Heidi Hammel

“Having the young people engaged, involved, and being the leaders themselves is a great way to capture them intellectually and emotionally.”

“Hubble wasn't designed to look at objects in our solar system, but after it was launched, astronomers realized that with just a little bit of modification to the software, it could look at solar system objects.”

“You have to budget time for the inevitable problems that come up with children. You have to always be ahead of the game. If your proposal is due at NASA on Friday, it has to be finished on Wednesday because, on Thursday, it could be fevers and head lice.”

“Hubble is absolutely unique; we must have a telescope in space to complement the very large telescopes on the ground.”

“You make sure you broaden yourself and have a good solid background in many different things. That's what you need to be a good scientist.”

“I think religion and science operate in different regimes. Religion is a belief system that tries to give meaning and comprehension to peoples' lives. Science is more about the mechanics of the universe around us and the way in which it works. And I don't think those things have to be mutually exclusive.”

“I think we need to be very careful if we want to do things like further modify our atmosphere. And similarly, I think we need to be very worried about unintentional modification, which is basically what's been going on.”

“The Hubble images far surpassed anything taken by any telescope on Earth.”

“Weather forecast for Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt: cloudy with a chance of ammonia.”

“Because Hubble's been up so many years now, it's actually given us a window to things like... how planets' atmospheres actually change, evolve... over time.”

“Because exploration is not science driven, you've got to ask what is it driven by? And it's driven by politics.”

“Being insignificant statistically doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It just means you don't have enough data to show yes or no.”