Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
nude macgirls webcam
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
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
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!
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.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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