In the first harsh light of revelation, news that the Hubble Space Telescope was flawed appeared to be an unmitigated disaster. Because the telescope's main light-focusing mirror had been precision ground to the wrong specifications, the U.S. had evidently spent $1.5 billion on an instrument that may never take the promised supersharp pictures of the heavens.
Now the situation does not look so bleak. The Hubble blunder is a serious setback, but NASA engineers have found ways to computer-enhance the telescope's images so that they are not as blurry as the first ones received. More important, in the 12 years it...
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