American Institute of Physics
SEARCH AIP
home contact us sitemap
Physics News Update
Number 112 (Story #3), January 28, 1993 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SERVICING MISSION , planned by NASA for Dec. 1993, will address the problems of the 2.4-m primary mirror's spherical aberration and the jitter in the solar array, and will carry our various upgrades such as the replacement of the Wide Field/Planetary Camera. The aberration, which causes light falling on the outer edge of the primary mirror to be focused 38 mm farther along the central axis than light from the center of the mirror, will be undone by the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), a module that brings the light into a much tighter focus. (Astronomy, Feb. 1993.)