June 1, 2009
The telescope on everyone's mind during this month's Space Shuttle flight was certainly the Hubble Space Telescope, as astronauts inspected, repaired, and upgraded the satellite for years of additional scientific observations. But two additional telescopes were aboard Atlantis for this historic flight - a museum-quality replica of one of Galileo's telescopes, and a 200-year-old telescope built by master craftsman Jesse Ramsden. To give you the scoop about these telescopes, we interviewed Marvin Bolt of the Adler Planetarium. Hubble may be NASA's best-known telescope, but it wouldn't be here without 400 years of innovation.
