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NASA Debates How And When To Kill Hubble Telescope
Amy's Robot writes "The Washington Post reports that after 13 years of wear and tear, the Hubble telescope may be on the way out. NASA and some outside scientists have become involved in a heated debate about how and when to end the Hubble telescope program. Keeping Hubble in service until 2020 would require an extra maintenance visit by astronauts at a cost of at least $600 million. Some even worry the batteries could fail by 2010, since the next maintenance visit has been delayed by the Columbia accident and space station priorities. Is it worth maintaining our old friend Hubble, or should NASA let him go out in a blaze of glory?"
"How And When To Kill Hubble"
Professor Plum will use the candlestick in the library next Tuesday.
Trolling is a art,
Yes I think hubble should be maintained. At least until we get the Lunar observatory built. Then you will get some cool picures of hubble crashing into the sun.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Do you want a 12 tons falling on your house?
Instead, NASA's plan now calls for building an unmanned craft, which would be launched on a throwaway rocket and attach itself to the Hubble to steer the telescope safely into the Pacific Ocean -- eliminating any possibility that the 12.5-ton telescope could fall on, say, Mexico City or Miami.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Cool slide show of Hubble photographs at http://wires.news.com.au/special/mm/030811-hubble. htm
Unfortunately, gravity might take its course and drop it on a city somewhere.
A large part of the reason why they want to destroy it on their own terms is so that they can control what happens.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
seems fairly cheap to me, compared to what it would cost to build and launch a new one
I can't remember how Hubble was put up there - was it on a shuttle? If so, how feasible is it to just rope the thing in and bring it back? Is it worth the effort to do so and just fix it up, retrofit it, and re-launch, vs. dropping it out of the sky and building a new one?
It'd be great if they could bring it home in the Shuttle and put it in the Smithsonian... I'm certain the museum would hang it from the ceiling!
--Rob
This may sound idealistic, but whether they choose to prolong the mission or not, NASA should definitely consider bringing back the Hubble. It has tought us so much about the universe, and it's such a great piece of History that it's worth to be displayed in a place like the Smithsonian.
R,They need to take it down before it fails mechanically. It's a rather large satellite, and several large pieces might survive reentry to impact on some unsuspecting person below. They will take it down deliberately while it is still working, so that they can ensure they will land in the ocean somewhere, and not on someone's house.
To push it out of our orbit, and see what kind of images is gets while it heads out of our solar system (and beyond maybe)? Or is is calibrated in such a way that it can only serve its purpose from our orbit?
Give the "hunk-of-junk" to me... I'm sure I can find many... uses, for it... **cough** SETI@HOME **cough**
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A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Hubble bubble, toil and trouble...
Seriously, without knowing how much work is involved, would it be possible for NASA to retreive Hubble with a shuttle after a routine mission had been completed? Hubble has taught us so much it deserves to be retained in a museum somewhere. In a way, it's been as important to astronomers and astrophysicists as perhaps the Wright brothers' flyer was to aviators. It would be a crying shame to let it just burn up in the atmosphere.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Hubble is a very upkeep-intensive device. Only very good engineering lets it last the length of time that it does between servicing missions.
Even if you don't upgrade the equipment, there is servicing that needs to be done. The biggest problem in the past has been the reaction wheels; they have spares but they DO fail. At one time they were one failure away from not being able to control the scope.
If you ARE going to go up and replace a few reaction wheels though, you might as well cart along an extra new instrument or two; no point in boosting to orbit and not bringing along new toys.
I wonder if they can keep things going for a while by auctioning off time of the telescope? I doubt they could raise 600 million, but I'd bet they could keep things going for a while.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I mean in 13 years, how much is it that the Hubble telescope can see that it hasn't done yet? Is it now mostly "humm has anything changed" or is the exposure time so long and the focus so small that only a small part of the sky has been charted?
If it's the former, let it die and make a new, stronger and better one and send up. If it's the latter, fix it up and keep it running so it can continue to do its thing.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They already are planning it
The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2011, is designed to observe the universe in infrared wavelengths required to study the most distant galaxies as they accelerate outward.
But the problem is...It will not produce the spectacular visible wavelength images for which the Hubble is celebrated.
