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NASA Urged to Reconsider Shuttle Mission to HST
LMCBoy writes "Space.com reports today that the National Academies of Science has released its recommendation to NASA on the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. They conclude that 'NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.' They also say that none of the safety requirements of the CAIB report preclude a manned servicing mission to HST." Read on for more.
"The NAS recommendation would reverse NASA's previous position that a shuttle repair mission is ruled out for safety reasons. In the wake of strong criticisms of this decision, NASA has also been considering a robotic repair mission. The robotic mission would not risk human lives, but it relies on a number of bleeding-edge technologies that would have to be deployed on a very short timescale. HST's remaining gyroscopes are not expected to last beyond 2007."
I don't think NASA has the public support not to. If you watch the agency let Hubble die are you more or less likely to request that your elected representatives find more funding for NASA?
I think the problem is that they threw all their budget away on that damnable ISS (which if it were unmanned, would cost waaaay less), leaving no funding for real projects.
I mean, what's the point of throwing people up in space station compared to what you can get with an orbital telescope? The price of reparing this has got to be a tiny slice of what the ISS gets every year.
While it's good to know that NASA keeps the astronauts first and all else second, I think most would agree that Hubble needs this repair mission, and that those repairs can only be reliably carried out through the skilled men and women of the astronaut core. While I'm all for robots doing some of the space grunt-work, the HST is a very delicate piece of technology, one that should not be risked to further damage through unproven repair techniques.
As to funding, yes NASA is strapped for cash, but attempting to develop and deploy an (at least) semi-automated robotic repair device in the course or 3 1/2 years seems like it would cost vastly more than any manned space shuttle repair flight.
I've already voiced my opinion to my representatives, in unambiguous terms. IMO its criminal to allow a national treasure like that to die for lack of a few million to service it.
They've done it twice before, and I don't see any reason they couldn't do it again as long as the shuttle they use is equipt the same as the one they used twice before. That might take some extra funds doing the retrofit.
Tell ya how to take a vote folks, have the irs add a 50 dollar checkoff line to the 1040, where 50 bucks of your refund would go instead to nasa.
I'd bet nasa would hear a get off your butts and doit message loud and clear cause I know I'd sure do the checkmark.
I use 2 of its deep field images, totalling about 70 megs, as backgrounds for 2 of my 8 screens. Everytime I switch to one of those screens I'm reminded of just how usefull that the hubble has been even if it was in need of a set of glasses to clear it up. The last one, showing stuff as far out as 13 billion light years, is a truely impressive image since we are seeing the universe as it was when it was less than a billion years old when that light was sent on its way here.
Properly maintained, that scope can and will be making new discoveries, adding to our knowledge of the universe and physics in general, stuff that cannot be done thru the haze of our atmosphere here on the ground, a hundred years from now.
I'd like to see them add an RPG powered ion engine to it, not a very big one of course, just enough to give it a few ounces of push so that its orbit could be maintained over an extended period as one of the things the shuttle must do each time its there is to give it a push to correct for the decaying orbit. That pushing we are told, over-extends the shuttles available fuel, possibly endangering the ability to steer at landing time. The shuttle that goes there must have the robot arm, and it must be stripped a bit in order to lighten it to even reach the hubbles altitude which is about 50 miles above the design envelope of the shuttle.
But the point is, it CAN be done. Dangerous, maybe. But I don't recall that any of the crews who have been there regretted doing it.
Cheers, Gene
The astronauts are actually quite in favor of doing the mission. They know what they signed up for and they don't like bureaucrats telling them that oh no, we suddenly aren't going to let you do your jobs. Guess what... spaceflight is risky.
Stupid bureaucrats.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Hubble is a great telescope, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, ground based telescopes now are able to get around the distortion of the atmosphere to obtain even better images of the stars than Hubble ever could. I'd hate to see Hubble go, but as long as NASA keeps supporting doomed projects such as the ISS, I think we are going to be saying goodbye soon.
If NASA wanted to keep their astronauts perfectly safe, they would ground them all permanently. There is risk in the space game, and you deal with it, or don't. (One of my old professors from Rice, Jeffrey Wisoff, is an astronaut know and has previously service Hubble -- go Jeff!)
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Space is an unknown, it is one of the harshest environments to be explored by humans. You'd think we could do a little better... Nock Nock... Better, Faster, Cheaper doesn't work. We make stupid mistakes which cost a lot of money. As far as I am concerned, everything that NASA does is new, it has never been tested before, so what should NASA do? Test it! Improve it! Sending a probe to mars without sufficient memory is entirely avoidable, as are mistakes in conversion, metric systems, and a myriad of problems with hubble, from Nicos (100m down the drain because some ice expanded) to the Gyroscopes, to the Mirror has been a failure. NASA has had many successes but its last two directors have had their flaws (including our current directors blinding obsession with finding life on mars). Bottom line... NASA needs new management and a new Mission Statement.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
What about asking other nations or private organisations for money to service it?
