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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."

5 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You're fired... by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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  2. Re:Cost vs Risk by proj_2501 · · Score: 4, Informative

    three left. you're missing the endeavour

  3. Fix the old, replace with new? by Apollo+Jones · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

  4. Re:This is awesome... by QEDog · · Score: 5, Informative
    We've had too many years of wonderfully smart people trying to sell super-colliders to lawyers -- we should have learned something by now.

    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.

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    "There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
  5. Re:Want extra funding? by AviLazar · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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