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Robot Helps NASA Refocus On Hubble
The ailing Hubble telescope keeps refusing to die; jdoire points out this story at the Washington Post which reads in part "Largely because of the Canadian robot named 'Dextre,' NASA has gone in less than a year from virtually writing off the Hubble to embracing a mission that will cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion and approach in complexity the hardest jobs the agency has ever undertaken." (We last mentioned Dextre back in August.)
We make our astronauts. =)
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Hubble is a joint project of NASA and ESA. So why Hubble's future is depending only on NASA actions?
from esa.int Partnerships -NASA is ESA's partner for the HST. ESA has a nominal 15% stake in the mission and has, among other things, provided the Faint Object Camera, the first two solar panels that powered the spacecraft and a team of space scientists and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, United States.
So shouldnt we Europeans provide at least those 15% to save Hubble? It is our toy too.
Deliriant isti Americani.
Known as 'Dexter' in the USA.
Quite honestly, other than balancing the budget, I see this as some of our better spent money. Not so much on the Hubble (even though I do think that we should keep it going), but on being able to handle a mission robotically. This money will not be used just to launch the mission, but also to prepare for it. It will require a fair amount of work on robotics. This will help show us if we have it or not. If not, then we lose the mission and possibly the telescope. But if so, then we are in a better position to build on Mars (or on the moon).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Space Review has an article called "Robots and Hubble: a bad idea?", which argues that repairing Hubble with robots is both risky and expensive.
The article discusses two alternatives: "Alternative One: Bring back the shuttle" and "Alternative Two: Replace Hubble with spacecraft". Both alternatives would be expensive but with a better chance of high scientific value.
Other people have proposed "Alternative Three: Replace Hubble with ground telescopes". NASA could give funding to the astronomy community to build a ground telescope with adaptive optics. It's not a perfect solution because Hubble can detect some wavelengths that ground telescopes cannot, but it's a very cost-effective solution and would be a good compromise until the next-generation space telescopes are launched. Alternative three would be low cost, high scientific value. The University of Arizona's $120 million Large Binocular Telescope is the world's most powerful optical telescope, with images about 10 times as sharp as the Hubble's.
Robot Helps NASA Refocus on Hubble
Written-Off Mission to Extend Telescope's Life Is Revived Because of 'Dextre'
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 12, 2004; Page A03
The promotional video shows a multi-jointed titanium handyman untwisting knobs and disconnecting an electrical cable with slow-motion aplomb, displaying fine motor skills that the voice-over assures will enable it to install "new batteries, gyroscopes and scientific instruments" aboard the aging Hubble Space Telescope.
But the video is only a teaser. In April, when NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt showed the whole sequence to headquarters VIPs, what had first seemed an elusive dream -- a robotic mission to service Hubble and extend its life by five years or more -- suddenly became real.
"I remember coming to look at this stuff and asking, 'Is that an [animation]?' And somebody said, 'No, it's really happening,' " recalled Edward J. Weiler, who was NASA's associate administrator for space science at the time and is now Goddard's director. "I didn't think robots could do this kind of stuff."
It is by no means a sure thing. Yet largely because of the Canadian robot named "Dextre," NASA has gone in less than a year from virtually writing off the Hubble to embracing a mission that will cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion and approach in complexity the hardest jobs the agency has ever undertaken.
"Almost as difficult as landing on Mars successfully twice," Weiler called it. Servicing the Hubble, like the nine-month tour de force that has kept two rovers tooling around the Martian countryside, will demand a host of technical tasks and tricks that have never been tried.
To do it, the United States must develop its first-ever robotic docking vehicle, fill a bag with tools that, in many cases, have not been invented, and use the robot repairman to unscrew j-hooks, open and shut doors and "drawers," disconnect and attach electric connectors, and rig jumper cables.
By the end of 2007, NASA hopes to put into orbit its Hubble Robotic Vehicle of four components: a de-orbit module designed to dock with Hubble; a grappling arm to seize the telescope during docking and serve as a repair platform; an ejection module to carry spare parts and tools; and Dextre.
The jobs, in descending order of importance, are to change Hubble's batteries; install new gyroscopes; swap an old camera for a new, more sophisticated one; install a new spectrograph; and, if possible, replace a telescope pointing device and repair another spectrograph.
"There's nothing easy about it. It's all firsts," said Goddard's Preston M. Burch, Hubble's program manager. "And some of the things we're thinking about make people nervous." The fundamental tenet for a servicing mission, he noted, is the same one that doctors espouse: "Above all, do no harm."
In the past, shuttle astronauts had the job of servicing Hubble, missions that required a few days of spacewalks lasting six hours each. Dextre "can work 24-7," Weiler said -- a fortunate feature, because robots are not as supple as humans. "Watching it is like watching grass grow," Weiler said.
