Farewell To Eyes Above And Below

LMCBoy writes "SpaceRef is reporting that the STIS Instrument on board HST has failed. The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was HST's only spectrometer, and was responsible for several important discoveries, including the first detection of an exoplanet's atmosphere. The loss is believed to have been caused by a failure in the instrument's main electronics box, which led to a rapid increase in the input current of about 1 ampere, which caused the instrument to enter a "suspend" state. It is believed that this failure is not recoverable." No_Weak_Heart writes "Perhaps the world's most renowned submersible, Alvin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is slated for retirement. Alvin has helped scientists explore deep sea, find a lost Hydrogen bomb(oops!) and discover more than 300 new animal species, will be replaced by a newer version in 2008. Also available this audio clip from NPR." (Here's a glance at Alvin's replacement.) Update: 08/07 17:29 GMT by T : Note: "HST"="Hubble Space Telescope." Thanks to Chris Johansen for pointing out the overloaded acryonym.

Comments

Hopefully this....

[ProudClod]

won't put an end to the planned rejuvenation of the Hubble Telescope.

A friend of mine's dad has been pulled out of semi-retirement to help design a light receptor to be fitted to the hubble, which would be able to detect accurately induvidual photons of light.

So if this failure leads to the collapse of the Hubble Reborn project, he'll be out of a job, and more importantly out of a damn interesting project.

So long..

[Grave]

And thanks for all the awesome images.

Re:So long..

[Biogenesis]

I believe "and thanks for all the gif's" would have flowed better in parallel with the original quote...I'll go back to the shadows now.

It's time to let the Hubble go

[HMA2000]

You don't spend $1000/year on maintaining an old lawnmower you buy a new one that is cheaper and requires less maintence. Likewise it's time to let the Hubble go.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[WindBourne]

Yes, but until you have the replacement in place, you do not get rid of the old one. Once there is a good replacement for, and not just more empty promises, then you let it go.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[Exatron]

No, it's not time to let Hubble go. A lawnmower is completely different from an expensive and still potentially useful scientific instrument. Fixing Hubble is worthwhile because its replacement isn't operational yet, it won't be serviceable, and it's designed to detect different things.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[Detritus]

You do if a new lawnmower costs $100,000 and has to be ordered five years before delivery.

NASA and HSTSI have invested very large amounts of money and time in the HST program. Even if a new telescope was built and launched, it wouldn't make the instruments magically become 50% cheaper. With the way NASA is being funded, it may be decades before another optical telescope is put in space.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[DAldredge]

No, the largest portion of the US FED budget is transfer payments. Defense and Interest on the debt are in 2nd and 3rd.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[Capt'n Hector]

No, it's not and yes you do. Repairing hubble is much cheaper than designing/building/launching a new telescope. Hubble has a failure rate, yes, but so will any other space based telescope. Tell that to those people planning the next generation space telescope at earth-moon l3, an orbit which is NOT servicable. Your new telescope better require NO maintenence.

Additionally, how exactly do you "let the Hubble go"? Ever wonder what an enormous 2.4 meter, aerodynamic chunk of glass will do if you let its orbit decay? SOMEONE is going to get hurt, because many parts of hubble will not burn up in re-entry. To "let the Hubble go" would require another servicing mission. Might as well fix the STIS anyway, eh?

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[WindBourne]

Whats the worst thing that could happen if there is a period of time where we are without a space telescope? This isn't exactly a life-critical piece of machinery.

Uh, yeah

The Hubble is done. Deal with it. If the geniuses in Congress decides that our hard earned tax dollars are better spent putting up a new scope up than feeding the poor, educating our children, or researching cures for deadly diseases, we can have another one.

I am curious. At what time in our past history, or any societies history for that matter, have we been able to feed all, educate all, and have absolutely no disease? None that I am aware of. But I do note that in history, societies always do better when they persue science and technologies. Historically, that was when they where engaged in a war off their soil. When the war is on their soil, science and technology stop. So how do we increase our science. One approach is simply start worthless wars that do little for us. Hummmmmm. Rome did that for eons. Perhaps others have as well.

But a better time was when a society sought something beyond their grasp. England migrating all over the world is a good example (interesting that they were not the original discover, but took advantage of it). The original Space shot did more us than any other war did. And it was a whole lot cheaper than any war that we engaged in.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[fredmosby]

The X-33 was canceled because they couldn't keep the composite fuel tanks from leaking. They had to change the design to aluminum tanks, which lowered the payload because they weigh more. When NASA evaluated the new design they said no thanks.

Re:It's time to let the Hubble go

[LWATCDR]

"If the geniuses in Congress decides that our hard earned tax dollars are better spent putting up a new scope up than feeding the poor, educating our children, or researching cures for deadly diseases, we can have another one."

