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Hubble Snaps Farthest / Oldest Galaxy
starannihilator writes "Astronomers use gravitational lensing, a magnifying effect caused by the gravity / mass of galaxies, to capture images of the farthest / oldest galaxy known - from when the universe was just 750 million years old. Stories from the BBC,
Sign On San Diego, West Hawaii Today, or
Mercury News."
Yay! Even more reasons to keep this guy around! It's a damn shame they want to deorbit Hubble. With this much invested into a telescope that STILL continues to function fine, why not just open it up for other uses rather than deorbit it?
What can they do to gather funding from other than government sources? What other countries would like to help?
At one time I expected this telescope to the the most incredible scientific instrument ever built. But my enthusiasm for it was damaged when they neglected to test it before launch. Did the telescope project accept the responsibility for the failure, and cover the cost of the repair mission themselves? No. They went back to the well of public funding again. And they have done it since then again. I think the public has paid enough. Let's launch some new technology.
While I have seen hundreds of "discovered by Hubble this week" I have not seen one discovery in the news come from the station. It's usually fighting with the Russians or announcing it's going to cost ten times more than we thought to do one twentieth the science.
I'm sorry but this is just nonsense.
I am personally involved with some experiments conducted in ISS, and I know there is a lot of important research going on there.
Just because ISS does not have a PR department that hypes up every other little discovery as is happening for hubble, and because it doesn't give you pretty pictures but complex scientific output, you have no argument for saying there is no research going on in that place
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
I understand the stupidity of de-orbiting Hubble, and I do think NASA should extend its life a little longer by doing the service mission. But don't you think all the sentimental slashdot comments is a little too sentimental? Just maybe Hubble is getting old, and it's time to put up a new telescope for replacement (hopefully or eventually)?
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
Why doesn't the ISS have a PR department, or at least some form of publicity for the research that's going on.
Well, other than the fact that a lot of scientists are getting their shit in knots over the idea that someone may steal thier research data and put it to a practical use before they can.
You want to keep the public's eye on the benitits of the station, rather than the cost, or the latest stupid problem.
Hubble needs this sort of thing to keep it serviced. This is very interesting and in my mind at least partially justifies Hubble.
A better space telescope is in the works, and it is scheduled for launch as early as 2007.
Why risk 50% of our remaining space shuttle fleet, another human crew, and untold billions to repair Hubble at this point?
A few years gap won't kill science or the stars. I mean... for all of human history except for the 14 years that Hubble has been in service we had no equivalent of Hubble. What's another 3-4 years when we've already missed 11.2 billion years?
Yeah, but who considers most of the representatives informed?
It's not for the preresentatives that the PR is needed, it's for the public. it's easy for them to dismiss the ISS, because they know very little of what is being done up there. And the public, should have some weight with thier representative... at least if the representative wants to sit in his comfy chair past next time the election rolls around.
James Webb doesn't cover the same spectrum that Hubble does. Visual and UV will be completely ignored by it. No replacement for Hubble is in the works, and UV coverage can't be obtained from Earth-based telescopes. This has been well-covered before -- please inform yourself before you recklessly cast aspersions on a space project in typical sissy fashion.
That's up to the owner of the life in question. If astronauts are happy to do it, we should be happy to let them.
How much OIL is worth a human life?
That was classic intercourse!
Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery Discovery is being overhauled, is it not? "Overhauled" as in, virtually permantely overhauled, right?
And I bet the astronauts would be more than willing to go.
You could find qualified astronauts to go on a mission with 99-to-1 change against coming back. Let's get real. Astronaut willingness is not a valid indicator.
The cost of another lost shuttle to NASA would be enormous. The loss of funding, support, and interest would likely end manned space flight for decades.
If this shed light when the galaxy was 750M years old, and the galaxy is expanding, this means when the galaxy was 750M years old that galaxy was much closer to where we are now. This would tell me that the galaxy alreay shined light on this segment of space, how is that light still here? How can light shine twice?
We have 2 space shuttles. We've lost two recently.
We have 3 space shuttles and have lost two in 18 years.
