Hubble is profoundly significant
I think for humanity.
We work together, we launched this telescope
that's now in orbit that's now in orbit Earth
and has been in orbit for 25 years
revealing things about the universe that we never knew before.
So because of Hubble we been able to learn
about other galaxies and even the expansion
of the entire universe and details about our own
neighborhood and solar system with detail that we could never have had before.
It was hoped from the outset that Hubble
would help us understand how fast the universe was stretching apart
and it has done that.
But one surprise is that in recent years
Hubble along with ground based telescopes
have been used to determine
that expansion rate is actually getting faster
that expansion rate is actually getting faster, it's accelerating.
Something we call "dark energy" is pushing the universe apart,
that's a big unexpected surprise.
We're also doing things with Hubble that
are innovative that weren't planned from the outset.
One is, we're using Hubble to study the atmosphere's
of planets outside our own solar system.
So we have only known for a few years now
that there are planets outside our solar system
Hubble has not made most of those discoveries of exoplanets
but what Hubble is doing is analyzing the
composition of some of those atmosphere of exoplanets.
And that's a very innovative use of Hubble.
Hubble, even after 25 years is actually
working as well or better then ever
and the reason that is the case is that
the last servicing mission that astronauts did
in 2009 was very successful.
We were able through their hard work and
hard work of many many people on the ground
to install 2 brand new state of the art instruments.
A new camera, a new spectrograph,
and also the astronauts repaired another camera
and spectrograph already on the observatory.
So now we have this full suite of several science instruments.
We also have good batteries and gyroscopes
all the things we need to keep the telescope pointing and operating stability.
So we can get better science now from Hubble
then ever before.
In fact, scientist around the world are proposing
to use Hubble at the highest rates ever in recent years.
So, Hubble is bringing excellent science and we anticipate this for several years to come.
I think Hubble has become a cultural icon
because the beautiful images that it sends down
and one thing I'm pleased that NASA has done
and also the European Space Agency
is to make these images easily available to the public.
This is an image taken by pointing Hubble
at a relatively boring position in the sky
where there aren't any nearby star or galaxies
and Hubble was allowed to collect light
for days on end, so you could see the faintest galaxies
and faintest objects.
What appeared in that image were thousands
of galaxies, most of them never discovered before
and that's just in a soda straw area of the sky.
If you imagine these galaxies extrapolated
around the whole sky, you get a visual image for
how many galaxies there are.
We are always getting surprised by what we are discovering with Hubble.
We are now looking into the atmospheres of exoplanets.
These are planets outside our solar system.
Nobody ever envisioned that for Hubble when it was first launched.
We are able to watch and see
how things change in our own solar system,
we're able to see how planets and comets change,
sometimes on a daily basis.
That's very exciting and we are able to
compare the make up of extremely distant galaxies,
with galaxies like our own,
using Hubble's sensitive cameras and spectrographs.
Different kinds of telescopes have
different strengths and capabilites,
so Hubble is very good at doing observations in
visible optical light and some what into
near infered light and ultraviolet light.
But Hubble is not capable of looking far
into infered light into these
reddened and lower energy light forms
that are sometimes emitted from objects
especially distant galaxies.
The James Webb Space Telescope,
to be launched in 2018,
will be an infered observatory and
it will be able to see galaxies that are farther away
then what Hubble can see.
It will also be able to peer into some of these
dusty regions around stars where we think
dusty regions around stars where we think planets form.
So James Webb will pick up on some of the science that Hubble
has revealed and take us a little bit farther.
So we're excited about James Webb and we hope it will overlap with Hubble some years.