When will this stupid argument stop... "We can put a man on the moon but..."
Did you know that the population of the US spend more money on potato chips last year than Nasa?
Get over it. If you are so worried about the poor stop spending you money on consoles, cable tv, and Ipods and give it to the poor. Even better get up and work a soup kitchen and or homeless shelter.
The amount that hubble costs the US is trivial.

Blind? No problem

[Isopropyl]

Now that the HST is effectively blind, it can look forward to a long and promising career as an NFL referee.

Re:Blind? No problem

[NeoThermic]

>> Now that the HST is effectively blind, it can look forward to a long and promising career as an NFL referee.

Or if FIFA get their hands on it, it can referee the next England match...

NeoThermic

Could the extra power distort what hubble saw?

[displague]

Maybe those extrasolar bodies were just electronic blur from the over powering. Is this possible? Does HST focus in on some spectographically known object as a periodic test?

Re:Could the extra power distort what hubble saw?

[Capt'n Hector]

um. no. sorry. And yes, HST does check quite often with its shutter closed (after each exposure, probably) to account for temperature changes across the CCD.

Sea littler

[ndavidg]

Found a hydrogen bomb? The one that releases the power of the sun? Given the amount of earth the ground covers compared to dry land, it makes you wonder how many more of these little "lost treasures" are out there. Definitely puts one over on the guy and that T.V. commerical: "With the treasure hunter, my wife is proud of the weight I lost, and she's definitely proud of this!" [H-bomb twinkles]

Alvin and Titanic

[linuxdoctor]

Don't forget that Alvin was also responsible for helping Dr. Robert Ballard to find the wreck of the Titanic.

Maybe...

[the pickle]

...this will take some of the sting out of the planned retirement of the Hubble.

I agree with another poster here that we need to get a suitable replacement up ASAP, but perhaps now that Hubble is truly showing its age, the public will accept its retirement as an eventuality. After all, Skylab was a pioneering space "device" (for lack of a better term) and we let that fall back down to Earth.

I'm not saying we should necessarily write it off right now, but that maybe those folks at NASA who said six months ago that Hubble was getting near retirement age were right. Now, instead of lots of expensive repair missions, let's get a new and better 'scope up there ASAP!

p

Re:Maybe...

[RobertFisher]

I think you are missing out on one major fact.

The plan to decomission Hubble earlier this year came within days of the Bush plan to redirect NASA to explore Mars. If you really believe that the decision was based on good science and engineering, and not on political goals, then you are incredibly naive. The announcement came with only a nominal budgetary increase, so many NASA budgets were completely slashed, including the Hubble servicing mission. Several other very important missions, including the Dark Energy Probe, are now on permanent ice as well. It is not a matter of "expense," as you suggest, but rather one of priority. We have the money, but rather than devoting it to science, it is now going into the drain of a Mars mission which will never launch, because Congress will never approve the hundreds of billions required.

The NGST (now named Webb) telescope has been in the works for years. It has a launch date of 2010. The Hubble reservicing mission was planned for 2006, and should have kept Hubble in operation until at least 2011 or 2012. That WAS a rational plan to keep the HST maintained, and to ensure than we have one optical space observatory in service at all times.

--RF

Re:Maybe...

[Halvard]

After all, Skylab was a pioneering space "device" (for lack of a better term) and we let that fall back down to Earth.

We didn't "let" Skylab fall back to Earth, unless you consider orbital decay about 18 months early and a delayed space shuttle that was to push it back up letting.

More info on the STIS failure on Hubble

[Jack Porter]

• NASA Press Release
• Space.com

Geez guys, pay attention!

[nbvb]

The spectrograph is what failed; the optics are fine and dandy.

We're still going to get nice pretty pictures out of Hubble, just no UV/wavelength pictures ...

Hubble's hobbled, but still alive and kicking.

ACS grism still works!

[Capt'n Hector]

Hubble is NOT blind, although this is a major setback. There is still a working spectograph on the space telescope called the ACS grism. You can still do spectroscopy!

Linkage

Replacements

[Mr. Sketch]

I believe there are already some possible Hubble replacements. The new telescope in Arizona is planned to produce visual images 10 times sharper than Hubble (according to cnn.com) . Also, many scientists studying deep space are using X-rays, which has the Chandra X-ray observatory

Re:Replacements

[wass]

The new telescope in Arizona is planned to produce visual images 10 times sharper than Hubble

for the bazillionth time, Hubble is more than just pictures. Ground-based scopes are limited to optical frequencies, Hubble can see from near IR to near UV.

More importantly, though, imaging is only one small component of astronomy, it's the spectra where much of the 'real' science is done. Spectra need to be very clean, the atmosphere not only blocks certain frequencies out of optical, but adds its own absorption/emission spectra on top of that.

So basically this telescope is NOT a replacement for Hubble, no matter what they're claiming to get funding. It will complement Hubble, that's for sure, but definitely not replace.

