The debate over the Hubble Space Telescope is about more than our ability to see billions of light years away. It’s fundamentally a debate over money, that involves the scientific community and politicians and the very future of America’s space program.
Many scientists question why the government wants to put astronauts on the moon and later on Mars. They say that the best use of scant science dollars demands more support for telescopes and robots that can go farther and look further than humans.
The Hubble they say, though 15 years old and in need of repair, is still the best eye on the expansion of the universe: our eye back into time. The question is will NASA decide that Hubble’s eye is important enough to win a new billion dollar pair of spectacles in this week’s budget. A price tag on deep space.
Guests:
Rick Fienberg, editor-in-chief of Sky and Telescope Magazine
Stephen Murray, Senior Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.