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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."
From: rwo@gemini.astro.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Cancellation of SM4
Dear SOC:
You've just heard from Randy, and I just finished a long conversation with Dave Leckrone. O'Keefe decided, apparently almost purely for reasons of Shuttle safety, to cancel SM4. Budget was not a driving concern, nor was the new Bush space initiative. (Only the timing was related to the President's announcement.) Code S opposed the decision and had identified sufficient funding to cover the SM4 slippage.
Basically, the problem was that a Hubble Shuttle mission would require special safety procedures to be developed (inspection, etc) that would not be necessary for an ISS mission. (This point seems to be disputed by people in Houston, who were eager to do SM4.) Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future.
John Grunsfeld, the Chief Scientist, was apparently as surprised as most everybody else at the decision. Dave's first inkling was the email sent out by Rogier yesterday. This has been held very close to the vest.
The decision is such that it looks like there is no recourse.
We have been encouraged to think of other productive ways to use WFC3 and COS---maybe on MIDEX's, etc. Looking for bright ideas to salvage something from these excellent instruments.
If the President's initiative is approved, even in its first phase, there will be significant science involved, in which GSFC hopes to participate.
Despite our own fundamental disappointment, we were on the periphery of the project, and our main concern should be for those who spent the last six years of their careers working on it and doing such a beautiful job.
There are plenty of issues to work through, and we should still plan to hold our February SOC meeting.
Regretfully --- Bob G. Oatse
A shame to lose the Hubble because we are doing "science" on the ISS, which is so much more important. See any ironies there?