The Hubble Space Telescope reached orbit with a mirror ground to the wrong shape by a fraction of a human hair, and astronauts repaired the billion-dollar mistake by effectively giving it glasses

Hubble’s first images did not look like the beginning of a new era in astronomy. Stars that should have appeared as sharp points arrived with fuzzy halos. Fine detail was washed out. The telescope was in orbit, its 2.4-metre primary mirror could not ... [9440 chars]