Media are invited to attend a breakfast reception at 8:30 a.m. EDT April 23 to celebrate the 24th anniversary of Hubble Space Telescope’s launch into space with the opening of the “Repairing Hubble” exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, located at 600 Independence Ave. SW in Washington.
The exhibit features two Hubble instruments that played a crucial role in the telescope’s success over the years. The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) instrument, installed in 1993, fixed a major flaw in Hubble’s primary mirror. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) recorded razor-sharp images of faraway objects in relatively broad views for more than 16 years. Both instruments were returned to Earth during Hubble’s last servicing mission in 2009.
Participating agencies include NASA, the Smithsonian, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and Lockheed Martin Electronic Systems Canada, located in Montréal.
Speakers at the event are:
— NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who piloted the shuttle that carried Hubble into space in 1990
— Gen. J.R. “Jack” Dailey, USMC (Ret.), director of the National Air and Space Museum
— John Grunsfeld, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate associate administrator and astronaut on Hubble servicing missions
— John Trauger, former WFPC2 principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Seating is limited. Media who wish to attend must RSVP to j.d.harrington@nasa.gov no later than 2 p.m. EDT, April 22. Parking will not be available at the museum.
A recording of the event will air on NASA-TV April 23. For more information on times, visit:
For more information about the WFPC2, visit:
For more information about NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, visit:
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