[krb]

“The mirror segments have undergone a series of polishing and cryotesting cycles.”

It was micro gravity that the Hubble people screwed up, IIRC.

[driftdiver]

jeez you’d think it was rocket science or something.

Most people are lucky to find their way across town and yet so many insist on looking down on people attempting the nearly impossible.

[Greysard]

It was micro gravity that the Hubble people screwed up, IIRC.

"To achieve the exacting specifications for the mirror, Perkin-Elmer used an optics template, a tubular array of smaller mirrors and lenses linked by connecting rods, to guide the grinding and polishing processes. When the Allen committee tested this template assembly, it found that there was a critical error of 1.3 mm (0.05 in.) in the placement of the template's components. The Hubble mirror was carefully fashioned to match exactly this error in the template." (link)