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NASA Cancels Hubble Mission, and Other Space Bits
An anonymous reader writes "NASA Watch is reporting that NASA has cancelled Servicing Mission 4 for the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason given is not for budgets, but for safety." ender81b writes "With all the excitement generated by the Mars Exploration Rovers now is a good time to look at future space exploration missions. One of the most exciting is the Kepler spacecraft which will search for terrestrial planets around nearby stars. Other interesting upcoming missions include the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Deep Impact which will fire a small impactor into a comet to study the insides, Messenger which will fully photograph Mercury for the first time, and the ESA's Herschel infrared space telescope and Rosetta spacecraft which will land on a comet for the first time. Whew, good time to be invovled in space exploration!" StarWreck writes "Cnet.com is reporting that the Mars Rover uses Java. The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars."
The article states only that Java is being used for the software used to send commands to the rover and process the output.
I'm assuming that the limited amount of power the rover has access to would forbid the use of Java, would that be right? And if everything is controlled from the ground anyways, we're not talking about especially complicated code in any case, so why bother with the overhead?
Then again, if they're sending code to the rover maybe Java does make sense; bytecode tends to be smaller than machine code, so you get better utilization of upstream bandwidth.
(Anybody know what OS the rover uses?)
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Okay, now I know that it is somewhat of the geek stereotype that "If its not broke, gimme a minute to make it faster", but why does it seem like we are abandoning the HST?
.02, YMMV.
Yes, I know that technically it is coming to the end of its projected life span, but that does not mean we should just let it die. I never cease to be amazed at some of the images (yes I know they are touched up) that the HST has given us.
Yes, NASA and JPL are (and righfully so) basking in the glory of the success of the latest Mars probe. But what about in 6 months when those probes are gone. All I see in these stories are future flights. Why abandon something that is still giving us good results.
With the less than perfect track records of probes sent by *any* space agency, I can't pin my hopes of data (and dreams) on future flights.
I think its only wise to keep the HST working as long as we can, or at least until the Webb (is that correct?) telescope is up and functional.
Just my
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
To quote "John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist" in the CNN article i linked a few posts after yours,
"He said the decision was influenced by President Bush's new space initiative and "Grunsfeld said Bush "directed us to use this precious resource" (the shuttle) toward completing the International Space Station and fulfilling U.S. obligations to the 15 partner nations."
Who are we supposed to believe? NASA, or you?
This guy even seems to think it's a good idea, so it's not like he's trying to pass the buck, ""This is a sad day," said Grunsfeld, but he said the decision "is the best thing for the space community.""
They may have been considering it before, but Bush's plan certainly helped decide the issue.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Hubble has been the best publicity generator for astronomy for *years* now. My bet is that this was announced when and how it was precisely because they are hoping to generate enough public outrage to get this decision reversed. Personally, I know it was a blow to many of my colleagues. Trying to get HST time has been difficult and frustrating, but you can't deny its impact. The number of high quality science results that have been generated by the telescope dwarfs just about all of its competition when you use most object measurement criteria. We'll see what happens, I guess, but my guess is that the astronomical community is going to at least try to put whatever weight they can muster behind getting the HST servicing mission made a priority again.
As a note about fully mapping mercury, it seems to be one of the forgotten planets nobody talks about much, but has had some attention in the past.
Still, there are some interesting Mariner shots of the planet online. Not quite half has been mapped yet, but there's some interesting features that make it unique.
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They're saying the Hubble won't get serviced because there isn't enough time to do it before the shuttle fleet is retired. And since the date for the retirement of shuttle was selected after the Mars announcement, I think it's fair to say that Hubble is being neglected for budgetary reasons.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
We _plan_ to have a replacemnt sent up. The current plan assumes about a 3 year gap when we won't have a space based telescope. If the economy doesn't get more rosy, that three year gap might stretch to five or more. Ground based telescopes have also improved and can take up more of the slack than many expect, but there is some risk here. For ex. what happens if there is a nearby supernova during that window when we don't have a space based scope? We have a small but significant chance of missing a once in a few hundred years observing opportunity because it happens to fall in the gap.
Yes, this is not related to the manned mars mission. The decision to deorbit Hubble has already been made. Nothing is being lost here to the new programs, and nothing is being lost from unmanned missions and straight science to promote manned missions. However, something may well be lost for other reasons.
Who is John Cabal?
NASA Watch is reporting that NASA has cancelled Servicing Mission 4 for the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason given is not for budgets, but for safety."