So no more great picutures of the universe like Hubble is famous for. I say that it is well worth the 600 mil to keep it up til at least 2020. As inspiration / backup, Hell that is less than a paltry 60 million a year.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
If you haven't read the article, just taking amoment to read the first paragraph really summarizes it to me. I was just a teen when Hubble was launched but the images of space that Hubble gave me were a personal experience, though I have no connection to the industry of space exploration in the slightest.
...On the other hand, didn't they think of all these things 13 years ago when the were launching Hubble?
To me, it seems like destroying Hubble is not a fitting end to a tool that has built so much for us for over a decade.
So I wonder, why are devices like Hubble not built to be retooled - built with some type of standard socket connections so batteries, comupters, lenses, etc. could be more easily upgraded by swapping out major units and bolting them together on a frame just like a computer?
Would a shift in design principles not be the ultimate homage to Hubble, that it would live on as inspiration for developing space exploration devices that were upgradable?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Hubble is not the debris problem. The debris problem is the millions of tiny bits of rocket and sattelite detritus that are whizzing around earth. If the hubble is coming towards you it's pretty easy to see and dodge. If something the size of a saltshaker is coming towards you, it's not so easy to see and dodge, but it can kill you just as dead.
Personally, I'm all for nudging hubble out away from the plane of earth's orbit and just letting it float away and keep observing until it totally dies.
All's true that is mistrusted
Anyone who has seen Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie knows how this will end...
"Mike killed the Hubble! Mike killed the Hubble!"
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
rather than putting it into the Atmosphere, why not put it up on Ebay.
one deep space telescope. has seen where no man has seen before.
used, with millions of miles. as is, where is.
been refurbed a few times but will let go to
good new home. procedes will go to new programs.
Crash it into the moon - we can then finally see if that flag is up there.
Send some elementary school kids up there. If they don't destroy it by doing the monkey bars on its delicate superstructure, they'll hasten its suicide by circling it and chanting, "One Eye, Got One Eye, One Eye, Got One Eye!"
Ask it what time it is, then when it looks at its wrist, hit it with a hammer.
Rename it Old Yeller. Dad'll put it down, while you weep into your dusty wool shirt.
Just put a Democrat on it! It will be sure to 'mysteriously' crash, probably in a wooded area full of hippies.
I like the idea of launching Lance Bass into space.
I guess they don't know how the equation works.
x = cost of property damage when Hubble crashes + lawsuits from surviving relatives
y = cost of 'recalling' Hubble
If x is less than y, we don't do it.
I wonder if it's at all possible or feasible to figure out a way to attach it to the space station. Then it can be either maintained by crew on the station from time to time (since the space station seems to be where we're keeping or interests/people), or slowly scrapped. There's gotta be a few million $$ of parts that can be reused on that sucker, no?
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This guy is talking through his hat. If anything would cause Chinese immigrant laborers to organize and demand overtime, it would be continuous bombardment with deadly high-energy cosmic rays. Just wouldn't be cost-effective.
Therefore a logical decommissioning date would be just after the new scope is up and checks out functionally.
Has anyone thought about automating this stuff? Make these things modular so unmanned robots can do the servicing and updating. Embed little marker tags into the craft so an approaching repair-bot can find its way around, like those robots that follow colored lines on the floor.
--- Ban humanity.
There have been several options listed
a - burn it up
b - bring it back (maybe if the transporter survives the trip)
c - patch it (and give up other items)
and myabe others I missed in the convoluted article.
But one I didn't see in the article was to give it a good hard shove and put it into solar, or translunar orbit.
If this option were followed there would be a chance that it could be retieved later when bugdets were better, or could serve as a permanent exhibit in an solar space museum if we ever get serious about getting off this rock in a more permanent way.
The destruction of our orbital heritige is a symptom of our throw away society, the mass has been moved the hardest part of the journey.
Why waste the effort spent by turning it into terrestrial litter.
If we learned anything from the movie 'Independence Day', we know that any spacecraft can be brought down by a virus. So NASA should just fire up the 'ol Powerbook and upload a virus to bring down Hubble. Problem solved.
Or develop some multi-billion dollar, space-qualified gimbal mounting.
Nah, the attitude/orbital requirements for the scope and the station are just too different.
Plus the vibrations from the space station everytime someone sneezes or touches anything would probably ruin your images.
--- Ban humanity.
