Shortly after midnight on Dec. 18, just five days after the shuttle Endeavour returned from the daring mission to repair the Hubble telescope, scientists secretly put the refurbished instrument to its first test. They ordered the Hubble to point toward a bright star and beam its image to Earth. Anxiously, they crowded around a computer screen at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, as they waited for the picture to appear. The Endeavour astronauts had installed the telescope's corrective lenses and other equipment perfectly. But it wasn't certain that the devices would actually work. As the star's image came...
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