Burch hopes to complete the mission in a month. Some of it will be done by the robot working on its own, but most will be handled by ground controllers manipulating the robot's two arms -- like playing a video game.
"Astronauts are keen to do this," Burch said, and they will probably get the call because of their experience and knowledge of the perils inherent in handling large objects in space -- where something pushed or pulled does not slow down until it is checked.
"Hey, if they ask me, I would be very happy to do this," said Michael Massimino, an astronaut who serviced the Hubble in 2002 and has joysticked Dextre in the lab. "It's an interesting and challenging project -- it's cool, really cool."
Dextre, so nicknamed by the Canadian Space Agency, was developed by MD Robotics, of Brampton, Ontar
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Getting Hubble healthy again and deliver a new set of glasses would be a major technical achievement. Some of the challenges will be the remote docking of spacecraft and all the complicated swapping of hardware. Remember however that Hubble was originally built for human maintenance and that Dextre was built to replace modules at the ISS. It was designed from the beginning for the ISS, but came as an afterthought at Hubble. This will lead to enormous costs that only came available after public outcry. I would think that the same 1B$ could also have been spent on 1 or 2 smaller telescopes. They would probably be smaller than Hubble, but this might be compensated by new technology that wasn't available when Hubble was built 20 years ago. Expendable telescopes are an order of magnitude cheaper than maintainable ones.
Artist impression of the mission is here, anybody know if there are some videos?
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
It makes it sound like NASA gave up on Hubble, then someone said, "Wait, we've got this great robot!" and NASA said, "Oh, we didn't know that, here's some money, let's save Hubble!"
In reality, Hubble has already been extended years beyond its operating life. Even without servicing missions, it costs money to support Hubble. Hubble was ALWAYS going to be ended at some point.
Hubble already received multiple servicing missions beyond what was originally planned. Before Columbia, they were going to do one more "last" servicing mission (and we really mean it this time), but afterwards, it seemed a risk too great to make, since Hubble should have been ended years ago anyway.
However, robotic servcing was always a possibility, and as the article went on the point out, NASA solicited proposals. And Congress allocated funding. It's not like, as other parts of the article suggest, public outcry forced NASA to change its mind. All public outcry did was get some serious proposals for robotic servicing done, and put a little pressure on Congress to allocate funding for it.
NASA already has follow-on telescopes in the planning and construction phases, and ground-based scopes are now in many ways more powerful than Hubble. This whole issue will come up again in a few more years, when Hubble needs servicing again, but seriously, it has to die sometime.
Bruce
I'll bet we can destroy the entire ozone layer for a fraction of the cost of one shuttle mission! Then we can use cheap ground-based telescopes to do UV imaging. And as an added benefit, it will kickstart the next stage of human mutation and evolution!
There'll probably be PR, especially if the mission succeeds, about the pluky robot with Can-do. Maybe even toys in cereal boxes. So they might want to think about how they're going to explain "Where's Dextre now?" to kids.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Who cares if its expense, while I say let's the thing deorbit and move on, it does present an interesting engineering challenge. If they do manage to repair the thing with robots, the accomplishment is not that the Hubble is working again, but the fact that they did it with robots. That fact will give them more options and a big boost to the more ambitious missions that are on the boards as well as increase the capabilities for smaller onse since we can fire off robots into orbit without worrying about having to ground the fleet everytime one crashes.
Why not take the 1.6 billion dollars that a risky repair mission would require, and build two or three replacement Hubbles?
The research is already done, the bugs discovered and quashed, and the support infrastructure is already in place.
So it should be possible to launch two or three new Hubbles at a cost of $600 million apiece. Instead of one repaired Hubble, why not three new ones?
Well, I've never heard that any extra-terrestrial corporations participated on the project. So, ultimately, those $1.6e9 were all paid either to workers as wages or to investors as profits. Then it's up to those people to decide whether to spend it on improving or on worsening things. But all the money, down to the last cent, was spent right here on the ground.
word is that a hostile robot named Mandark may try to disrupt the mission.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
So it should be possible to launch two or three new Hubbles at a cost of $600 million apiece. Instead of one repaired Hubble, why not three new ones?
A lot of the 1.6 billion is going to R&D, because this mission would do things that have never been done before.
Building and launching 2 disposable Hubbles would get you 2 nice telescopes for a while (but not as long as the current one has lasted, since the Hubble design requires periodic servicing); designing a robotic service mission will get you a lot of knowledge about how to do robotics in space, as well as a nice telescope for a few more years (and maybe future robotic service missions can extend its life even further, but those ones won't need all the R&D, so they'll be much cheaper.)
How do we justify a $1.6B repair for a device that originally cost $1.5B. Seems we could design and launch a much improved model for the same amount.
See also "The case against Hubble"..
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-04p.html
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"