> Personally, I'm all for nudging hubble out away from the
> plane of earth's orbit and just letting it float away and
> keep observing until it totally dies.
I seriously doubt that Hubble has enough reaction mass to send it out of orbit. In fact, the Hubble most likely uses some form of OMS (Orbital Maneuvering System) thrusters to change orbit. These thrusters are very weak and are good for adjusting your rotation or changing the ellipse of your orbit. Changing the path of an orbit can potentially send a craft into a downward spiral that would (eventually) result in atmospheric contact.
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The Hubble Telescope has a 2.4 meter primary mirror (it's a Ritchey-Critien type Cassegrain design). Hubble's successor is currently in development and will have a 6-meter multi-cell primary mirror. This will give the James Webb telescope roughly 25 times the light-gathering ability of Hubble. Improved electronics will let the new telescope resolve objects about 400 times fainter than Hubble.
What's more, the new telescope will not be in low Earth orbit like Hubble. Instead, it'll reside at the L2 Lagrange point which is about 1.5 million KM from Earth. This means it's a one-shot deal. It has to work right the first time: there won't be any manned repair missions. One of the benefits of sitting at the L2 point is that it can be oriented so that one side always faces the sun...put a good solar shield on that side of the telescope and the rest of the telescope will remain frigid...essentially, you get a cryogenic cooling system for free.
Why visible light? One of the great advantages of a space-based telescope is it's wonderful resolving power (although, with adaptic optics, ground-based observatories are getting damned impressive), which allows it to observe very deep sky objects. And, due to redshift, the deepest observations that will be made will be in the infrared and far infrared. So, it seems to me that, in order to explore the ancient universe, it makes more sense to have a telescope with a sensitivity centered closer to the infrared end of the spectrum. Moreover, in order to explore objects deep in our own galaxy, or on the other side of the galactic plane, the only option is infrared observations.
Frankly, IMHO, the obsession with true-color images has more to do with public relations than true science. After all, some of the most interesting, recent discoveries have been in the ultra-long wavelengths (eg, WMAP) and the ultra-short (eg, Chandra).
One B-2 Stealth Bomber --> $2.2 Billion USD
15+ more years of Hubble --> $600 Million USD
which would contribute more?
Why does the space station take priority ? they should scrap the ISS and start planning new orbital telescopes. most of the real valid research is done with hubble, and the dmand for time on it is outragous. NASA is a failure because it focuses on money sinks that do nothing.
We don't want another Skylab, with the whole world wondering where it will crash. Hubble is a rather large satellite (nothing like Skylab, but still quite large), and NASA doesn't want it falling on a populated area. Electronics wear out (especially in the harsh environment of space), batteries die, etc. If it is going to be brought down safely, it must be done while it is still functioning, so the de-orbit can be controlled.
Even before Columbia, there were only a couple of more Hubble servicing missions planned, before Hubble was decommissioned and replaced by the Webb telescope. The service missions have now been reduced to one, and they'll get everything that they think is reasonably possible out of it, but then they need to give up on Hubble and move on.
"Sorry Bob, but we're still a little too heavy for reentry. You're gonna have to get out and wait for the next shuttle...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
...need I say more?
Now I won't claim that the ISS has produced zero science, but I will claim that it's a mighty expensive way to do science. Humans in space may win congressional votes, but they're a pretty expensive way to do research. Remote control machines such as the space telescope, the Mars landers, Voyager, etc. have produced much more science for much less money.
If we let the ISS drop, there's be plenty of money to keep Hubble running, build its successor, send machines to Pluto, and a ton of other stuff. Unfortunately, the political reality is that Congress and the American public aren't particularly interested in the actual science. But we're willing to spend $2.5 billion per year because we think astronauts are cool!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Check out the pictures taken using the other end of the spectrum, namely X-rays.
Take the wonderfully violent Crab Nebula for instance. Just marvellous.
The owls are not what they seem
Several people here said we should bring the HST back to earth in the shuttle - and lots of other people have explained why it's impossible - I beg to differ.
The shuttle can haul 63,500lbs of payload up to orbit - but it can only carry 43,500lbs on return to earth. However, the Hubble only weighs 23,500lbs - it's BIG - but it's mostly empty space. So it's NOT impossible.
However, consider things like retracting those big solar panels - I doubt they were designed to retract under power - there are probably all sorts of other reasons you can't bring it back - but shuttle cargo capacity isn't one of them.
