David Leckrone: 'Superman of the Hubble Science'

NASA scientist David Leckrone has been dubbed the "Superman of Hubble science," and for good reason. For the past 16 years, he has been the Hubble Space Telescope's lead scientist, and has been in on virtually every major decision made throughout the project's long and often-troubled history.

He has been the chief advocate of the project's scientific objectives, and he has helped decide which instruments needed to be added or repaired, including the recent major overhaul of the telescope by the crew of the shuttle Atlantis.

"David is the Superman of Hubble science, said Laurie Leshin, the deputy director of science and technology at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "He is the Hubble scientist. There is no other."

Preston Burch, the head of the Hubble project, said Leckrone's role as senior project scientist for the past 16 years has been "ensuring that, from a science perspective, Hubble is doing the right things."

"David is a tiger, and I can't think of a better person who could have served this position," said Burch. "His contributions have been indispensible to the project."

This past week, the Atlantis completed a repair mission that will give the telescope new life for an additional five to 10 years. The astronauts installed a new wide-field camera for deep-space observations, a super-sensitive spectrograph to detect faint light from distant developing galaxies, new gyroscopes and batteries, insulation and a guidance sensor for pointing accuracy.

"This is an extraordinary moment in the history of science" and "it's an extraordinary moment of space flight," said Leckrone. "We have increased Hubble's capability literally by orders of magnitude."

The NASA scientist hopes that in the next few years the Hubble will provide a "family photo album of galaxies, from their infancy to old age" and help us understand how the Milky Way was formed. Leckrone added that "half of the Hubble's most important discoveries have been completely unexpected," so there's no telling what else we might learn.

This next era, he said, represents "the second Hubble revolution." But there is no doubt about the record of accomplishment so far.