Astronomers had hoped the $1.5 billion Hubble space telescope would give their field its biggest boost since Galileo first used a telescope in 1609. Now the trouble-plagued observatory may make them wait a few more years.
"We've been waiting for a decade, so to wait some more is pretty disappointing. I guess we'll have to suffer," said astronomer David Koo of the University of California at Santa Cruz.NASA announced Wednesday that an apparent manufacturing error prevents proper focusing of the mirrors on the telescope, which is the most expensive unmanned spacecraft ever built.
Agency officials said that until shuttle astronauts can make repairs during a mission scheduled for 1993, the problem will make the telescope's most important instrument - the wide-field and planetary camera - virtually useless. NASA said it hopes to send a shuttle earlier.
The flaw also will make the telescope's second camera, the faint object camera, unable to take pictures any better than those made by a telescope on the ground. The Hubble was designed to study extremely distant stars and galaxies.
Three other instruments, which detect various types of light but are not cameras, will be less seriously impaired.
"It's a major blow to our hopes," said Kim Leschly, wide-field camera systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It is very disappointing, extremely disappointing."
If the telescope's mirrors worked properly, the wide-field camera would be able to make out an object the size of a baseball from a distance of 200 miles.
The camera was designed to help determine the age of the universe, test theories of how the universe evolved, search for possible planets orbiting nearby stars and map the surfaces of moons, asteroids and comets.