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The Deep Impact project is going to fly alongside a comet, and shoot at it, making parts break off for further observation. It's the first drive-by shooting in space.

I work at Ball Aerospace... I thought some of you might like to see the BATC stuff.

Furthermore, even if the HST mirror had been manufactured perfectly, it would be no better than the post-corrected HST. In other words, the HST fix made it "as good as new".


The extra lense introduces a data loss. It will be removed in 2003.

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Oddly enough, you can go to Ball Aerospace and ask for just that... satellite buses

Hubble sat around for a few extra years and had plenty of time to age. The whole problem with the optics on Hubble was that sitting on earth too long deformed the mirror.

Nope. Although the HST primary mirror was ground perfectly to shape, it was unfortunately the wrong shape. Nothing to do with the HST's (admittedly) rather long stay in the clean room. You can read about the corrective optics package that NASA put together to fix the problem (called COSTAR) here.

Hubble is about 15 years old.

Older. The design concept work, which for something your sending up on a man rated booster sets the design in stone, was done in pre-1977.

It was one of the first (if not the first) satellites designed to be maintained by the shuttle.

Unless they've done some military stuff that I'm not aware of, its the only one. No one else was dumb enough to do it again...

Not sure about the lifespan.

Final servicing mission is due for 2003, after that HST lasts as long as it lasts. Some satellites last well beyond they're design specs. For instance the ESA IUE satellite was designed with an expected lifetime was three years, in the end it lasted eighteen years. Finally being shutdown on September of 1996. By late March of 1996 the satellite was operating on just one of its original six gyros (and no HST can't do that!).

The HST will be replaced, at least on the NASA side of the fence, by the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) due to be lauched some time in 2008.

This is an obvious plug. We're a small company and don't have our named mentioned all that often. The star tracker (as it is really called) was built by Ball Aerospace. It is the Ball CT-601 model tracker with a 7.5in shell and 92mm lens, so I'm told.

Our trackers are used all over the place, so perhaps other spacecraft can be used similarly.

Needless to say, our star tracker folks are excited.

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

This is an obvious plug. We're a small company and don't have our named mentioned all that often. The star tracker (as it is really called) was built by Ball Aerospace. It is the Ball CT-601 model tracker with a 7.5in shell and 92mm lens, so I'm told.

Our trackers are used all over the place, so perhaps other spacecraft can be used similarly.

Needless to say, our star tracker folks are excited.

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

This is an obvious plug. We're a small company and don't have our named mentioned all that often. The star tracker (as it is really called) was built by Ball Aerospace. It is the Ball CT-601 model tracker with a 7.5in shell and 92mm lens, so I'm told.

Our trackers are used all over the place, so perhaps other spacecraft can be used similarly.

Needless to say, our star tracker folks are excited.

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

Check out some pictures of the Deep Impact mission including a model of the spacecraft and impactor. Nothing revealing, but interesting. Imagine the pictures from the high resolution camera on the impactor as it hits the comet.

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"