope, launched in 1990 and costing over $2 billion, was discovered to have a major problem with blurry pictures. What was the cause of this problem, and how much were the repairs?

honeybee4

The mirror was not curved right. It cost $8,000,000 to repair it. http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112188/hubble_space_telescope.htm?tql-iframe Jun 10 11, 9:39 AM

WesleyCrusher

The error was a spherical aberration (shape flaw) in the telescope's main mirror - it was too flat by about 220 times the design tolerance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror The exact cost of the repair cannot be determined since it vastly depends on the percentage of the cost of space shuttle flight STS-61 that made the repair as well as other upgrades to the actual repair and how one calculates the flight costs (complete cost or incremental). Averaged over all program costs, a Space Shuttle launch did cost $1.3 billion while the incremental cost (cost of performing one more launch with a shuttle already built) is given as $36 to 60 million. Thus, one can equally justify launch costs as low as $18 million or as high as close to the full $1.3 billion as part of the cost. Some sources give the cost communicated to President Clinton by NASA as $1 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget (general figures for shuttle launch costs) http://www.company7.com/c7news/nasa_sts61.html (cost communicated to Mr. Clinton, see two paragraphs before "Our Involvement") Jun 10 11, 9:50 AM

serpa

After Hubble's deployment in 1990, scientist realized that the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw called 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 aberration resulted in images that were fuzzy because some of the light from the objects being studied was being scattered. COSTAR (the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement) was developed as an effective means of countering the effects of the flawed shape of the mirror. COSTAR was a telephone booth-sized instrument which placed 5 pairs of corrective mirrors, some as small as a nickel coin, in front of the Faint Object Camera, the Faint Object Spectrograph and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph. http://hubble.nasa.gov/missions/sm1.php In December 1993 the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour fitted the telescope with corrective optics and made other repairs. After this $629 million outer-space repair job, the telescope worked perfectly. http://www.answers.com/topic/hubble-space-telescope Jun 10 11, 9:55 AM