What about selling Hubble?
What about giving it as a gift to anyone who wants it?
During the proceedings (thanks C-SPAN!), it was quite evident that NASA was not giving a coherent reason for abandoning Hubble. NASA claimed that a mission to Hubble was unacceptably risky, while missions to ISS were not. The board pressed them on just how and why, and the increased risk seemed negligible for such a servicing mission.
However NASA was excited about sending an unmanned robotic mission to service Hubble, and they claimed that there were companies working on proposals to provide that robot.
My take was that this is the result of putting a non-scientist bean-counter (O'Keefe) in charge of NASA, coupled with an administration keen on cutting social funding while simultaneously funding private contractors as though there was no tomorrow.
The HST's data archive is currently about 12TB. That data lone is going to provide grounds for scientific papers well into the future. This data archive grows by about 2TB every year. That is a lot of data out of one instrument. There's a lot of good science left in that data. Letting that tremendous data source fall prematurly into the ocean because the HST was abandoned would be monumentally stupid.
There's also quite a bit of money and resources already devoted to the HST. Instruments and components have been built and paid for and the work is already done. Letting it sit on a shelf indefinitely would be a magnificent waste. Besides the money already spent a mission will have to be sent up, automated or not, to de-orbit the HST.
NASA ought to bite the bullet and push the envelope a little bit. It doesn't matter that they would be using untested technologies. Fixing the HST would be the test. I have little doubt that it would be feasible to robotically service the HST. A small cadre of tool laden AIBOs with rocket packs should be able to do the trick. If NASA is too scared to send people into space they could at least send a few cute robot dogs.
The technology and techniques learned with the HST could be applied later with the ISS' construction or even an in-orbit repair of a Shuttle or other craft. Maybe we could even start designing satellites that are meant to be services by robots to extend their useful lifetimes. Companies would be much more likely to invest in satellites if its potential operational life of 20+ years instead of 12 if everything goes alright.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The hubble space telescope uses a CCD equivalent to a less-than-consumer-level digi-cam.
This site says: "The Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has four CCDs, each containing 640,000 pixels." so that's a 2.5 mega-pixel camera.
Let's all keep this in mind....
It would be a shame to scrap HST because we didn't want to spend an extra $500 million to save it.
It's even more the shame for all the money saved during the last year+ of non-flight. That $500 million isn't money that's unavailable, but it is money that would go to a purely intellectual goal. The current ruling ideology does not value social/intellectual concerns.
If NASA is not sure that shuttle can fly safely,
they should by one Soyuz from us, Russians.
Of course, Soyuz is technology of early 70'th,
but it would be newly manufactured, when shuttles are PRODUCTION of eithties. It is also order of magnitude cheaper. We fly space tourishs to ISS for $20millions or so.
The worst thing of all is what the US government spent the money on, when they'd cut it from NASA's budget.
Vietnam.
I wonder... in a hundred years, will historians point to this decision and say that this is the moment when the American dream died?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The HST provides the best telescope data, period.
The bean counter idiots in charge of NASA intend
to replace HST with an inferior IR space-based
telescope. The same contractors that have been
working on HST are working on the "replacement".
There is far more money to be made developing a
new telescope than there is for "maintenence" on
the HST. The development of a bleeding edge
robotic servicing mission also is more profitable
for the contractors than a manned mission.
It all boils down to money, and where that money
would be spent. Space robotics have a huge
potential in military applications, so the R&D
money spent by NASA can be parlayed into bigger
profits for these same contractors. The best
hope for the continued survival of HST would be
to farm out the repairs to China or India, but
the political costs would be too great.
The money misspent on the ISS has drained the
NASA budget at a time when pure science is
being sacrificed for dual-use applied science
and political expediency. The ISS has become
a fiscal "black hole", with budget overruns
that make the original projected costs of the
shuttle program look like kindergarten.
When real scientists running NASA were replaced
with politically "inspired" professional bean
counters is when NASA started going downhill.
And the Bush "back to the moon" initiative is
pure BS, as there is no valid scientific value,
nor the money to waste, for such a mission
directive.
What a shame it would be to spend all that money putting Hubble up there and then not servicing it because of budget cuts. That would be like spending $20,000 on a new car and then deciding a few years later that you can't afford to take it in for an oil change. It's already up there, they might as well service it.
The Hubble was built in 1985. So, your analogy is a bit off base. It would be more like repairing that old 128k MacIntosh you bought back then. There's a time to repair, and there's a time to move on to newer technology. Otherwise, you're only hanging on for sentimental reasons, not for science.
Just another day in Paradise
Even if it could be shown that a shuttle mission (with a crew who are willing to accept all the risks) was cheaper and easier than a robotic mission, NASA would still push for the robotic mission.
