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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,
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
seems fairly cheap to me, compared to what it would cost to build and launch a new one
Give the "hunk-of-junk" to me... I'm sure I can find many... uses, for it... **cough** SETI@HOME **cough**
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
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.
Lunar observatory? How 'bout the James Webb Space Telescope, slated to launch on August 2011.
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.
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
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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It looks like they were planning on bringing it back..
"Before the Columbia accident, NASA intended eventually to have a crew of astronauts maneuver the 43-foot-long telescope into a cargo bay and bring it home for installation in the National Air and Space Museum as an inspiration for future generations. A general unwillingness to subject astronauts to such risks for a museum exhibit, among other things, eliminated that option, Weiler said. "
but I know... that's from the second page : )
I think it would be stupid^H^H^H^H^H^Hoverly optimistic to de-orbit Hubble until the new Webb space telescope is launched and fully tested. After all, how dumb would NASA look if it destroyed a perfectly good piece of equipment, and then its replacement fubared because of a mismatched washer or something.
And right now, the plan is to do just that, to bring down Hubble before Webb is even launched, to save a few (million) bucks in Hubble operational costs. And the big debate is that everyone with any sense, and any sense of history, is telling them (NASA penny pinchers) that they're crazy.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Something NASA should consider before taking penny-wise, pound-foolish steps.
Cheers!
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
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.
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?
It isn't, actually. The Hubble weighs about 24,000lbs, and the shuttle can bring down about 43,500.
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!
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.
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
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.
Random and weird software I've written.
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).