On top of that, a replacement will be ready sometime in 2007.
The current timeframe is a 2011 launch, and that is expected to be pushed back signifigantly, due to development and technological issues.
The Hubble is failing, and requires massive, extraordinary measures to save it.
The Hubble requires routine scheduled maintenance.
I think you are ignorant and mal-informed as to what the real reasons behind the NASA decision is.
You are the one who is ignorant and mal-informed if you think the real reason behind this decision is anything other than money.
You can't have it both ways.
Listening to O'keefe on a press conference about a month ago, when he addressed the Hubble issue in detail, it all became clear to me: It's pure politics.
After the CAIB, he was blasted, questioned and doubted to no end, so what does a skilled polititian do? cut your losses and move on. Well, he did just that. So now he's gonna follow the CAIB like it's the road to salvation. To the letter.
The CAIB puts forward a number of requirements for shuttle flights, including the ability to service the Shuttle via ISS if something goes wrong...among a host of other "inconvenient" requirements.
O'keefe decided to follow the CAIB to the letter so that means that going to the hubble will "break the laws" of the CAIB (Hubble is in an entirely different, incompatible orbit...still you'd think that being the thing called SHUTTLE it shouldn't be an issue, but it is)
So servicing the Hubble will violate his mandate to play it safest and thus it won't happen because it's "too risky" according to the CAIB mantra.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
You must be thinking of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. That restaurant is at the other end of the Universe.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I'm coming increasingly to believe the space station is a bit of a dead duck and the issues that prevented the location of ISS in a higher orbit should have been addressed, so that it could do something really useful - like being a base where servicing missions can start and end from.
Then one would deliver a true shuttle which would flit between ISS and whatever hardware needed upgrading. Fuel and personel would be delivered to the space station alone as a starting and ending point.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Bush has handed a political stick to his opponents. Kerry would be well advised to promise to revisit the Death of Hubble decision: it will get him a lot of votes. There is no sense in killing Hubble to add 1 or 2% to the Mars / Moon missions that might launch sometime in the 2010's. Webb may be killed for its money as well. NASA is using Hubble as a political lever, and the argument that space is a dangerous place for shuttle nauts does not stand up: remember the burned Apollo crew anyone? Maybe NASA believes Bush wants stuff in orbit that points down and not up.
space agency? If all the major nations combined their efforts rather than having a fragmented approach then surely things would get done and benefit everyone. Also it would create debate as opposed to politicains declaring equipment repairs unsafe and EOL them without a good analysis of whats going on.
Jonathanjk.com
What I wouldn't give to be just 750 million years old again...
Life, the universe and everything seemed so simple back then.
Maybe there is a solution, but then that might just as well be applied to the original Hubble mission, so that the Shuttle could reach the ISS.
NASA has also stated that for doing two simultaneous missions (or one on standby on the launchpad) they would need two mission control centers as well. I have no idea if that's true or not, just stating what NASA replied to the two mysterious reports from anymous NASA employees.
karma capped
Something as simple as NASA's "Image of the Day" can bring a lot of attention to the project, as it gets picked up by the media if the subject matter is deamed "of interest". Thier little blurbs about what's bening seen are much easier for the public to read and understand.
in contrast, most of the stations experiments you get an overview of, with no actual data of the findings to read though, even in a techincal sense.
It's easier to see a benifit in the Hubble for most people, even if they don't value knowing more about space, than it is to see value in a tin can that's gota few people floating around in it.
Read the status reports for ISS.
I don't have anything against the ISS. I think it's valuable, although extreamly costly.
Bullshit. HST is among the most productive astronomical facilities ever, measured in publication and citation count ( analysed here). HST data is typically used in more than 150 peer-reviewed papers a year. These are papers in journals such as Astrophysical Journal, Science, and of course Nature. A simple seach of the Science archives show 68 original research publications with "Hubble Space Telescope" in the text since 1995. A similar search for "International Space Station" returns ZERO hits. A search of the Nature website returns an interesting article: " Biologists recommend scrapping NASA's research on crystals" (Nature394, 213 (16 Jul 1998)) that starts out: "A panel of US biologists has called for an end to protein crystallography experiments in space -- one of the highest-profile research activities..."