Personally, I'd vote to build a replacement - get it up to orbit - then either bring Hubble down on the same shuttle - or get rid of it in a controlled crash.
www.sjbaker.org
Remember Skylab?
Yes, Skylab! It was the first manned space station, and it was american! well, anyway, instead of worrying about TODAY and keeping it operational with TODAY's technology, the pie-in-the-sky nasa engineers decided to wait until tomorrow's technology could save them from poor planning.
Do I see history repeating itself?
MARK MY WORDS: If they allow Hubble to de-orbit, in order to free up cash to build a new replacement, THERE WILL BE NO REPLACEMENT FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Remember, this is Congress, isn't it? And this is a country filled with half-ignoramus who get all their news from Rupert Murdoch.
Cue "Dueling Banjos" - "How come we spend all this money on space monkeys when we don't have no jobs down here?"
Of course, you try to inform these people that NASA has a very small budget - pratically non-existant next to the defense department's big money handout, and that many of the NASA programs are actually at the behest of the Department of Defense, so that their "real budget" for science is very very small.
Cue "Dueling Banjos", again: "But we don't need no science, we need jobs"
Of course, this man is retarded - but he actually represents the majority sentiment.
Now, of course, to you and me, we see the hallmark of a productive society as scientific research. And we are smart enough to know that science for science's sake often has a fantastic impact on everyday lives, etc...
But, this hayseed has a congressman, who also wants to know why you crazy science people want $600 million just to look at the sky.
So, keep in mind - if Hubble fails, their will be no timely replacement.
Long before Mir was brought down, they knew the station will fly/tumble over Japan, but they also knew it would be too high to cause any damage, and safely hit the South Pacific. If it wasn't a controlled fall, it would have been calculated as having a ~98% chance of hitting water.
This article sums up the scientific value of Hubble so far: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3115159. stm
I appreciate your insistence that the only reason to go into space is for scientific knowledge, but I don't think your premise regarding manned space flight is correct.
All the knowledge we gain (scientific or otherwise) is ultimately tied to the fact that we must eventually leave this world if we are to grow as a species. Eventually, manufacturing, mining, and even our quality of life will depend on this.
I also don't see how burning up an unused/unfinished $13 billion dollar investment is considered a plus for all the people who have paid for it. I also don't see how you can gauge the scientific potential of the ISS before it's finished and has a full crew dedicated to experimentation and science.
I agree that we should find a way to increase NASA's budget. I believe there is no reason to down the Hubble if we can service it and it remains useful. I don't believe the way to accomplish either goal is to abandon manned spaceflight, or cannibalize it for other programs. We spend 400 billion on our military every year, surely we can find a way of cannabalizing THAT boondoggle before picking on any of NASA's current budget?
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
for those who don't know, the whole point of a nuclear reactor is to provide lots of heat to boil liquids for a turbine generator. You wouldn't need to do this if you can use all those microwaves and hard radiation floating around space. con: water is heavy. pro: water blocks radiation and it never needs replacing
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What's the possibility of placing Hubble inside a special re-entry vehicle (perhaps a big tube with heat shield) and parachuting it down like the old apollo spacecraft did? It's seems like such a waste to destroy such a significant part of space history.
When all else fails, run.
Visible light is important. Not as much for deep sky objects, sure. And probably not even for the next generation or two of space telescopes. But we have not even come close to being able to visually look at even our closest neighboring star systems. We rely on gravity wobbles and visual occultation to find other planets. As our resolving power improves, we will begin to make out these details and it will likely be one of the larger discoveries that have been made this century (assuming it happens this century).
Physicists probably won't care much about other star systems while they're struggling to unify special relativity and general relativity, but plenty of other branches of science will. So don't dismiss visual wavelengths.
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Indeed! Imagine what detail we'd get moving the lens 0.00000000000000000000000000001% closer to that nebula! And for just $100 billion worth of fuel, booster technology, spacewalks and supply launches! You'd have to be a fool not to jump at that chance!
If it could be steered into a safe de-orbit, would it not be possible to steer it into a rendezvous with the space station and either mothball it, refit it there - or use it as an attraction for the next space tourist who came along? After all, if the space station is looking for a purpose, why not a repair shop? Its always seemed very wasteful to me to let all those raw materials that cost so much to get into orbit burn up on re-entry. You could even put it into Lunar orbit(although I guess the fuel needed would be prohibitive) to use as raw materials should a lunar base ever be made.
