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Space Tug to Save the Hubble?
Aglassis writes "In an article at SpaceRef, the CTO of Orbital Recovery Corporation claims that his company will be able to develop a space tug that could save the Hubble Space Telescope (from becoming 'a ballisticly implanted reef in the Pacific') by either moving it into a much higher stable orbit, or by moving it to the ISS where it could be maintained and operated. Some of the reasons that he cites are that the Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, could be delayed or suffer some sort of failure. Since the JWST will be at the L2 point, servicing will be impossible."
...to find the Beagle?
Maybe the Universities and goverments that use the Hubble can take over management of it. Nasa should give them a shot.
Doesn't NASA have a AAA card? They tow for free, you know...
Which of those advanced systems are going to allow for observing at wavelengths to which our atmosphere is opaque?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Adaptive optics can do a lot to cancel atmospherics. The real problem is that the atmosphere just plain obstructs much of the spectrum.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
"Some of the reasons that he cites are that the Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, could be delayed or suffer some sort of failure."
Sounds like some kind of extortion scam to me...
Pay me to save Hubble or something could happen to your fancy schmancy new one.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Is there actually a market for orbital recovery? Apart from Hubble, which it would be nice to have back for sentimental value, I can't think that there's much up there than needs recovering. Most satellites are so many years out of date that it makes no commercial sense to get them back again - you'd only have to re-launch them anyway, at which point you might as well have spent the money on new ones.
Equally, no-one needs to run the risk of trying to repair things that are orbiting the Earth; it's guaranteed to be cheaper to junk it and build a new one.
Methinks this guy is playing on popular support for the "keep Hubble" campaign to raise the profile of an otherwise unviable business.
</devil's advocate>
These sigs are more interesting tha
I attach below the text of a letter recently sent to European astronomers, regarding the demise of Hubble support:
Dear colleague,
As you may know, NASA has decided to cancel all further servicing missions to Hubble. Servicing Mission 4, originally scheduled for next Spring/Summer, was designed to refurbish HST and enable it to continue operating in the current efficient and successful way. NASA has decided that all future Shuttle missions will be devoted to the International Space Station. Hence, no upgrade in capability or maintenance is planned for HST. A direct consequence is, of course, the end of WFC3 and COS as HST instruments. A discussion is developing, however, on the possibility of launching one or both of these instruments as part of a "fast-track 2 meter class telescope" mission.
Without the replacement of failed gyros there is a high probability that HST will have to be operated in a two-gyro mode relatively soon, with substantial restrictions on the science observations. A controlled de-orbit of the spacecraft will have to be achieved using a special robotic mission at some time in the future as yet unspecified.
There is little we Europeans can do directly to change NASA's decision which, apparently, is final. We believe strongly, however, that it should be made known how universal the feeling of disappointment is within the scientific community. As European members of the Space Telescope Users Committee (STUC), we have asked the ST-ECF to open a web page where you can send comments on the fate of HST and on the loss for the scientific community. We encourage you to share your views with us, visiting the site and sending e-mails to the address given.
The site is now available at http://www.stecf.org/SM_cancellation.html
Best regards,
Eric Emsellem and Monica Tosi
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Don't be so sure about valuable assets. NASA proposed a space tug when it was building the Space Shuttle. The idea was that a tug would pull satellites to a lower orbit where the Shuttle could reach them. At that point, the shuttle would be responsible for repairing, refueling and refurbishing. If necessary, even bring them back to Earth.
Here's the problem: No one wanted their satellites back. By the time their fuel was spent, they were old technology that would be replaced by a new satellite. The shuttle had bet the bank on the economic theory that people wanted their space-stuff back and lost.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Which of those advanced systems are going to allow for observing at wavelengths to which our atmosphere is opaque?
None.
Which of the wavelengths that the hubble can shoot which ground based cannot will fail to be served far, far better by Webb?
The fact is that most of the work being done by hubble can be done from the ground today and what cannot is being replaced by Webb with greatly improvments. This is by design.