There's still one off the coast of Georgia!

[RogL]

There's still one off the coast of Georgia!

Heard about this only recently. Google for "Georgia coast bomb", you'll find some stories, such as http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/05/02/a5.bo mb.0502.html.

It's considered more risky to retrieve than to let it lie. Might spread contamination. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida; if it went off, I might hear the boom!

Re:There's still one off the coast of Georgia!

[ikeleib]

There's a big differnence between the one of the coast of Georgia and the one that was off the coast of Spain. The bomb is in US territorial waters, and the Navy can effectively guard that position. However, it was not certain that the bomb off the coast of Spain was in their territorial waters. By the international laws of the sea, the first person to tie a line to salvage is entitled to it. Both the US and the Soviets were desperately looking for that bomb. It represented an intelligence goldmine. The Soviets were relegated to looking outside Spanish territorial waters, whereas the US had the run of both. The US Navy salvage team was able to secure and grab the bomb from the bottom of the ocean. It was just inside Spanish territorial waters. It is exactly for this reason that the US Navy salvage team is one of the elite parts of the Navy. They could very easily be called on to find and recover a sunken ballistic missile submarine in international waters.

Likewise, those who think that Navy deep diving vessels, such as Alvin, are purely for research are kidding themselves.

Re:There's still one off the coast of Georgia!

[chimpo13]

You said you RTFA. It says the bombs' not armed. Some random guy found the bomb and offered to bring it back up without the Navy coming by and saying "get lost". What's to stop someone else from finding it?

The Navy does a great job keeping out foreign vessels. There's hardly any drugs brought in that way.

I think the panicked people in Georgia have a right be be panicky about a nuke sitting in the nearby ocean. They're not worried about the Russians learning anything from it. They're worried about bomb grade uranium ready for the taking. The feds need to spend the money and bring it back up.

Alvin and the romance of oceanography

[Animats]

It's hard to believe it now, but there was a period in the 1960s when the ocean was talked about as a great frontier, as important as space. Undersea habitats were built, and undersea cities were discussed. Men went to the deepest place in the ocean and came back.

Today, the romance of the ocean is dead. You can work on a containership or an oil rig, but nobody dreams of a career as an "aquanaut". Jacques Costeau seems dated.

Re:Alvin and the romance of oceanography

[Trejus]

The romance of the ocean isn't dead. If anything, it's just starting. In someways it was a little unfair to put these two articles together, since the implication for Alvin was all wrong. It's not being decommissioned, they have just announced plans to replace it.

Woods hole, the makers of Alvin, are buliding a new a sub that can go about 5,000ft deeper, which means that crews can access 99% of the ocean floor as opposed to ~68% they have accessable with Alvin. They are also building a ROV that descend the full length of the Marinara trench. Alvin still works great, but is just too old and cramped, and doesn't compare to the modern research subs operating out of Europe and Japan, which puts American researchers at a disadvantage. In fact, the operators of Alvin have not decided whether or not to decomission it. They might still decide to continue to run it after 2008 in the "shallow" waters that it accesses today in conjunction with the new submarine.

Plus, it's going to be bigger and roomier, one of the researchers compared it to "buying a new cadillac when you have a chevy in the garage."

Sounds like more of a new dawn than the death of oceanography to me. Of course, the Slashdot headline was mis-leading, but that's why we love it ;)

You can find more information here
and here

Re:Alvin and the romance of oceanography

[argStyopa]

It's hard to believe it now, but there was a period in the 1960s when space was talked about as a great frontier, as important as the ocean. Space stations (Skylab, Mir) were built, and space colonies were discussed. Men went to the MOON and came back.
Today, the romance of space is dead. You can work the shuttle or in NASA, but almost nobody dreams of a career as an "astronaut".

Unfortunately, after the edits it's still pretty much true.

Mod +1 tragic.

Re:Aren't there other instruments on board Hubble?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

RTFA...

"The highly probable consequence of this scenario is the total failure of the MEB/Support Electronics +5V power converter. Since this component is essential to the operation of all of the 8 mechanisms within the instrument (including shutters), its demise renders those mechanisms inoperable. A re-configuration to the Side 1 electronics (current operations are on Side 2) is not possible. (The Side 1 electronics failed in May 2001.)"

my enphasis.

Re:Aren't there other instruments on board Hubble?

[Keysh]

Yes, there are several other instruments; and, as a previous poster noted, these other instruments account for about 70% of Hubble's typical observing. There's more on the various instruments, past and present, here: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/HST_overview/; and links to more technical descriptions here: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/HST_overview/instruments/ .

Briefly, there's ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys), which does both optical and UV imaging; WFPC2 (Wide Field Planetary Camera 2), the older UV/optical imager; and NICMOS, which does near-infrared imaging. Both ACS and NICMOS also have spectroscopy modes, though they don't make up for what STIS does, or did.