National Geographic Society

Hubble's WFPC-2, now on display at Air and Space
—Picture copyright Smithsonian Institution

"The difference between an artifact and an instrument is that, now that it's an artifact, you can't touch it anymore."

So General Jack Dailey told astronaut John Grunsfeld during the opening of a new gallery in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum—now home to several significant artifacts from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Just a few short months ago, Grunsfeld was part of the shuttle mission sent to repair and upgrade the aging Hubble. The crew's tasks included removing the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) and the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) so they could be replaced with more advanced instruments.

(See some of the first pictures from the upgraded Hubble.)

COSTAR, sometimes called Hubble's contact lenses
—Picture by Eric Long/NASM, copyright Smithsonian Institution

Air and Space made the phone booth-size COSTAR part of its new gallery, called Moving Beyond Earth, a high-tech setup full of interactives, computer feeds, and huge visual projections.

The gallery also houses the HST Power Control Unit Trainer, a life-size replica of Hubble's electrical nerve center. Grunsfeld was among the astronauts who used the trainer to practice replacing the unit during a 2002 servicing mission.

—Picture by Eric Long/NASM, copyright Smithsonian Institution

WFPC-2, meanwhile, gets a place of honor in the museum's Space Hall. The camera, about the size of a baby grand piano, "turned Hubble into the Great American comeback story," NASA's Edward J. Weiler told reporters during the gallery opening.

The now beloved space telescope had a few early setbacks, including the grim discovery shortly after launch that its primary mirror was deformed, making its science images pretty much useless.

WFPC-2 got installed during the first-ever Hubble servicing mission in December 1993, complete with its own built-in corrective optics that compensated for the faulty mirror.

(FYI, new instruments installed since then also carried their own corrective optics, eventually rendering COSTAR obsolete. It was removed to make room for a device called a spectrograph, designed to study the origins of the universe.)

The same mission added COSTAR, a bundle of tiny mirrors that sent corrected, focused light to the rest of Hubble's instruments. But WFPC-2 specifically went on to provide scientists with some of the most iconic Hubble pictures that both dazzled the public and offered new insights into the universe.

"Museums remind us of the choices we make as a culture." —David DeVorkin

(See WFPC-2's last "pretty picture" before the camera was removed in May 2009.)

"Hubble has more than fulfilled its promise," said senior curator of space history David DeVorkin.

But astronaut Grunsfeld, who joked about his title of "chief Hubble hugger," reminded the audience that it wasn't really the instruments that saved Hubble, it was the people.

"Museums remind us of the choices we make as a culture," DeVorkin added. During Hubble's development, people made the choice to build a space telescope that could see objects ten billion times fainter than the human eye.

People also made the choice to make that telescope something that could be regularly serviced rather than used until it broke and then abandoned.

And when Hubble suffered from its initial setback, people made the choice to find ways to fix what was quickly labeled as a national failure.

"It's a message of persistence," Dailey said. "Don't quit. Hubble is a perfect example of that."

Did you hear? Today, July 20, 2009, is the 40th anniversary of the day humans first set foot on the moon.

Yeah, I know. If you read newspapers/watch TV/surf the web/opened your door this morning, you've probably been flooded with Apollo 11 news by now.

On one hand, it's quite the achievement worth celebrating. On the other, it's a reminder of all we have *not* accomplished in the field of human space travel over the past 40 years.

For our part, NatGeo has been busy creating some fascinating content to commemorate the heady days of the Apollo program.

One of my personal favorites is an interactive version of a pressed vinyl record called Sounds of the Space Age, which was an insert in the December 1969 issue of the magazine.

I may not be old enough to remember the moon landings (technically, I wasn't born yet!) but man, I do recall those wonderfully floppy records. I'm pretty sure I had one with a McDonald's song that had me crooning the ingredients in a Big Mac when I was 12...

Speaking of Micky Ds, some good folks working out of a now-defunct restaurant in California have been restoring the original 1960s Lunar Orbiter pictures taken to help scout out landing sites for the Apollo program, and we've got a few examples of their work on display.

To get a real sense of how well satellites could see back then, check out a zoomable version of the famous "Earthrise" image taken by the first Lunar Orbiter.

Still not convinced man landed on the moon? Writer Ker Than interviewed a couple delightfully witty experts, who gave him the skinny on why some of the more common hoax theories are all wet. And if historic images don't seal the deal, check out pictures released this weekend showing quite clearly the shadow of a lunar lander.

Finally, here's a shameless plug for a piece I scared up on the question of who, exactly, can claim the moon.

There's a ton more from us, and so much good, funny, thoughtful, and touching Apollo coverage elsewhere online.

It might seem weird to get so excited at the 40th, with the 50th just a few short years away. But as one historian recently noted, this could be the last major anniversary when all of the original Apollo 11 crewmates can still gather to tell tales. So make the most of it, people, we're living history even as we relive that historic day.

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it.

I've grown up on a stead diet of Star Trek—from the days when Mom confided to my preteen self that she married Dad because he reminded her of Mr. Spock, to just this week when I was talking to a coworker and found out I was not the only person in the universe who actually liked Voyager.

[watch me duck to avoid being pummeled by virtual tomatoes ...]

So you can imagine my joy when I was given the green light to guest blog for National Geographic magazine about the science of the starship Enterprise.

—Copyright 2009 by PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORPORATION. All Rights Reserved.

Hopefully this will make up in some small part for my disappearing act over the past few weeks—it's been something of a whirlwind, but that's no excuse for being a delinquent blogger.

Having now seen the new film, I can say I was not disappointed, mostly because the acting was so genuine. They really captured those characters without turning it into a parody—Karl Urban is my new hero. Despite Bakula's best efforts, I'd say the franchise is still alive and kicking.

As a bonus, one of the questions I asked for the magazine's blog that didn't make it in was whether they had any science consultants other than Cassini's Carolyn Porco, who famously provided design help with their planetary scenes. Production designer Scott Chambliss told me in reply:

We did quite a lot of research with the NASA and JPL crowd. They told us that they watched Star Trek, and aspired to create in the real world what the Trek world did. Go figure!

When you think about it, there's a host of things in modern society that mirror Trek tech:

• flip phones = Starfleet communicators
• PDAs = PADDs (those nifty hand-held screens officers use to read reports)
• Bluetooth headsets = Uhura's earpiece

And even more Trek-inspired gadgets are "on the way," if scientists have their way about it—cloaking devices, hyposprays, tricorders, universal translators, even nanoprobes.

So, it's been a long day, and I'm beat ... Can someone please get on those transporter beams? Thanks.