I grew up in Colombia Missouri, which is not far from a typical, small mid-western town named Marshfield. Have you heard of Marshfield, Missouri? Until recently, the town was just a humble speck on my Missouri highway map. As soon as I was old enough to leave the state on my own, I moved to New York to discover something….anything. After all, though astronomically impossible, it does seem as if the world revolves around New York City. If one is hungry for an up-close and personal view of renowned feats of art and science or looking for a hub of energy and opportunity to test out grand (or just plain crazy) ideas, New York City is the right place to be. Now that I am here, I am pursing my current passion for journalism and space. Every month I review a new book and write a few articles; this month, I researched the history of the telescope. Lo and behold: Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Space Telescope was named, was born in Marshfield, Missouri—a short drive from my supposedly unremarkable hometown. It’s not a place of options and opportunities like New York, but nearly everyone has a backyard and a fantastic view of the sky. The Alanis Morrisset-esque irony of leaving home to write about space from my cramped Brooklyn apartment (which boasts no backyard and pulsates with light pollution) is starting to sink in…

For those that do not follow telescope history, Edwin Hubble was the first man to demonstrate the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way. He also discovered that the degree of observable redshift from a galaxy increases in proportion to the distance of that galaxy from the Milky Way (this established that the universe is expanding, and is know as Hubble’s law). It is appropriate that the grand telescope created through collaboration between the ESA and NASA was named after the man whose insight gave shape to our portrait of the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope has provided us with some of the most detailed images of the most distant objects within our scope of the universe. Not surprisingly, this has lead to a number of major breakthroughs in astrophysics by providing scientists with accurate data that can determine the rate at which the universe is expanding. To most of the population, such discoveries are no more than facts that are out of reach. In this case however, the technology developed for the Hubble has brought forth more than awe-inspiring insights to unreachable universes for it has also provided practical uses on Earth that save lives on a daily basis.

For example, not long after the billion-plus dollar Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April 1990, it began producing out-of-focus pictures: one of the main mirrors was the wrong shape. This was bad for the budget, but great news for breasts. Luckily, a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute came up with a new image processing system by using computer algorithms that filled in the gaps that were making the Hubble’s images appear blurry. This same process is now applied to routine mammograms and is especially useful for identifying early signs of breast cancer.

A few years after this discovery, astronauts visited Hubble to install a high-resolution digital detector in order provide even clearer resolution of small, dark objects that astronomers were keen to study. Once again, this proved to be a boon for breast cancer patients. This technology is now used for relatively inexpensive, nominally invasive procedure for breast biopsies. There is something funny about a gigantic, phallic-looking object in the sky that has some difficulty in its mission but somehow manages to save breasts worldwide. My male colleagues are sure that this is proof that if there is a God, or a Creator of some sort, then he is surely a man.

There has been quite a hubbub about the decision to service the Hubble again. After all, it is expensive and it has already outlived its 15 year life-expectancy. But despite the budget squeeze, an astronomical number of women have outlived their own life expectancy as breast cancer patients, and they even have breasts left to squeeze. So I am delighted that we have found room to milk the budget for the sake of pictures of galaxies beyond the Milky Way, and I can’t wait to see what the astronauts come up with when they visit the Hubble on May 12, 2009. And next time I go back to Missouri, I perhaps I’ll start a new business selling “Honk for Hubble” bumper stickers at the local hospital giftshops.