Not such a bad species after all

Much as we disappoint ourselves with our bad behavior and antics on earth, the human race is still able to do astonishing things.

From Hubble Space Telescope Will Last Through the Mid-2020s, Report Says by Nola Taylor Redd.

Despite recent issues with one of its instruments, the Hubble Space Telescope is expected to last at least another five years. A new report suggests that the iconic spacecraft has a strong chance of enduring through the mid-2020s.

"Right now, all of the subsystems and the instruments have a reliability exceeding 80 percent through 2025," Hubble mission head Thomas Brown of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland told Space.com. Brown presented the results of the engineering report on the telescope's reliability here at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 10.

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Fortunately, the spacecraft was designed to be serviced by astronauts. Thanks to their intervention, and a set of replacement instruments that could correct for the error much as a pair of glasses can correct a person's vision trouble, Hubble has sent beautiful images back to Earth for more than 25 years.

One reason the spacecraft has lasted so long is that astronauts have provided aid. Servicing missions continued to update the telescope until 2009, when the space shuttle was retired.

The final update to Hubble included the installation of two brand-new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and WFC3. The astronauts on Servicing Mission 4 also performed on-site repairs for the telescope's two other instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), both of which had stopped working. The astronauts additionally replaced Hubble's 18-year-old batteries with new ones; installed six new gyroscopes, whose job is turning the telescope; and added a brand-new Fine Guidance System to point the instrument.

The Hubble was launched in 1990. It was last serviced in 2009. It is expected to remain functional until 2025.

So we designed and built one of the largest, most complex, most precise, and most delicate sensing devices in human history. We hurled it into space, just about the harshest and most destructive environment known to man. We have abandoned any maintenance a decade ago. It sees into the furthest reaches of space and back into the deepest folds of time. And we expect that it will remain functional for thirty-five years.

That is astonishing. Not such a bad species after all.