Science writer John Wilford once observed that his articles had to focus on one of these story lines to earn their way into print: “big bang, big bucks, big screwup, or big comeback—and with the Hubble Space Telescope you’ve got them all.” He was right. Since launching into orbit almost 30 years ago, Hubble has gone from the humiliation of “techno turkey” to high-risk recovery to recognition as one of history’s most prolific scientific explorers.
Before setting out on its decades-long journey, Hubble was touted as the greatest advance in astronomy since 1610, when Galileo peered up at Jupiter through a telescope he invented. Four centuries later, astronomers hoped that Hubble—then the most complex and costliest satellite ever dispatched into space—would enable them to home in on the big bang. The product of 12 years of design, testing and construction, the gleaming aluminum cylinder would break down barriers of space and time to obtain crystalline images of celestial objects and events never seen or even imagined.