As John Glenn wrote in "Infinite Worlds," the Hubble Telescope has "rewritten the book on astronomy," and it has been doing so for 25 years. This spring, the Hubble will celebrate its 25th anniversary at an exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Hubble@25, co-curated by Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut and current senior advisor of space programs at the Intrepid Museum, commemorates what Massimino calls "the greatest scientific invention ever built."
Massimino, known to his Twitter followers as @Astro_Mike, travelled to space, not once, but twice. He says he caught the space bug when he was six and first saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, but didn't think much of it as he grew up. It wasn't until he got out of college that the engineer decided to pursue a masters degree (and later, a doctoral degree) and work at NASA.
In "Infinite Worlds," Massimino wrote that he was "the luckiest rookie space flyer since Alan Bean" – The Oceanside, N.Y. native, on his first flight to space, was the first rookie to take a spacewalk around the Hubble.
Massimino recalled his experience in the vacuum of space, 350 miles above the blue dot:
"It was so beautiful that it brought me to tears, which immediately caused terror, as I was concerned about introducing water into my space suit, creating some kind of problem, and having to admit during the ensuing investigation that I had cried. My astronaut colleagues never did let me live that down."
Massimino recently spoke to HNGN in an exclusive interview. Along with a dry wit and sharp intellect, the former astronaut doesn't hide his passion for the Hubble and everything it has done for mankind.
The Hubble is celebrating 25 years. What has the Hubble given to us in a quarter century?
It's given us a look into the universe that we would never have even imagined. If you look at the images of the universe that it's shown, it's taken us beyond places where we can't go. It's also not only answered questions and shown us the beauty of the universe, but it's also come up with questions that we don't have answers to; for example, dark energy and dark matter were both formulated by using Hubble.
Dark energy's discovery resulted in a Nobel Prize. Hubble has lead to one Nobel Prize – I think it's going to lead to more. It's also discovered things that people had hypothesized. Astronomers thought that black holes existed. The Hubble proved that there are black holes. There was also the hypothesis that there were planets around other solar systems and Hubble showed us there are, so it has increased our understanding of the universe and it's also shown us the wonder of what's out there.
You went twice to fix the Hubble and your second time was a historical mission...
The two missions I was on were both the Hubble. You can learn all about them if you come to the Intrepid Museum actually. We have Hubble@25 exhibit and it features stuff from both of our flights and all of the Hubble flights. It shows some of the things we did from that second mission, Servicing Mission 4, which was the final Hubble mission. We did a repair of instruments on-site. Usually, you'd just replace an instrument if something was wrong with it – you'd take it out and put a whole new one in, but on servicing mission four we went in there a took the instruments apart – performed brain surgery on the telescope. You can see the actual tools (at the exhibit) that flew in space and the way we trained. Some of the artifacts that we took back are shown here at the museum and tell the story pretty well. So, the historic part of that mission was it was the final one. It was a little bit unique in what we were doing and I think it's depicted well here at the museum. It's well worth the visit.
Final thoughts?
I think the thing is – you can argue about it – but I think it is the greatest scientific invention ever built. For an engineering perspective, it's amazing the way it works and how it can point very accurately at the sky. It travels 13,500 mph but it can fix on a point of sky with the accuracy of shooting a laser from the Empire State building and hitting a dime on the Washington Monument. So it's an incredible engineering machine and it also gives us this great scientific value where Nobel Prizes can be won and it unlocks the secrets of the universe and brings up with beauty of the universe. I think it's the greatest engineering and science instrument ever built and I would encourage your readers to learn more about it here at the museum. It really is a wonderful exhibit that we have here that depicts it, and the 25th birthday of Hubble is coming up in the spring so it's time to reflect and the cool thing about it is the telescope is still working and hopefully it'll still be working in April when we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the telescope. I think it's something the whole world can be excited and proud about and you know, we don't always get a chance to sit back and notice these great things that we do. I think we should celebrate that.
The interview was edited for length.