The correct answer is:
Spend that money on ground based observatories with advanced systems that allow better than hubble imaging from earth.
Why is that the "correct" answer? It's a crime to deorbit large objects when they are potentially so much more valuable where they are.
Just off the top of my head:
- It could potentially be used for 24/7 monitoring of targets (which you can't do from earth)
- We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers
- Automate it for long term survey duty (Oort cloud, etc.)
- Even if the Hubble is never used as an observatory again, it does consist of a lot of parts / raw materials that could someday prove useful.
- It may be a future tourist attraction
If somebody actually spent some time on it, I'll bet they could come up with a dozen more good uses.Further, having a proven tug capability (tested in a situation that wasn't life threatening) would be very valuable in and of itself.
To me, this looks like the right answer.
-- MarkusQ
I can't believe that NASA is even considering abandoning the Hubble.
Let me get this straight. They are going to abandon a working spacecraft, that continues to revolutionize deep space imaging, on the whim of a politician spewing typical election year rhetoric?
I think anything and everything should be done to maintain the Hubble for as long as possible, or until it truely becomes obsolete. I could understand the decision if they had a far superior telescope already in space and functioning, but this seems a bit off the wall.
Not sure if I interpreted the article correctly, but it seems they won't have a superior telescope in space for 1 or 2 years after the Hubble has been abandoned?
Also, the tree hugger in me has to ask. Why are we willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to colonize other planets, when we are slowly destroying our own. Seems like our priorities are just a bit out of whack.
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
I'm not going to discount the value of a manned mission to Mars, but if there's anyway that can be done without having it mandate the end of Hubble, then we need to do it. Hubble has not only been nothing less than an incredible boon to science, it is also very near the only positive PR that the space program has had in better than a decade. The value of that is almost immeasureable.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
More significantly, there is the issue of orbital inclination (the angle between the orbit and the equator). Hubble is at a comfy 28.5 degrees, which is optimal for shuttle launches from KSC given the launch site's latitude. ISS is inclined at 51.6 degrees, which is more of a 'climb' from low-latitute launch sites like KSC, because of the need to launch materials from Russia. (Low latitute launch sites get an extra 'kick' from the earth's rotation, the more equitorial the orbit.)
Transferring in altitude and orbital plane is no easy trick, (http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/s atellites/hohmann.html) but can be done (just check the math... a lot).
Even if it's done though, NASA would have to commit to service the HST for a few more years. And, although their "official" reason for canceling the HST Service Flight is "safety," the real reason is funding. It may be cliche, but as the line goes, "No Bucks, no Buck Rogers."
I would bet there are gaggles of astronauts who would volunteer to fly a HST service flight with these risks and I'd much rather spend $500 million (most of which is already spent on the hardware and training) to support HST for another 5-7 years than on anything else, including ISS or Pluto-Kupier. Otherwise, we're left with a HST which is one failure away from becoming an orbital paperweight (if there is such a thing) and $200 worth of already-built flight hardware sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Here's the problem: No one wanted their satellites back. By the time their fuel was spent, they were old technology that would be replaced by a new satellite.
::cue music::
For a lawnmower blade to cut your grass or a satellite that's out of gas, use eBay! Use eBay! For a Beagle that has missed his mark or a spark plug wire that wouldn't spark - Use eBay! ::/cue music::
What is it about this comment that make me think of commercials for eBay?
Which of the wavelengths that the hubble can shoot which ground based cannot will fail to be served far, far better by Webb?
The UV. Our atmosphere is opaque to the UV, and JWST, being an infrared optimised telescope, isn't going to be capable of observing the UV at all.
Its important to note that JWST is not a simple upgrade to HST. It has a very different mission and set of instruments. Its not just HST with a bigger mirror.
The reason we won't put the Hubble at the L2 point is because Bush can't pronounce Lagrange. Ergo, no announcement. Thus, no funding.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?