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Supernova Imaged by Hubble Telescope
Delta Vel writes "First discovered by a Japanese amateur astronomer on July 31, this Type II supernova was imaged by Hubble on August 17th. The newly named SN 2004 dj, the closest supernova to be observed in over ten years, is about 11 million light-years away in the spiral galaxy NGC 2403. Looks like they goofed in one of the images, though--the arrow points to a different bright spot on the before-and-after image than it does on the main and annotated images." Reader Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Today, astronauts Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke popped open the hatch on the Russian side of the ISS spacecraft and quickly stepped through the fourth and final spacewalk of their six-month mission. Their mission? Install three antennas and replace a 2-foot-square Russian pump panel. But of course, because it isn't a part or our Mission to Mars, it is still too dangerous work on the Hubble Telescope, which after all, is only used for science."
Even better is the fact that they don't point to different bright spots. It's just the before and after picture is a cropped version of the main and annotated images.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
>But of course, because it isn't a part or our Mission to Mars, it is
>still too dangerous work on the Hubble Telescope, which after all, is
>only used for science."
>
Everybody excoriated NASA for not flying to the station, not paying attention to safety, not getting the Air Force to look, etc, etc. They came up with the safe haven plan to address those concerns, way to go NASA. Then someone noticed it was going to end up not saving Hubble. All of a sudden, what the hell, take a chance, don't you guys have any guts?
You can't take both bold chances, and ensure perfect safety, at the same time. Particularly to save a 20-year-old telescope with a spotty reliability record, a replacement plan in progress, and better telescopes on the ground.
Too late for that. The message would have had to leave before the supernova, so it would have already passed us.
We'd have to go FTL a loooong way to look for any signal.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Shuttle launches run to around US$500M (the actual cost is unclear, since it's never costed on a per-launch basis) - or at least they used to before all this extra safety stuff was added in. Assuming that NASA does actually manage to get shuttle operational again (which isn't guaranteed) the cost of an individual launch will probably be even higher than it used to be. Then you have to throw in the cost of the replacement hardware.
According to this the JWST will cost US$824.8M. That appears to include launch costs (Ariane V, so probably ~$100M), and operations (for 5-10 years). A large chunk of the cost of the telescope itself will be non-recurring engineering (i.e. design work). Assuming a build-to-print replacement telescope, you could probably do a replacement (with launch costs) for around $400M or less. So, less than a shuttle mission (neglecting the whole L2 issue), and no lives risked.
It still doesn't invalidate my point that 20 years is not particularly "old" for a telescope. Especially when it cost $US1.5billion.
By way of calibration: the Mars Exploration Rover mission cost just shy of a $1B, and will be lucky to last 2 years, let alone 20. Space isn't cheap.
With regard to repairing Hubble, there's only so much stuff you can repair/replace (without actually replacing the whole thing) before it succumbs to old age. It's not clear that it's cost-effective to do another servicing mission - you may save the gyros, only to have other stuff fail. Space is not a benign environment. The cumulative total radiation dose is slowly chewing thorugh HST's electronics (although I believe the last servicing mission replaced the onboard computer, other electronic devices onboard are still the originals), the micrometeoroid background is eating at its structure, the batteries are nearing the end of their cycle life, and the thermal system is slowly degrading as the optical properties of the HST exterior change due to micrometeroid strikes and solar UV. Let it die.
Incidentally, I'm no fan of the Bush Mars plan. I just think that all the noise over Hubble is driven as much by partisan politics as it is by scientific, engineering, and cost considerations.