Name: What it takes to launch a telescope
Uploaded: 2019-05-30T14:44:41Z
Duration: 7 min 8 s
Description: TED Fellow and astronomer Erika Hamden leads the team building FIREBall, a telescope that hangs from a giant balloon at the very edge of space and looks for clues about how stars are created. She takes us inside the roller-coaster, decade-long journey to get the telescope from an idea into orbit -- and shows how failure is inevitable when you're pushing the limits of knowledge.

Erika Hamden: What it takes to launch a telescope

What it takes to launch a telescope

TED Fellow and astronomer Erika Hamden leads the team building FIREBall, a telescope that hangs from a giant balloon at the very edge of space and looks for clues about how stars are created. She takes us inside the roller-coaster, decade-long journey to get the telescope from an idea into orbit -- and shows how failure is inevitable when you're pushing the limits of knowledge.

Scientific discovery advances by looking at the universe in entirely new ways, but innovation comes with relentless setbacks. Building a balloon-borne telescope to map immense, invisible hydrogen clouds took over a decade and weathered countless failures, from destroyed sensors to a crash-landing in the desert. Even after setbacks as dramatic as a punctured balloon, the journey continues because progress grows from refusing to quit. True exploration means accepting that failure is not the end, but a vital step toward new knowledge.