Associated Links:
thestar.com
news.scotsman.com
I do not understand this. We've got a wonderful tool up there a generating ton of data. Just because it's not getting great press anymore... and just because it's not the sexy thing right now, why forget about it?
They can easily (well, easy for me to say) work on it during their visits to the space station.
We'll spend a trillion to get men to Mars... but we can't take the time and energy to keep the space telescope up and running?
I like the push to Mars... but why abandon a tool that is gathering so much wonderful data?
AC
This article (http://www.nature.com/nsu/030728/030728-13.html) from the summer had the following speculation-
"Until recently, the agency had planned to have the space shuttle return Hubble to Earth for museum display. "No one wants to do that anymore," says Anne Kinney, head of NASA's astronomy and physics division.
In fact, the US astronaut corps opposes "risking human lives for the purpose of disabling great science" representative John Grunsfeld told the meeting. It would support a servicing mission to extend Hubble's life or ensure its safe re-entry, he said. A servicing trip to the telescope costs NASA about US$700 million, much of which maintains planning teams at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The option of moving the Hubble to a higher storage orbit has also been dropped. Instead, NASA favours attaching a rocket booster to the telescope in 2010 to steer it to burn up over the ocean.
So far, NASA has found no affordable way to attach the rocket and extend the telescope's life without degrading its performance. Defenders argue that the problem can be solved, and that useful observations can still be obtained from the telescope after the booster is attached."
I guess it's just going to drift while. It's in a 600km orbit.
I think while Earth-based telescopes have equalled or surpasssed the Hubble Space Telescope thanks to the use of segmented mirror designs and adaptive optics, you still want to have a powerful telescope that will operate beyond the refractive interference of the Earth's atmosphere for very distance object imaging.
The is where the James Webb Space Telescope now in development comes in. It will have a much larger primary mirror than the HST, and will of course sport adaptive optics so the precision of the primary mirror need not to be so extreme. The new space telescope might have high enough resolution that we might be able to see even the effects of smaller, rocky crust planets circling around other stars.
The articles state that NASA is going to "design and build" a robotic attachment to send up to Hubble when the lifetime is over. This is going to dock with Hubble, the control the re-entry so that it doesn't end up hitting a populated area.
Seems to be, the costs of one additional shuttle mission may very well be cheaper than the costs to design and build this robotic craft.
Also, the original plan called for a final shuttle flight to return Hubble inside the payload bay. Hubble was to be studied in detail to see the effects of long-term exposure in space to help design future craft to be more resistant.
After that, it was going to be given to the Smithsonian AIr and Space museum. A fitting place given the discoveries made with Hubble.
Sometimes I think we are often shortsighted these days...Doing everything for the bottom line and not thinking about future generations ability to "see and touch" some of the great things we have done.
If anyone's curious about the CPU used by the rovers, it's one of the POWER derived radiation hardened chips made by BAE Systems. While it's PPC based, it's more similar to a family of CPUs that split off even before the first of the Mac PPCs, the 601. Similar operating speed and power, however, as the first of those.
The newer PPC based space capable CPUs are RAD750s, which are directly related to the G3 PPC powering iMacs and iBooks.
While on the topic of space hardware, and going back to photograph mercury, what kind of camera equipment was used to take images of the moon and mars in the 1960s/1970s? I was told by an English teacher that each photo was snapshotted on film, then exposed in a small photoprocessing lab inside the probes, and scanned to send back to earth as there was no possibility of capturing fast moving images on CCD that far back. I think that sounds a bit of wishful thinking urban legend. Anyone know for sure?
thanks
Read the letters. The reason SM4 is cancelled is due to the need for developing safety procedures that are not necessary for (science lightweight) ISS, now the exclusive beneficiary of shuttle missions. Why would it be impossible to develop these safety procedures? It only takes half a dimwit to understand that money is the roadblock. Sadly, we've less than half a dimwit sitting in the Oval Office, randomly reshuffling NASA in order to generate election buzz...
The three main beneficiaries are Cape Canavral (launch, at Florida), Johnson Space Center (Mission Control, at Houston), and JPL (interplanetary craft, at Pasadena, California). FL, TX, and CA. All of these centers, and hence states, will see vastly increased funding. And all of these centers are also in key states Bush needs to win the election.
