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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.)
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.
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.
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