Because if something goes wrong, NASA are out one expensive irreplacable shuttle and only have 2 left.
Which isnt that much of a margin for error when it comes to sending shuttles up to finish the ISS.
I think the Hubble should be saved, too. It is by far the optical device with the best 'seeing'. NASA and the scientific community have already labored long, and spent a fortune running the program. It has produced wonderful results. This is in spite of its checkered history: what kind of dolt would send this priceless piece of hardware into space untested?
However, I suspect that the Hubble people are not acting altruistically. They are not thinking 'what can WE do to improve space-based astronomy.' It is more like: 'I want more funding. Screw the rest of you guys.'
Shame isn't the half of it. HST was designed to be lofted to orbit, lifted when its orbit has decayed, and brought home when its mission is over by the Shuttle. It was designed to be serviced, upgraded, and maintained by astronauts. It was assumed that the Shuttle would bring the astronaut/wrench-benders to the job site with their tools and parts.
OK, I'll buy the idea that robots could bring the HST to a safe re-entry and destruction. I won't buy the idea that what we have available today and what we can get completed, checked out, and space-rated by December 2007 can do the gyro, battery, and two telescope change-outs. Sorry, geeks, it isn't going to happen any more than nine women are going to make one baby in one month. OTOH, if a robot could crash HST by slowing it down along its present track, couldn't one push it the other way and raise its orbit? Where does this leave us?
How to get astronauts to Low Earth Orbit (LOE) at about a 23 degree inclination...can't do it with a Soyuz-TMA on a Soyuz-U or -M launch vehicle ("Carrier rocket" if you're Russian) out of Baikonur because the lattitude of the launch site makes their Equator-crossing-angle too steep (in case you wondered why the International Space Station has such a high inclination, now you know.) Will they be able to launch a manned mission out of Kourou by December 2007? Unlikely. Could the do it out of Canaveral by then? Probably. There's infrastructure here that doesn't exist in French Guyana and there's even an operating spaceport here with launch pads to spare. Facilities would have to be built, but have you noticed what they are? Butler buildings and steel trestles, railroad lines, and lots of space. Not much of a problem at the Canaveral Spaceport. NASA already owns all of the stuff they were going to put into the HST and has the training facilities already built for the mission.
Hm. U.S. astronauts aboard a Soyuz-TMA. Radical idea or common practice today? You know the answer to that.
OK, let's say we do it. We get away from the present program, which looks to me like a cross between the Credit Mobiliere and the Revenge of the Nerds, and get a commercial contract - just like you buy IT hardware, software, and services - and let U.S. and Russian companies do this job with minimal NASA and other Government involvement: no success, no pay. Now, does that sound like what Congress is telling NASA to start doing anyway? OK, why not start here?
What do the Russians say about this? It amounts to: "Sure, let's do it. Cash up front."
bobhagopian writes:
I'm going to make a brief comment here.
Going back to the Moon will have some research value. To say we've exhausted what we can learn about the Moon is simply not true. Is it the best place to put our research bucks now? Probably not. Other areas would probably yield more bang for the buck.
Will going back to the Moon excite the public about space exploration? Again, not as much as the new Cassini mission or a search for life on Mars.
But the value of returning to the Moon is not in research. It's much more in building space infrastructure. Today what we can do in space is limited quite severely to what we can launch from Earth. If we return to the Moon, we can perhaps start using space resources. That will greatly expand what we can do in space. To do much in space, sooner or later we're going to have to start using what we find out there, rather than just using what we can haul up from Earth.
Why don't I favor going straight to Mars? To get to Mars with anything approaching present day technology requires very long travel times. When things go wrong (and they will go wrong) it's a long way to go for help.
In the early years of the settlement of the Americas by Europeans, quite a bit went wrong. Whole colonies were wiped out. It took a long time to get to the point where we are today. And that effort was made in a physical environment not fundamentally different from the environment the Europeans left behind.
Space is very different from Earth. Mars is very different from Earth. I want our mistakes to be made in ways that will allow us to recover from them and learn from them much more quickly. That means returning to the Moon -- and staying.
There's another value to this work. The public can get excited about research. But they are more likely to support work that holds out the possibility of real material benefit to them.
If 400-500 years ago Europeans had only sent explorers to the western hemisphere, do you think support would have continued for very long? Exploration is only one valuable human endeavor. There are many more things that humans do that have equal or greater value.
Support space research -- but don't stop there. Support space exploitation as well. You'll wind up with far more research than we can currently support.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Not necessarily true. Hubble is in orbit at a fairly shallow inclination (28 degrees). Picture the Solar System--the Sun and Earth-Moon system are all in the same 'horizontal' plane; Hubble's orbit is slanted about thirty degrees from that, but still pretty close. Pointing 'up' or 'down' out of that plane, neither Sun, Moon, nor Earth ever enters its field of view.
~Idarubicin