Sorry about the conspiracy theory, but it's an interesting trend, noticed especially by several NASA folks too.
make world, not war
... is a fine piece of work for its time, but we are capable of making much more powerful space telescopes now, it might be best that we DON'T put mroe money into the Hubble.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
I think I might be able add a little perspective here, and yes "OMG .." is a good start. I have been working for the past 5+ years on a science instrument for SM4. We've been busting ours butts, and our instrument is complete and ready to go. Today we learned that our mission is cancelled immediately, thanks for playing, do not collect$200, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
The 'safety' issue is that the shuttle must fly a different orbit to service the Hubble than for a trip to the ISS (International Space Station). Once in orbit, a tile-damaged Hubble bound shuttle could not change its orbit to reach the safety of the ISS. NASA COULD however have another shuttle on the pad to catch up to the damaged orbiter and unload the astronauts. The problem is cost, whether to have the extra shuttle ready, or to employ a in-orbit tile fixing procedure.
GW is forcing NASA to re-direct $11Billion dollars from existing science projects to add to his contribution of $1Billion, so that we can send our ass(et)s to the Moon.IMHO, the cancelling of SM4 is purely about saving money. IMHO, this is GWs 'pie in the sky', get there before those evil Chinise and do it now, or I'm gonna cry, 'vision'.
The Hubble has been the best observatory ever constructed, and while ground-based optical telescopes have caught up the Hubble is some respects, no ground-based telescope can measure UV light, or compete with the Hubble on image stability (among many other things).
What's to become of the Hubble ? We cannot just let it fall back to Earth, very large pieces will survive the re-entry. Ideas have been tossed around with the options being to spend tons-o-cash to de-orbit it with a special rocket pack (guiding it into ocean), or bring it down with a shuttle.I doubt that the rocket pack can be constructed before Hubble re-enters in 2006. So, we may have to send a shuttle up to bring it down anyway.
FYI, SM4 would have extended the Hubble's livetime considerably with new Gyros and pushing Hubble back up to the shuttle yes maximum elevation. This would allow for overlap with JWST. Without this facility (HST) an entire arm of the astronomy community will be cut off.
Can you imagine if GW told the military, sorry about cancelling those jet-fighter things, don't worry we're gonna build this large wooden badger that's gonna show those silly French guys real good.
This is really sad, since I think we need a strong (and useful) presence in low earth orbit before we tackle the big goals. For example, telescopes (plural), at least one space station that does useful things like stockpile food, rocket fuel, etc. The reason is that it is easier to build a smaller space vehicle to escape earth's gravity (well, the strong part near the surface) and restock supplies in orbit. Let the damn shuttle with its huge storage capacity ferry supplies to orbit, while moon and mars vehicles are built leaner.
I really think it is important to get a habitable space station, maybe with artifical gravity (a big spinning thing, greenhouses, etc), into orbit. It provides a launchpad to bigger and better goals, and who knows, maybe people will start living in orbit full time like in science fiction. That is a good thing for reasearch if we ever want to send humans farther out.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
They can easily (well, easy for me to say) work on it during their visits to the space station.
i could find a thousand physicists to disagree with you...it's all about orbital inclination. the hubble is at 39 deg inclination to the equator. the station is at 51.6. it would take MASSIVE amounts of propellant to make your idea feasible.
why? remember spinning that bike tire as a kid? translating the axis was easy. changing it's direction, huh, there's some kind of weird force opposing that...same thing with orbital mechanics.
the same argument holds true (but to a larger extent) for the challenger...they couldn't go to the space station because of different inclinations.
for the lazy - lower inclinations are the same as smaller amplitudes on the sinusoidal ground tracks that are visible in mission control...
According to a Time Magazine survey 19 percent of respondents believe their income places them in the top 1 percent of taxpayers. Another 20 percent say they're not in the top 1 percent now but will be soon.
500M$US to bring it down? Chicken feed to an Administration that spends 1000 times that in deficit. Shame. Shame on them.
The two most common things in the Universe are dark matter and stupidity.
Exactly. As an astronomer let me assure you that all of these are absolutely worthless, and all scientific progress will cease once this horribly-redesigned-to-justify-a-manned-shuttle, wasn't-even-built-right-by-political-contractees turkey that's reached the end of its operative lifetime.
Actually, it is a shame in a purely emotional way. Just like when MIR was deorbited. But it's still the right call.
And I don't mean to demean the astronauts who at risk to their own lives got that POS in something like working order, and finally gave everyone some pretty pictures.
What's puzzled me is why NASA doesn't consider licensing Energia from the Russians and using it to lift the remaining ISS components. Because of its cargo capacity, they won't have to worry about cramming all the stuff into the Shuttle...
Energia is a proven platform, at any rate; and we wouldn't even have to send people up on it.
