3. National disgrace

The Hubble Space Telescope was supposed to herald a new era of astronomy, but something is terribly wrong.

NASA’s director of astrophysics, Charlie Pellerin, has been on holiday in Japan, thousands of miles from the agency. He is about to return to devastating news: while he has been away, engineers have discovered a catastrophic problem with the newly deployed telescope. Hubble may be safely in orbit, but it isn’t seeing the universe as it should.

NASA launches an investigation. Someone, somewhere, must be responsible. Maybe they can find the cause, but that won’t fix the telescope.

Somewhere, 380 miles above Earth, Hubble floats alone in the darkness, hopelessly out of reach.

Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects.

13 Minutes: Trouble with Hubble is a BBC Audio Science Unit production for the BBC World Service.

Hosted by space scientist Maggie Aderin.

Theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg, and produced by Russell Emanuel, for Bleeding Fingers Music.

Archive:
Mission audio and oral histories, Nasa History Office