NASA is shifting the way the Hubble Space Telescope points. The change is a work-around for a piece of hardware that's become intolerably glitchy. Officials say Hubble will continue to do 'ground breaking science,' for about another decade.
When a private space traveler said he wanted to take a SpaceX capsule on a mission to improve the aging Hubble telescope, NASA studied the options. Internal emails show concern about the risk.
The comet, known as C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), has an estimated diameter of about 80 miles. That's bigger than Rhode Island and about 50 times larger than the heart of most comets.
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted light from what appears to be the most distant star ever seen. It offers a glimpse into an early moment in the history of the universe.
With the James Webb Space Telescope safely deployed, many scientists want to use it. To minimize the effect of unconscious biases, they go through a process developed for the Hubble Space Telescope.
The upcoming launch of NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope should let astronomers see what some of the universe's first stars and galaxies looked like soon after the Big Bang.
"It's just the inefficiency of trying to fix something which is orbiting 400 miles over your head instead of in your laboratory," said Paul Hertz, the director of astrophysics for NASA.
None of us is perfect, and sometimes the Hubble Space Telescope just flat-out points to the wrong spot in the sky. This has been happening more than ever in the last couple of years.