Come on, NASA, just get that Orbital Space Plane up so we have a people ferry. Save the heavy hauling for other platforms.
You're still better off with a GCNR engine. Given that the engine can "breath" different forms of gases, you can build it to power a horizontal takeoff and landing craft using *only* air. When the air supply is not high enough (during sub-sonic speeds and near orbital periods) hydrogen or oxygen fuel could be pumped from fuel tanks. Plus, the craft would have the power and fuel to make a more gradual ascent so that the airframe doesn't have to be strong enough to support Mach 12 atmospheric conditions. Instead, it can accelerate to those speeds as the air thins.
Another advantage to the nuclear solution is for interplanetary craft. It doesn't make sense to land a few million ton craft, so small GCNR transportation "shuttles" could be launched from the main craft. Since no oxidizer is necessary, the shuttles could fly in O2, CO2, Methane, or just plain no atmosphere.
Oh, and the military already built a nuclear ramjet that ran off of air for fuel. Do a search for "Project Pluto". The actual design was a little disgusting as it considered it a "bonus" to spew radiation all over Russia. Still, it was 1950's technology. With our modern resources, simulation abilities, and exotic materials, there's no reason why we can't build a far better design.
Scramjets are looking to be at least a decade away from usable designs. We have the technology to build a nuclear space plane now.
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You certainly are a self-important little bastard, aren't you?
Does it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, sometimes, other things take presidence over you and your science?
Consider this: China has made known their intention to have a base on the moon. Which is all well and good. However, how do we ensure their intentions are peaceful? And even if they are, how do we ensure they stay that way? Does it not occur to you that should their intentions be not so peaceful, that the Chinese would have a significant military advantage? Does it not occur to you that, in the interest of our national defense, it's in our interest to maintain at least parity with the Chinese? If the Chinese, with a monopoly on the moon, decide they want to start lobing missles at us from there, we'd be pretty well fucked, wouldn't we?
If it's a choice between our ability to defend ourselves and a twit with his experiment, I think I'll go with self-defense first, thankyouverymuch.
Not everything revolves around you and your science. What part of that don't you understand?
So the new space initiative will have hubble destroyed *before* a replacement telescope (webb) is up.
It will leave the shuttle destroyed *before* a new human rated vehicle is in place.
Of course, it is likely that both these projects will die under the weight of the war/feed-the-rich deficit.
The next american on the moon will have to go through a chinese passport control. You wait and see!
Any numbers to support your claim? Ie, how much is expected to build and launch James Webb Space Telescope? This project will be a higher-altitude non-serviceable telescope.
Hindsight is always 20/20. You could claim that assuming a truly cheap and reusable space shuttle it did make sense at the time to build a serviceable space telescope.
And remember the original Hubble before COSTAR optical corrections would be almost useless if it wasn't serviceable. What was the cost to develop Hubble up to that point?
Did it really make sense to make it bigger, heavier and more expensive and with huge parts than can be serviced while wearing oven mitts?
Make it bigger?
And yes, given that increases in technology in the last 20 years have consistently and greatly improved Hubble with each servicing mission.
Please, I'd really like to see your numbers that designing several different telescopes from scratch and launching them independently would be cheaper and make more sense.
But not to mention the risk is much greater that something will be broke and then cannot be fixed. Did you ever hear the story about a small communications satellite where the engineers instinctively put a fuse in the power supply? The fuse blew at some point. Whoops!
make world, not war
Sean O'Keefe is a bean counter(accountant) Bush sent to NASA to trim its budget. Neither of them have any interest in space exploration or science. I saw O'Keefe's new conference on CNN after the Bush announcement and it was sickening watching someone who had no vision, knowledge of or interest in space, dodging questions and avoiding specifics on this supposedly bold new initiative. You would think they would have prepared for this announcement and presented a bold vision, rather than looking like a deer in the headlights not knowing exactly what all this means or being unwilling to admit it.
Having seen the funding timeline for this at the news conference its pretty clear what the plan is. Kill off the space shuttle and the ISS while you divert all the space enthusiasts attention with the promise of bold missions to Mars and the Moon. Of course none of those start ramping up for years and until you've already started killing off space exploration and when it comes time to bend metal on the new projects, Bush will be long gone, no one will want to pay the tab and the conservatives will have managed to kill off the civilian space program. Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.
This is a perplexing dilemna because killing off the space shuttle and ISS is exactly what the civilian space program needs to be come viable again. But when you do it you actually need to have a viable new program to replace it and this new program simply isn't viable.
