The Hubble Space Telescope was released back into the wild this morning, it’s 19 year check-up, repairs and upgrade successfully completed, and spectacularly so. The only “failure” was the incomplete repair of the lesser-used half of the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which they only half-expected to work anyway.
Here’s to many more years of spectacular images and even more spectacular scientific results. At one of the post-spacewalk press conferences, one of the scientists on the panel explained that Hubble now sends down 30 times more data than it did just after it launched, which is just one measure of how much more efficient and effective an instrument the newly, upgraded telescope has become. Long after its final plunge into the Pacific Ocean (hopefully many years hence), the scientific data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope will continue to yield results that will bring us to a greater understanding of the universe around us.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering why an atheist would used a religious expression like “God speed” on his blog, my answer is “Why not?” There is no doubt that religious expressions, traditions, literature, and imagery pervade our culture, and I don’t see any reason why they can’t co-opted for entirely secular purposes. After all, why invent a new secular family-oriented gift-giving winter festival when there is a perfectly good one just lying around? The same goes for expressions like “it’s a miracle”, “bless you” and “God speed”. There is no reason why they should be spurned simply because they have religious connotations. Go green, and recycle!!
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