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NASA Gives OK to Fix Hubble Telescope
Erick writes "NASA has decided to rescue the Hubble. This will come as great news to all of those who have advocated for fixing the ailing 'scopes sensors, gyros, etc. The article states that nine to 12 months of planning will precede a mission to the Hubble Telescope."
Why would she implode? If she were exposed to the vacuum of space, I could see her lungs bursting (exploding) if she tried to hold her breath, but I would figure that every fluid in her body would boil away, and that's what would kill her.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
three left. you're missing the endeavour
Actually, NOVA got footage from NASA for a show on the first repair mission to Hubble.
Endeavor, too. And NASA doesn't build launch vehicles. Lockheed-Martin and Boeing do.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Its replacement is scheduled for launch in 2011 (it's in the article btw). Until that time it would be nice to have some nice crisp & clean new wallpapers for our desktops.
Great news that NASA will seek to keep the Hubble up and working. Sounds like NASA will be able to schedule a service mission in about 3 years (with one of those years just planning). However, I am a little worried that there is not a lot of press covering its replacement - the James Webb Space Telescope. This isn't scheduled to be launched until 2011. The extension of Hubble closes the gap between current and future platforms. Interestingly Webb has a mission life of 5 - 10 years. In contrast Hubble was launched in 1990 and will be in use for at least another 3-4 years. Let's hope NASA is being conservative in their estimate of the duration of the Webb...
The Superconducting Super Collider was canned for political reasons. The congress wanted to crack down on something for budget reasons, and there were 2 big targets: the International Space Station or the SSC. Remeber how each of these projects are a tiny amount of the goverments budgets. They needed to make an example out of one of them to "show" that they were serious about the budget. They cracked on the SSC because it was less "interesting" to the public, even though it was more important scientifically. They were going to look, among other things, for the Higgs Boson. It would have attracted thousands of scientists from around the world.
Then the same politicians crippled the Space Station by putting it in an orbit that would let them cooperate with Russia, but made it useless for its original purpose. They broke the Space Station for a public show of how happy things are politically with Russia.
I disagree, we haven't had years of smart people selling super-colliders.
Basic science is hard to grasp for the general public. What is its application? Who knows? But, the point is that to build new technologies, a good strating point is to understand nature a bit better. Don't forget the basic science, without it the rest wont work itself out.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
As I recall, NASA does have a cable channel where you can observe their missions. I viewed this once, and well - it was VERY boring.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
a 3-hour spacewalk
Unfortunately, there is no spacewalk planned. The approval has been given for a robotic mission only. Presumably this means that people actually believe it can be done by a robot, which hasn't been clear up to now.
SSC was pork-barrel politics from Bush Sr.
The scientists who wanted it, thought it should be built in Illinois, so that Fermilab could be used as an injector ring. It would have been merely an expansion of Fermilab, and thus, would have saved taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars in construction of new facilities (and would have allowed scientists who already live there to stay living there). Additionally, there already existed in Illinois, several firms with lots of experience in deep tunnel boring projects (for Chicago water pipelines, etc.) In Texas, the plan was for some oil-service companies (run by buddies of Bush), to expand their businesses to acquire the capability for that kind of tunneling. They did not have that capability when the contracts were awarded.
Bush pulled strings to get it built in his home state of Texas. Yes, the religions wingnuts have no qualms spending big money on big science, as long as their contributors get to feed at the trough.
Likewise, Clinton performed a mercy-killing on the project, partially as a politically-motivated attack on Bush's supporters, and partially as an attempt to show that they were serious about fighting pork in the federal budget. But there were sound scientific reasons too. Ongoing expansion projects at other facilities in the world will fill in the gaps left by the loss of the SSC. There would be no such alternative for the ISS. On the other hand - I agree that for the money spent, the SSC had a better promise of delivering more useful science than the ISS. Right now, the ISS does provide some limited capability there, but the cost of maintenence (including the Shuttle) is just plain crippling the space program's more worthwhile scientific projects.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
rtfa. It was NASA chief Sean O'Keefe's decision to plan mission, not President Bush's, nor his administration's.
This link makes it clear that O'Keef wants this to be a "robotic mission". I don't think they can design robots to replace batteries and gyros by 2007, but I truly hope they can. So it won't be a political battle that axes it, but a technological one.
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just to add few cents from Russian point of view. Russians were not happy on abandoning their own project Mir station - and more - there are those here in Russia who are unhappy that we spend money on ISS - which costs us quite a bit of money and yes - brings few scientific output. To most Russian space specialists ISS is not 'up to date' space station ( due to the organisation of process and rush when it was designed) - it is more costly to maintain than estimated cost for some projects we had here on paper and which Russians could launch after Mir ended it's mission if there were no ISS commitments .
Overall - I could say that common beliefs here among specialists and which are articulated ( years before ISS was launched) for example by former chief designer of Salyut and Mir space stations is - manned space researches are cost ineffective and failed to meet expectations which were about manned flights in 60s to 80s. It is like the fact it is much more efficient to use robotic satellites but manned space flights bring more public attention and are politically more attractive and the last point always wins when funding solutions are made.
Thus the decision to launch robotic mission to repair Hubble seems a good move from the point of getting more output from money.
As for what russians had from launching ISS - here there were much public protests against abandoning Mir, till now seems no real scientific results were achieved on Russian part and now, when US declared that they will stop shuttle missions since 2010 and will limit current ISS building process puts a lot of hurdle on russian space budget with even less perspective that IS scientific will be somehow effective in future. And as Souz becomes the major mean to deliver humans to ISS and each costs money - which no one expected to spend The Russians are posed in very difficult situation - spend money with almost no political or scientific results - ISS is mostly respected as US creature, science is not effective with reduced support from US, and Russians are about to spend more money to support operations. As a matter of fact - we have much less developed economy so launching additional Souzes is not a fun but a big hurdle which in turn stifles russian attempts to develop modern robotic satellites due to lack of funding ( space budget is one and limited by relatively small economy- and if money spent on Souz es no money on unmanned flights).
So - NASA is moving in right direction - and rusians are having hurdles to develop due to need to support flights to ISS.
Besides, it is still the only way astronomers can take a peek into space (in the visible part of the spectrum) without having to accept athmospheric disturbances. That is, it is still our sharpest eye out there and will surely help in bringing us some great science. Thanks a lot, NASA!
Actually, adaptive optics give us better visible-wavelength pictures from the ground now. The Hubble is useful for wavelength bands that the atmosphere absorbs.
if the Hubble is in a Shuttle-serviceable orbit, the Earth blocks it's view 45 out of every 90 minutes ...Except when the telescope is pointing along Earth's axis of rotation, but that gives you a rather small patch of the sky to observe. My understanding is that they do build the deep-field images by adding successive exposures.
:)
I should really write replies when I'm more awake.