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The second one failed in April. If Hubble only had two working gyros, it would be shut down until repairs could be made (as was done in 1999). Three is the minimum required for pointing the telescope (one for each dimension).
Maybe they need another spy satellite.
Or, they could use it as an offensive weapon. Focus the rays of the sun and fry cities!
Or perhaps they could use it for some kind of solar collector/intesifier to provide power?
-- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows, Microsoft is always the company that is handing out stress balls?
HST IS a reconfigured spy satellite design. It's heavily based upon the Keyhole 11 Satellite, but with a better quality mirror, different instruments, changes to make it easier for servicing and extra gyroscopes for stablization (because astronomical images take much longer to be formed than spy pictures).
Why not just attach this throwaway rocket and instead of aiming it to fall in one of earth's oceans, aim it at the moon just to see what happens! I mean, why not?! think how cool that would be to have a crater in the shape of the hubble telescope to preserve its memory forever...or at least until another telescope is destroyed on the moon ;)
I think they should rent time to male college students to look into female student dorm windows or to look down on nude or topless beaches. Imagine the resolution? They'd certainly raise enough cash to keep Hubble going for at least another decade. They could use paypal. Instead of calling it Hubble Space Telescope they could call it the Hubba Hubba Nudiescope!
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Why not attach a thruster pack on it using an unmanned robot launched whenever and then have the Hubble pushed into a lunar orbit. That way we can preserve the Hubble (unless something small and fast hits it) and it will be in a great location for potential future use. I can Imagine the first moon base scientists taking on a "restore the Hubble" as a small project as from the moon getting into lunar orbit is so easy to do. yeah you would need to send the spare parts to the moon for such a thing to happen, but with the Hubble parked it would be a do-it-our-own-time kind project. Sure it wouldn't be as good as what we would have at the time, but it would still be very useful. If anything giving universities or other organizations "hubble time" on the cheap could help to pay for it.
I would hate to see something as wonderful as this work of art burned up.
Let me put it this way... the space elevator is to most spacecraft designers what string theory is to some physicists; Yes, it is a good idea. No, it's probably not going to work, and even if it could, we could never test it / build it. So it's really a moot point, and holding out hope for it is unproductive. Like it or not, we're stuck with chemical propellants for the forseeable future for Earth Access to Orbit.
Hubble is one of the VERY FEW things NASA has gotten right! Spend the $600 Million to fix it. Hubble has done more for science than the space station EVER will. It's like shooting a horse simply because it's old, even though it can still win a race.
And now, under orders from a White House (filled to bursting with creationists), some nickel and diming paper-pushers are considering frying it like a corn dog at the state fair. And let's not discuss how they are stripping down the James Webb telescope.
So, I guess it makes me feel older. Good run while it lasted though.
Bemopolis
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
It's not impossible- from a physics and theoretical point of view. What I have yet to see addressed, however, are several 'peripheral' issues like security (Both from humans and from nature- has anyone thought of the consequences of weather on a really big, tall, presumably current-conducting filament?). Or operations/safety (How DO you repair it if a car breaks down in the grey area between upper atmosphere and lower orbit, say, 60 nautical miles up? Can't get a plane there. Can't get an orbiting vehicle there. Climbing would take hours if not days, while cargo could be rotting or people could be dying. Or extensive micrometeoroid impacts on that same grey region. Or power generation at the orbiting terminus; you certainly can't pipe power up there from the ground (current carrying filament being dragged through a changing terrestrial magnetic field? Say goodbye to stability, hello to torque!) and solar panel arrays are prone to failure if used in the long term. And so on... Those are just two major points I've never seen addressed in any comprehensive way. Certainly, in theory, it's the best Earth-Orbit system. But I remain unconvinced as to its practicality.
Objects in low earth orbit lowly lose momentum due to friction with the outer atmosphere. Left on its own, Hubble is going to eventually come down on its own. The ISS, for example, requires a periodic boost in speed to keep it from slowing to the point where it can no longer maintain orbit. The point of guided re-entry and burnup is to make sure the big stuff comes down in a place it can't hurt anything (i.e., the ocean).