Hubble trouble
Letting loose of eye on our universe seems premature
Arizona Republic Online Edition
Feb. 24, 2004 12:00 AM

Not so very long ago, "black holes" were viewed as little more than space myths. Physicists could explain their theoretical existence. But nothing so bizarre as deep, dense and deadly voids that ate stars and reduced their mass to the size of pinheads could truly exist. Could they?

Lo, we have now seen it through our own eyes. Or, at least, through the lenses of powerful telescopes that detected a huge X-ray blast in a little-noticed galaxy 700 million light-years from Earth. Scientists say they now have strong evidence of a huge black hole that is tearing up and devouring part of a star that had the misfortune of drifting into the black hole's irresistible gravitational path.

"This is really fantastic stuff," proclaims astronomer Alex Filippenko of the University of California at Berkeley. "This is one of the holy grails of astronomy." Leading the way to this holy grail has been the Hubble Space Telescope, one of science's most valuable tools for confirming the existence of black holes. Indeed, the Hubble has been a literal eye-opener at discovering for earthlings the most distant corners of the universe.

Now it appears the Hubble's time of expanding our universe is coming to an abrupt end. The valuable space telescope is falling into its own black hole: NASA has announced that, for safety and financial reasons, it has canceled a 2006 maintenance mission to the $4 billion telescope. Lacking the necessary improvements, Hubble will slowly deteriorate until it will be rendered useless by 2007.

The canceled maintenance would have extended Hubble's useful life to 2010, perhaps longer. Given its remarkable productivity to date, another three years of stargazing could produce still more amazing results. Of all NASA's projects, Hubble clearly has been among the most productive. Extending its life as long as possible would seem to make sense