The fact that the general public is fairly deluged by pretty HST pictures is in addition to the fact that the astronomical community is using HST very actively; it's not an artefact of some PR department.
Don't get me wrong - I think manned spaceflight, and the space station are good things, and should be funded. But let's be honest here; HST blows ISS out of space when it comes to publications and scientific impact.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
You're right, there's risk involved. The question is which projects do you decide to spend the remaining shuttle flights on? Do you continue to pour money down an ISS rat hole that has delivered ZERO peer-reviewed science, has no reason to exist other than pork barrel or do you allocate the flights to maximizing the remaining science?
NASA has already killed Compton, is on its way to killing Hubble and you think O'Keefe and gang will fund Webb? Perhaps you didn't notice, Webb has already been scaled back twice - the ISS money vacuum will continue to wreak its damage. Other posters have already pointed out that Webb and Hubble are not interchangeable - they see different spectrums.The problem is is that NASA will continue to lose public support if its only reason to exist is to fly the Shuttle back and forth between ISS. The ISS has no value other than job creation. Hubble on the other hand, provides both jobs and real science - the kind of science that gets published in Science and Nature. ISS science is the kind of science you find at the local county science fair, i.e., "What color does my dog like?"
Your post and O'Keefe's decision to kill Hubble clearly illustrate how poorly educated this country is. Equating Hubble and Webb and choosing ISS over Hubble are examples of what happens when half our children aren't taught science well enough to know that it takes a year for the earth to circle the sun. The cost of that poor education is you get people like O'Keefe running Nasa and the public doesn't know enough to say boo about it. We've lost the super collider, we're going to lose Hubble, 50/50 Webb will not fly, manufacturing, accounting, customer service and software have been outsourced but we'll have a worthless missile "defense" and plenty of boobies on fark.com. That's the cost of poorly educating people.
Yeah it is a safety issue. Sloppy attitude is a big part of flight safety. This includes the sustainment management of the craft. The idiots at NASA learned nothing from the first shuttle disaster, except how to act suprised at the revelation of their poor program management Nothing that firing some of the lead management couldn't fix to set a firm example.
Astronauts are supposed to risk their lives. That's their job. Just like soldiers or policemen. Anyway, how is sending someone to Mars going to be safer than a quick jaunt to the Hubble to fix some things.
O'Keefe is simply not being candid about his real goals, which is to garner votes for his boss anyway he can.
Your average Joe/Jane can't remember what the Hubble was, but might just recall that Bush wanted to do something cool like send heros to Mars.
It depends on how you define the edge... if you mean the 'Big Bang', then probably not. If you mean shortly after the end of the 'Dark Ages' when the first luminescent matter appeared, then possibly yes.
Where did you pull these numbers from? Energia, which they used as their shuttle booster, could lift 95-100 tons to LEO. This flew for the first time in 1987 and they have at least one mothballed, even if there haven't been recent launches. The smaller Proton rockets, used for Soyuz launches, can lift 20 tons to LEO.
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
IF we had a permanent base on the moon AND a lunar-based telescope, we'd have exposures of up to two weeks long!
BUT if Bush's plan is only a political game to win votes in Florida and Texas, we might as well try to make NASA change its mind on Hubble.
It's a cardinal rule of investment, actually: you don't invest in something today just because you sunk a lot of money into it yesterday. You invest because of the promise of future returns. The overall return from a "Hubble's Last Stand" mission may well be less, in NASA's view, than from a new telescope, or Mars effort, or what have you. If so, then scuttling Hubble is entirely justified.
AC.
After the unchecked torrent of lies from the Bush administration about everything, what makes you think they'll do *any* of the things they've promised the space program, once reelected in November?
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make install -not war
This one picture is likely more scientifically valuable than anything the space station has done, or probably ever will do. Nonetheless, NASA wants to pour tens of billions more into the space station, and abandon Hubble. Go figure.