NASA Hubble telescope helps blind woman see again

MEDICAL breakthrough using technology inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope is giving hope to thousands with blinding eye disease.

NASA’s telescopes have been helping mankind peer into the dark depths of the universe and now the same technology has helped a woman regain her sight.

Phyllis Price, 79, from the UK has suffered from macular degeneration in her eyes — the loss of sight meant she hasn’t even been able to recognise members of her own family for years.

Now, thanks to technology inspired by NASA, she is now able to walk around confidently, read and even knit.

The medical procedure, which costs $11,000-an-eye, involves placing tiny ‘telescopes’ that act like mini-magnifying glasses in the affected eye and uses the same principals used by NASA when it refocuses the Hubble Space Telescope.

Not only do the tiny telescopes magnify but they also direct images away from diseased parts of the eye to healthier areas.

Mrs Price told the Mirror (UK): “The difference in my sight is amazing.

”I lost all my confidence I could no longer read or sew and could only recognise people by voice.

”I found myself constantly apologising for walking past people I knew in the street. I wouldn’t have been able to recognise my own family unless they spoke to me.”

”I went to a restaurant shortly after having the implant in my second eye, and could read a menu for the first time in two years.”

This ‘giant leap’ in medical science could be the hope to an optical disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people.