You get a definitive clue something is wrong because they are going to continue wasting money to finish the completely useless ISS while they kill off the really valuable Hubble. Get a clue. The Hubble, like all the great observatories, is a priceless resource and they are one thing that should survive out of the current NASA along with JPL's efforts.
To me this smacks of the classic, clueless political manuevering and bureaucractic thinking that has been devestating space exploration for the last 30+ years.
@de_machina
With the 4th (actually 5th) maintenance mission cancelled, Hubble is likely to become inoperable earlier than its projected end-of-life. Even if the new telescope is launched on time (which I'm not at all confident about) there is likely to be a gap in observations.
The astronomical community has spent much effort in the past year reaching a consensus opinion, and conveying this opinion, to NASA and the government. Astronomers are in favor of continuing support and service for Hubble at least until the NGST (James Webb Telescope) is up and flying. Hubble does some things that cannot be done from the ground at all and has been a huge success. Despite the cost, Hubble has been evaluated to have provided the best science per dollar of all astronomy facilities. Hubble Space Telescope proposals for the next year of observations are due THIS Friday, Jan. 23. I assume we will go on with the current observing cycle, but probably not the one beyond. But we don't know yet. The timing here is shocking. I also have a lot of friends who work on Hubble Instruments that were due to be installed on SM4 -- their jobs will vanish as the funding is cut and we'll have a flood of unemployed astronomers (we are a small field and this will have a relatively large immediate impact). Many astronomers were looking forward to some spectacular new science capabilities. Those won't happen now (the Webb Telescope is being optimized for infrared work, so we will be losing general UV capability entirely). The American Astronomical Society is maintaining an informational webpage at http://www.aas.org/policy/CurrentIssues.html that should help us determine just how this is going to affect us. I served on the Hubble Space Telescope science review panel last year to determine what projects would be done. This was just after the shuttle accident, and there was speculation at the time that this could happen. We knew then that a Hubble-mission could not abort to ISS in the event of a problem and that this might curtail things like SM4. I don't think anyone there really believed it would happen though, at least not this abruptly at this time.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
'm no engineer but it seems that going to the moon is really not much of a problem, after all Armstrong was there. It looks to someone uninformed like me that Mars represents a small increment in difficulty and that it could probably be done with the same tech that got us to the moon.
I'm an unashamed space nut but I admit that there is simply no consensus that we ought to go there particularly if it costs what ever sum of money the public considers significant, by that I mean a sum likely to have a major impact on other government programs- just check the posts on slashdot if you diagree.
Presently business sees no economic return in going to the moon or beyond - no point in ranting that they are short sighted and wrong the fact remains they don't see it so we can't look to them as an alternative to government.
I,m sure you are all aware of the X-Prize http://www.xprize.org/press/what.html what is signicant about it is not just the intention - it's that the investment made by the participants bears no relation to the reward.
Historically there are many examples of government offering prizes for things they just can't justify spending the money on. It's a win win for government. If it succeeds they show foresight if it fails they spent their money on better things.
What about a government funded X-prize II - 500 million dollars for the first human spending six months on the moon. 500 million to be divided among other organisations that solved specific problems that would enable such a period on the moon.
How about the readers of slashdot design the rules. I offer my own ideas;
1. 500 m for living six months on the moon
2. 100 m for a reuseable rentry vehicle with a 10 tonne payload
3. 50 million dollars for designing and building a closed ecology weighing less than 5 tonnes that provided food and processed waste to allow a human to live for six months.
4. 10 million dollars for a rocket engine or other propulsion system that delivered weighed X tonnes requiring Y fuel giving Z thrust/specific impulse
5. 10 m illion dollars for an effective drug based therapy to cure low gravity induced decalcification
6. Once a design/build has won a prize - for space use purposes only the technology enters the public domain.
7 10 million dollars for Solar cells that weigh X that give Y watts of power that can be errected by one man.
8. etc etc etc
How about exemption from health and safety legislation so the families dying astronauts don't sue - and just like the early explorers on earth they will die. How about designing rules so that all the sciences get a slice of the pie not just engineering and materials science.
Much more fun thinking of a way to make it happen at a cost that does not offend rather than indulging in Bush Bashing - trotting out old arguments about child poverty, tech spinoff and the efficiencies of unmanned programs.
Is ther really anyone against the idea of going to the moon and beyond if it's done cheaply and without signifcantly detracting from other government programs ?
Sorry if this is a bit of topic - but sick of the old flames much prefer seeing such a well educated group of people coming up with answers.