Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 16, 1990                   TAG: 9005160008
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

HUBBLE'S POINTED IN RIGHT DIRECTION

"For the first time we now are sure we know where we are pointing," said Ed Weiler, NASA program scientist for the $1.5 billion instrument. "We can point to a place in space and actually find the stars that are supposed to be there, lock up on them, measure them and use them for focusing."

Since it was set free into space from the space shuttle Discovery on April 25, the telescope has had one problem after another - troubles that scientists have called teething pains of the most complex device ever put into space.

"Since the launch this has been the most exciting day," Weiler said. He said engieners at the Goddard Space Flight Center had succeeded twice in focusing the telescope and they can do it again.

The first photograph from the telescope had been expected a week after the launching, but that date has slipped time and again. Now engineers are talking cautiously of capturing the first image on Sunday.

Their focusing activities are akin to focusing binoculars, said Weiler. "You focus where you think the focus is and go back, that's the process we are using," he said.

In the case of the telescope, the secondary mirror is being moved a few microns - millionths of a meter - at a time. The instrument, when all the fine tuning is done later this year, will be able to look billions of years backward in time - to nearly the beginning of the universe.

Two problems remain to be solved. The instrument still gets the shakes whenever it passes from night into the sun and back into night - events that happen nearly 15 times a day. And there is a slight jiggling whenever the instrument's fine guidance sensors alone are orienting the telescope.